Webinar for members: The Role of the Ombuds in Preventing and Responding to Academic Bullying on University Campuses

Academic bullying is an unfortunate phenomenon in higher education around the world. Hostile behaviors from academic supervisors and peers can impact the lives, work, and careers of both students and full time faculty and staff. The structure of higher education allows individuals in positions of power to not only get away with, but can even perpetuate these behaviors.

This webinar will include esteemed panelists to discuss the phenomenon, and to engage in ways that ombuds can aid in the prevention of academic bullying, to provide support to targets of bullying, as well as to address the systemic conditions that underly and encourage these actions.

We will also learn about the work of the Academic Parity Movement, an organization whose goal is to uproot bullying and support those who have been impacted by the practice.

Panelists:

Dr. Morteza Mahmoudi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology and the Precision Health Program at Michigan State University.

His research focuses on investigating (i) overlooked factors in nanomedicine and (ii) academic bullying and harassment.

He received his graduate and postgraduate training from Sharif University of Technology (Iran), University College Dublin (Ireland), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Stanford School of Medicine.

Prior to joining Michigan State University, he was an Assistant Professor at Harvard University. According to Clarivate Analytics, he is among the highly cited researchers for the years 2018 and 2020–2024.

Dr. Waged Jafer is the Deputy Ombuds at the University of Pennsylvania.

Prior to her arrival at Penn, Dr. Jafer established the inaugural Ombuds office for Williams College in 2021. Prior to that she served as the Regional Ombudsperson for Near and Middle East with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.

Her extensive experience in conflict resolution has been mainly in higher education in Canada. She has served as the Ombudsperson for Quest University Canada as well as the Ombudsperson for UBC-Alma Matar Society. For two years she served as the Alternative Dispute Resolution Specialist at the Independent Investigations Office at UBC where she was tasked to develop the ADR framework as well as Restorative Justice program for cases of sexual misconduct as well as harassment and discrimination in that office. She has worked as a conflict management consultant and a sessional faculty member while completing her doctoral work at UBC.

Dr. Jafer earned a bachelor’s degree from Carleton University and a Master’s degree in Conflict Studies from the University of Ottawa-Saint Paul and a PhD from the University of British Columbia.