Bureaucracy and Betrayal: The Hidden Costs of Academic Politics
In the early days of COVID, while the world was reeling, something more insidious was unfolding in the quiet corners of academia. The new Chair of the Department of Medicine at University of Washington had just assumed power. She arrived with an agenda, one that, looking back, was equal parts political maneuvering and personal ambition.
She came in like a ghost. Aloof, almost spectral. I’d heard whispers that she wanted my program for herself. The philanthropic donors, the prestige of the work, all seemed to fit perfectly with her desire to build her own kingdom. And she wasn’t acting alone. She was working hand in hand with the microbiology department. They’d been desperate for a center of their own for years. I remember them coming to me, practically drooling, asking how I’d managed to build ours, how I’d gotten it funded, how I’d pulled all those pieces together.
My team and I got to work. We created a beautifully bound strategic plan that laid out every goal, every accomplishment, every step for the future. We even had it printed and wrapped with the kind of care you’d expect for something that mattered. We sent it to her so she’d have it when she arrived, so she could see exactly who we were and what we stood for.
At our first meeting, she didn’t even mention it. She hadn’t opened it. Instead, she zeroed in on a rumor she’d heard, that no one understood the difference between our center and the new one at Fred Hutch Cancer Center. She didn’t ask about our mission or what we needed. She wanted to know why we weren’t collaborating. I explained that we’d invited them, that they operated behind closed doors and never let us in. She didn’t care. She ended the call without another word. She never once set foot in my office or our lab.
Months later, after I’d resigned, I got an email from her admin, asking for directions to the lab. This woman was supposed to be my mentor and she had never even been to my office or the center. I laughed and told them to fuck off. If she had cared about the program, she would have come to see it herself.
This was just the beginning.
When she finally decided to engage, it was through an audit. Supposedly a review of our work. For this audit, they flew in a very famous microbiome researcher from the East Coast. A researcher whose insight could have been invaluable and whose visit could have been an incredible networking opportunity. But I was allotted only 15 minutes with him. Fifteen minutes to talk about years of work. And even that was canceled because his other meetings ran over. Instead, I got a ten-minute phone call at eight that night with someone I’d never met. A call that was meant to check a box, not to support or understand the work.
As COVID spread, my mother and her twin, both maternal figures to me, were diagnosed with terminal cancer. Amidst that crisis, the Chair wanted to give me the results of my audit. During a scheduled meeting, she opened the call with: “I hear someone in your family is sick.” I remember she wasnt even looking at the camera, instead she was ruffling through papers as she spoke these words to me.
When I told her it was my mother and aunt, she froze. Stopped her rutting through her papers and turned to the camera. It was clear she hadn’t been fully informed of the details and hadn’t expected my response. She was completely taken aback. She offered to delay the audit results, because she knew how it would look to me and to others if she delivered the results of the audit that had been carefully crafted to tear me down. I pushed back, I knew this was calculated. I told her that she had initiated all of this and wanted to have this call despite “someone” in my family being sick so please by all means fill me in on the results. She chickened out and gave some very vague feedback. Nothing actionable. Just enough to justify undermining me.
It was hostile covert aggression but wrapped in bureaucracy.
Over the next year, I found out she had been pitching ideas about the center to VC firms in San Francisco. When it came time for the donor report, we submitted a creative, high-quality piece, like we always had. But this time, we were told to redo it. Why? Because it didn’t mention her. She submitted her own version without informing me. I was never allowed to see it.
This is what organizational psychologists call strategic opacity, deliberately keeping someone out of the loop to take control of the story. To weaken their influence while appearing authoritative to outsiders.
Throughout this entire process, the microbiology department was her constant ally. They were always there in those closed-door discussions. They’d been circling like vultures, waiting for their chance to swoop in. When I was finally pushed out, they put a microbiology professor in charge. Someone they’d picked to run the center I’d built from scratch.
To make it even more brazen, they didn’t just replace me. They tried to erase me completely. They changed the name of the center to something bland and forgettable. They scrubbed every trace of me and my work from its story, like I’d never existed. But I remember. I remember being the one who brought those faculty together, who created excitement, who took a bunch of individual labs and turned them into a real center. I was the one who made it possible for people to dream bigger. And for all that, I got no thanks. No acknowledgment. Nothing but erasure from her and the microbiology department she conspired with.
This is what it looks like when leadership becomes a personal campaign. When someone sees your accomplishments not as a foundation to build on, but as a threat to their own fragile sense of self. Let me break down what I see in her behavior, through the lens of organizational psychology and the messy human instincts that can twist academic power into something toxic.
1. Instrumental Dehumanization
She never came to my office. Never met my team. That wasn’t laziness. It was deliberate. By avoiding real connection, she could justify dismantling everything we’d built. Empathy never got a seat at the table. Research shows that environments like this, where leaders treat people as tools, fuel distress and knowledge hoarding. They end up harming everyone involved.
2. Narrative Control
Ignoring our plan wasn’t just an oversight. It was a way to rewrite the story and make herself the hero. And with the microbiology department as her echo chamber, she erased the center’s roots and pretended it had been built from nothing. Studies show that leaders who twist the story like this poison trust and ruin collaboration.
3. Information Withholding and Triangulation
She kept me in the dark, forming secret alliances and holding meetings without me. Those conversations with the microbiology department, always without my knowledge, were meant to build their own empire. Research confirms that this kind of behavior splinters teams and creates a culture of fear and suspicion.
4. Covert Aggression
Doing an audit while my family was falling apart wasn’t just bad timing. It was a deliberate choice. A calculated way to push me to the edge. Research shows that this kind of hidden hostility can leave lasting scars, making it hard to trust again and sapping your energy for the work you love.
5. Envy and Status Games
I was young, trusted, and full of ideas. She and the microbiology department saw that not as a gift, but as a threat. Envy can be a powerful force, and it can twist even the best intentions into something ugly. Instead of celebrating what we’d done, they worked to erase it, to take the credit for themselves.
What You Need to Know
Here’s what I want junior faculty to understand:
Academic sabotage isn’t always loud. It’s often bureaucratic, polite, and devastating.
Never confuse silence with safety. If a leader won’t meet with you, won’t visit your lab, or excludes you from donor discussions—you’re being erased.
Control your narrative early. Document everything. Set expectations in writing. Keep a clear record of your contributions.
Words of Wisdom for the Next Generation
To those coming up behind me: academia is human, and humans can be messy. But real science doesn’t thrive on backroom deals and status games. It grows through honesty, collaboration, and a willingness to challenge even the people at the top. Don’t mistake hierarchy for wisdom or power for progress. Your ideas matter. Your voice matters. If someone tries to write you out of the story, don’t vanish quietly. Speak up. Share your experiences. And protect each other.
A Call to Action for the Future of Science
Science can’t keep going if we let these games play out in the shadows. We need leaders who see people, not just positions. We need to build systems that value dignity and respect, not just titles. We need to make sure the next generation has the chance to do great work without fear of being erased. Because in the end, no discovery matters more than the people who make it happen. Let’s build an academic world that lives up to that promise, together.
