recommendation in research bullying

Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice (2016)

Chapter: summary.

“I think in the early high school years I just tried to stay in the background, I was like ‘Hopefully no one notices me.’ And I would just walk through the halls like a ghost. And it seemed to work for a while but I mean with that you don’t get the full benefits of a social experience.”

—Young adult in a focus group discussing bullying

Bullying has long been tolerated by many as a rite of passage among children and adolescents. There is an implication that individuals who are bullied must have “asked for” this type of treatment, or deserved it. Sometimes, even the child who is bullied begins to internalize this idea. For many years, there has been a general acceptance when it comes to a child or adolescent with greater social capital or power pushing around a child perceived as subordinate—such that you can almost hear the justification: “kids will be kids.” The schoolyard bully trope crosses race, gender, class, ethnicity, culture, and generations, appearing in popular media ranging from Harry Potter to Glee , and Mean Girls to Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. Its prevalence perpetuates its normalization. But bullying is not a normal part of childhood and is now appropriately considered to be a serious public health problem.

Although bullying behavior endures through generations, the milieu is changing. Historically, bullying has occurred at school—the physical setting in which most of childhood is centered and the primary source for peer group formation—or really anywhere that children played or congregated. In recent years, however, the physical setting is not the only place bullying is occurring. Technology allows for a new type of digital electronic aggres-

sion, cyberbullying, which takes place through chat rooms, instant messaging, social media, and other forms of digital electronic communication.

Simultaneously, the demographics of cities and towns in the United States are in flux, with resulting major changes in the ethnic and racial composition of schools across the country. Numerical-minority ethnic groups appear to be at greater risk for being targets of bullying because they have fewer same-ethnicity peers to help ward off potential bullies. Ethnically diverse schools may reduce actual rates of bullying because the numerical balance of power is shared among many groups.

Composition of peer groups, shifting demographics, changing societal norms, and modern technology are contextual factors that must be considered to understand and effectively react to bullying in the United States. Youth are embedded in multiple contexts, and each of these contexts interacts with individual characteristics of youth in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and being a target or perpetrator of bullying. Even the definition of bullying is being questioned, since cyberbullying is bullying but may not involve repetition—a key component in previous definitions of bullying—because a single perpetrating act on the Internet can be shared or viewed multiple times.

Although the public health community agrees that bullying is a problem, it has been difficult for researchers to determine the extent of bullying in the United States. However, the prevalence data that are available indicate that school-based bullying likely affects between 18 and 31 percent of children and youth, and the prevalence of cyber victimization ranges from 7 to 15 percent of youth. These estimates are even higher for some subgroups of youth who are particularly vulnerable to being bullied (e.g., youth who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender [LGBT]; youth with disabilities). Although these are ranges, they show bullying behavior is a real problem that affects a large number of youth.

STUDY CHARGE AND SCOPE

Recognizing that bullying behavior is a major public health problem that demands the concerted and coordinated time and attention of parents, educators and school administrators, health care providers, policy makers, families, and others concerned with the care of children, a group of federal agencies and private foundations asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to undertake a study of what is known and what needs to be known to reduce bullying behavior and its consequences. The Committee on the Biological and Psychosocial Effects of Peer Victimization: Lessons for Bullying Prevention was created to carry out this task under the Academies’ Board on Children, Youth, and Families and the Committee on

Law and Justice. The committee was charged with producing a comprehensive report on the state of the science on the biological and psychosocial consequences of peer victimization and the risk and protective factors that either increase or decrease peer victimization behavior and consequences (see Chapter 1 for the committee’s detailed statement of task).

This report builds on a workshop held in April 2014 and summarized in a report from the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, Building Capacity to Reduce Bullying and Its Impact on Youth Across the Lifecourse . The committee that authored the current report, several members of which participated in the initial workshop, began its work in October 2014. The committee members represent expertise in communication technology, criminology, developmental and clinical psychology, education, mental health, neurobiological development, pediatrics, public health, school administration, school district policy, and state law and policy.

The committee conducted an extensive review of the literature pertaining to peer victimization and bullying and, in some instances, drew upon the broader literature on aggression and violence. To supplement its review of the literature, the committee held two public information-gathering sessions and conducted a site visit to a northeastern city. 1

Given the varied use of the terms “bullying” and “peer victimization” in both the research-based and practice-based literature, the committee chose to use a current definition for bullying developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

Bullying is any unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another youth or group of youths who are not siblings or current dating partners that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be repeated. Bullying may inflict harm or distress on the targeted youth including physical, psychological, social, or educational harm.

Not only does this definition provide detail on the common elements of bullying behavior but it also was developed with input from a panel of researchers and practitioners. The committee also followed the CDC in focusing primarily on individuals between the ages of 5 and 18. The committee recognizes that children’s development occurs on a continuum, and so while it relied primarily on the CDC definition, its work and this report acknowledge the importance of addressing bullying in both early childhood and emerging adulthood. The committee followed the CDC in not including sibling violence, dating violence, and bullying of youth by adults, as those subjects were outside the scope of the committee’s charge.

___________________

1 The location of the city is not identified in order to protect the privacy of the focus group participants.

THE SCOPE AND IMPACT OF THE PROBLEM

While exact estimates of bullying and cyberbullying may be difficult to ascertain, how their prevalence is measured can be improved. The committee concluded that definitional and measurement inconsistencies lead to a variation in estimates of bullying prevalence, especially across disparate samples of youth. Although there is a variation in numbers, the national surveys show bullying behavior is a real problem that affects a large number of youth (Conclusion 2.1). Chapter 2 describes the definitional, measurement, and sampling issues that make it difficult to generate precise, consistent, and representative estimates of bullying and cyberbullying rates. Moreover, the national datasets on the prevalence of bullying focus predominantly on the children who are bullied. Considerably less is known about perpetrators, and nothing is known about bystanders in that national data (Conclusion 2.2). Further, there is currently a lack of nationally representative data for certain groups that are at risk for bullying, such as LGBT youth and youth with disabilities.

Although perceptions and interpretations of communications may be different in digital communities, the committee decided to address cyberbullying within a shared bullying framework rather than as a separate entity from traditional bullying because there are shared risk factors, shared negative consequences, and interventions that work on both cyberbullying and traditional bullying. However, there are differences between these behaviors that have been noted in previous research, such as different power differentials, different perceptions of communication, and differences in how to best approach the issue of repetition in an online context. These differences suggest that the CDC definition of traditional bullying may not apply in a blanket fashion to cyberbullying but that these entities are not separate species. The committee concludes cyberbullying should be considered within the context of bullying rather than as a separate entity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definition should be evaluated for its application to cyberbullying. Although cyberbullying may already be included, it is not perceived that way by the public or by the youth population (Conclusion 2.3).

The committee also concludes that different types of bullying behaviors—physical, relational, cyber—may emerge or be more salient at different stages of the developmental life course (Conclusion 2.4). In addition, the committee concludes that the online context where cyberbullying takes place is nearly universally accessed by adolescents. Social media sites are used by the majority of teens and are an influential and immersive medium in which cyberbullying occurs (Conclusion 2.5).

As described in Chapter 3 , research to date on bullying has been largely descriptive. These descriptive data have provided essential insights into a

variety of important factors on the topic of bullying, including prevalence, individual and contextual correlates, and adverse consequences. At the same time, this descriptive approach has often produced inconsistencies due, in part, to a lack of attention to contextual factors that render individual characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, more or less likely to be related to bullying experiences. Youth are embedded in multiple contexts, ranging from peer and family to school, community, and macrosystem. Each of these contexts can affect individual characteristics of youth (e.g., race/ethnicity, sexual orientation) in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and perpetrating and/or being the target of bullying behavior (Conclusion 3.1)

The committee also concludes that contextual factors operate differently across groups of youth, and therefore contexts that protect some youth against the negative effects of bullying are not generalizable to all youth. Consequently, research is needed to identify contextual factors that are protective for specific subgroups of youth that are most at risk of perpetrating or being targeted by bullying behavior (Conclusion 3.2).

Finally, the committee notes that stigma 2 plays an important role in bullying. In particular, the role of stigma is evident not only in the groups of youth that are expressly targeted for bullying (e.g., LGBT youth, youth with disabilities, overweight/obese youth) but also in the specific types of bullying that some youth face (i.e., bias-based bullying). Despite this evidence, the role of stigma and its deleterious consequences is more often discussed in research on discrimination than on bullying. In the committee’s view, studying experiences of being bullied in particular vulnerable subgroups (e.g., those based on race/ethnicity or sexual orientation) cannot be completely disentangled from the study of discrimination or of unfair treatment based on a stigmatized identity. These are separate empirical literatures (school-based discrimination versus school-based bullying) although often they are studying the same phenomena. There should be much more cross-fertilization between the empirical literatures on school bullying and discrimination due to social stigma (Conclusion 3.5).

Bullying is often viewed as just a normal part of growing up, but it has long-lasting consequences and cannot simply be ignored or discounted as not important. It has been shown to have long-term effects not only on the child who is bullied but also on the child who bullies and on bystanders. While there is limited information about the physical effects of bullying,

2 As noted in a 2016 report Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, some stakeholder groups are targeting the word “stigma” itself and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is shifting away from the use of this term. The committee determined that the word stigma was currently widely accepted in the research community and uses this term in the report.

existing evidence suggests that children and youth who are bullied experience a range of somatic disturbances, including sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal concerns, and headaches. Emerging research suggests that bullying can result in biological changes. The committee concludes that although the effects of being bullied on the brain are not yet fully understood, there are changes in the stress response systems and in the brain that are associated with increased risk for mental health problems, cognitive function, self-regulation, and other physical health problems (Conclusion 4.3).

As described in Chapter 4 , being bullied during childhood and adolescence has been linked to psychological effects, such as depression, anxiety, and alcohol and drug abuse into adulthood. The committee concludes that bullying has significant short- and long-term internalizing and externalizing psychological consequences for the children who are involved in bullying behavior (Conclusion 4.4). Studies suggest that individuals who bully and who are also bullied by others are especially at risk for suicidal behavior due to increased mental health problems. Individuals who are involved in bullying in any capacity (as perpetrators, targets, or both) are statistically significantly more likely to contemplate or attempt suicide, compared to children who are not involved in bullying. However, there is not enough evidence to date to conclude that bullying is a causal factor for youth suicides. Focusing solely on bullying as a causal factor would ignore the many other influences that contribute to youth suicides.

With regard to the linkages between bullying and school shootings, several characteristics of the research that has been conducted on school shootings bear mentioning. First, to date, research has not been able to establish a reliable profile or set of risk factors that predicts who will become a school shooter. Second, it is important to keep in mind that multiple-victim school shootings are low base rate events, and thus caution should be used in generalizing findings from these rare events to broad populations of students. There is also a lack of reliable evidence about school shootings that may have been successfully prevented or averted.

Given that school shootings are rare events, most of what is known about them comes from studies that aggregate events over many years. These studies mostly employ qualitative methods, including descriptive post-incident psychological autopsies of the shooters, analysis of media accounts, or in-depth interviews of a small subset of surviving shooters. Most investigations have concluded that bullying may play a role in many school shootings but not all. It is a factor, and perhaps an important one, but it does not appear to be the main influencing factor in a decision to carry out these violent acts. Further, there is not enough evidence to date (qualitative or quantitative) to conclude that bullying is a causal factor for multiple-homicide targeted school shootings nor is there clear evidence on how bullying or related mental health and behavior issues contribute to

school shootings. The committee concludes that the data are unclear on the role of bullying as one of or a precipitating cause of school shootings (Conclusion 4.5).

Although the research is limited, children and youth who do the bullying also are more likely to be depressed, engage in high-risk activities such as theft and vandalism, and have adverse outcomes later in life, compared to those who do not bully. However, whereas some individuals who bully others may in fact be maladjusted, others who are motivated by establishing their status within their peer group do not evidence negative outcomes. Thus, the research on outcomes for children who bully is mixed, with most research on the short- and long-term outcomes of bullying not taking into account the heterogeneity of children who bully. The committee concludes that individuals who both bully others and are themselves bullied appear to be at greatest risk for poor psychosocial outcomes, compared to those who only bully or are only bullied and to those who are not bullied (Conclusion 4.6).

Existing evidence suggests that both social-cognitive and emotion regulation processes may mediate the relation between being bullied and adverse mental health outcomes (Conclusion 4.8). Regardless of mechanism, being bullied seems to have an impact on mental health functioning during adulthood. Prior experiences, such as experiences with early abuse and trauma; a chronically activated stress system due to home, school, or neighborhood stress; the length of the bullying experience; and the child’s social support system, all interact to contribute to the neurobehavioral outcome of bullying.

A PIVOTAL TIME FOR PREVENTION: NEXT STEPS

This is a pivotal time for bullying prevention. Reducing the prevalence of bullying and minimizing the harm it imparts on children can have a dramatic impact on children’s well-being and development. Many programs and policies have been developed, but more needs to be known about what types of programs or investments will be most effective. The committee concludes that the vast majority of research on bullying prevention programming has focused on universal school-based programs; however, the effects of those programs within the United States appear to be relatively modest. Multicomponent schoolwide programs appear to be most effective at reducing bullying and should be the types of programs implemented and disseminated in the United States (Conclusion 5.1).

Universal prevention programs are aimed at reducing risks and strengthening skills for all youth within a defined community or school setting. Through universal programs, all members of the target population are exposed to the intervention regardless of risk for bullying. Examples

of universal preventive interventions include social–emotional lessons that are used in the classroom, behavioral expectations taught by teachers, counselors coming into the classroom to model strategies for responding to or reporting bullying, and holding classroom meetings among students and teachers to discuss emotionally relevant issues related to bullying or equity. They may also include guidelines for the use of digital media, such as youth’s use of social network sites.

Selective preventive interventions are directed either to youth who are at risk for engaging in bullying or to youth at risk of being a target of bullying. Such programs may include more intensive social–emotional skills training, coping skills, or de-escalation approaches for youth who are involved in bullying. Indicated preventive interventions are typically tailored to meet youth’s needs and are of greater intensity as compared to the universal or selective levels of intervention. Indicated interventions incorporate more intensive supports and activities for those who are already displaying bullying behavior or who have a history of being bullied and are showing early signs of behavioral, academic, or mental health consequences.

There is a growing emphasis on the use of multi-tiered approaches, which leverage universal, selective, and indicated prevention programs and activities. These combined programs often attempt to address at the universal level such factors as social skill development, social–emotional learning or self-regulation, which also tend to reduce the chances that youth would engage in bullying or reduce the risk of being bullied further. Multi-tiered approaches are vertical programs that increase in intensity, whereas multicomponent approaches could be lateral and include different elements, such as a classroom, parent, and individual components bundled together.

Research indicates that positive relationships with teachers, parents, and peers appear to be protective. The committee concludes that most of the school, family, and community-based prevention programs tested using randomized controlled trial designs have focused on youth violence, delinquency, social–emotional development, and academic outcomes, with limited consideration of the impacts on bullying specifically. However, it is likely that these programs also produce effects on bullying, which have largely been unmeasured and therefore data on bullying outcomes should be routinely collected in future research (Conclusion 5.2).

Families play a critical role in bullying prevention by providing emotional support to promote disclosure of bullying incidents and by fostering coping skills in their children. And some research points to an opportunity to better engage bystanders, who have the best opportunity to intervene and minimize the effects of bullying.

Chapter 5 offers a number of specific ways to improve the quality and efficacy of preventive interventions. As concluded by the committee, there has been limited research on selective and indicated models for bullying intervention programming, either inside or outside of schools. More at-

tention should be given to these interventions in future bullying research (Conclusion 5.3).

There remains a dearth of intervention research on programs related to cyberbullying and on programs targeted to vulnerable populations, such as LGBT youth, youth with chronic health problems such as obesity, or youth with developmental disabilities such as autism. Schools may consider implementing a multicomponent program that focuses on school climate, positive behavior support, social–emotional learning, or violence prevention more generally, rather than implementing a bullying-specific preventive intervention, as these more inclusive programs may reach a broader set of outcomes for students and the school environment.

Moreover, suspension and related exclusionary techniques are often the default response by school staff and administrators in bullying situations. However, these approaches do not appear to be effective and may actually result in increased academic and behavioral problems for youth. Caution is also warranted about the types of roles youth play in bullying prevention programs. The committee concludes that the role of peers in bullying prevention as bystanders and as intervention program leaders needs further clarification and empirical investigation in order to determine the extent to which peer-led programs are effective and robust against potentially iatrogenic effects (Conclusion 5.5).

As the consequences of bullying become clearer and more widely known, states are adopting new laws and schools are embracing new programs and policies to reduce the prevalence of bullying. As noted in Chapter 6 , over the past 15 years all 50 states and the District of Columbia have adopted or revised laws to address bullying. Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia include electronic forms of bullying (cyberbullying) in their statutes. The committee concludes that law and policy have the potential to strengthen state and local efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to bullying (Conclusion 6.1). However, there are few studies that have examined the actual effect of existing laws and policies in reducing bullying. The committee concludes that the development of model anti-bullying laws or policies should be evidence based. Additional research is needed to determine the specific components of an anti-bullying law that are most effective in reducing bullying, in order to guide legislators who may amend existing laws or create new ones (Conclusion 6.2). Further, evidence-based research on the consequences of bullying can help inform litigation efforts at several stages, including case discovery and planning, pleadings, and trial (Conclusion 6.6).

Some policies and programs have been shown to be ineffective in preventing bullying. The committee concludes there is emerging research that some widely used approaches such as zero tolerance policies are not effective at reducing bullying and thus should be discontinued, with the resources redirected to evidence-based policies and programs (Conclusion 6.7).

In Chapter 7 , the committee makes seven recommendations. The first three recommendations are directed to the cognizant federal agencies and their partners in state and local governments and the private sector, for improving surveillance and monitoring activities in ways that will address the gaps in what is known about the prevalence of bullying behavior, what is known about children and youth who are at increased risk for being bullied, and what is known about the effectiveness of existing policies and programs. Another four recommendations are either directed at fostering the development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based preventive intervention programs and training or directed to social media companies and federal partners to adopt, implement, and evaluate policies and programs for preventing, identifying, and responding to bullying on their platforms. The committee’s recommendations are provided below:

Recommendation 7.1: The U.S Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission, which are engaged in the Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention interagency group, should foster use of a consistent definition of bullying.

Recommendation 7.2: The U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, and other agencies engaged in the Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention interagency group should gather longitudinal surveillance data on the prevalence of all forms of bullying, including physical, verbal, relational, property, cyber-, and bias-based bullying, and the prevalence of individuals involved in bullying, including perpetrators, targets, and bystanders, in order to have more uniform and accurate prevalence estimates.

Recommendation 7.3: The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, the state attorneys general, and local education agencies together should (1) partner with researchers to collect data on an ongoing basis on the efficacy and implementation of anti-bullying laws and policies; (2) convene an annual meeting in which collaborations between social scientists, legislative members, and practitioners responsible for creating, implementing, enforcing, and evaluating antibullying laws and policies can be more effectively facilitated and in which research on anti-bullying laws and policies can be reviewed; and (3) report research findings on an annual basis to both Congress and the state legislatures so that anti-bullying laws and policies can be strengthened and informed by evidence-based research.

Recommendation 7.4: The U.S. Departments of Education, Health and

Human Services, and Justice, working with other relevant stakeholders, should sponsor the development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based programs to address bullying behavior.

Recommendation 7.5: The U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, working with other relevant stakeholders, should promote the evaluation of the role of stigma and bias in bullying behavior and sponsor the development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based programs to address stigma- and bias-based bullying behavior, including the stereotypes and prejudice that may underlie such behavior.

Recommendation 7.6: The U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, working with other partners, should support the development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-informed bullying prevention training for individuals, both professionals and volunteers, who work directly with children and adolescents on a regular basis.

Recommendation 7.7: Social media companies, in partnership with the Federal Partners for Bullying Prevention Steering Committee, should adopt, implement, and evaluate on an ongoing basis policies and programs for preventing, identifying, and responding to bullying on their platforms and should publish their anti-bullying policies on their Websites.

In addition, the committee identified a set of current research gaps and recognized the value of future research in addressing issues raised in the report and important for a more comprehensive understanding of bullying behavior, its consequences, and factors that can ameliorate the harmful effects of bullying and foster resilience. These research needs are listed in Table 7-1 and are connected to general topics addressed in the report such as “Law and Policy,” “Prevalence of Bullying,” and “Protective Factors and Contexts.”

The study of bullying behavior is a relatively recent field, and it is in transition. Over the past few decades, research has significantly improved understanding of what bullying behavior is, how it can be measured, and the critical contextual factors that are involved. While there is not a quick fix or one-size-fits-all solution, the evidence clearly supports preventive and interventional policy and practice. Tackling this complex and serious public health problem will require a commitment to research, analysis, trial, and refinement, but doing so can make a tangible difference in the lives of many children.

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Bullying has long been tolerated as a rite of passage among children and adolescents. There is an implication that individuals who are bullied must have "asked for" this type of treatment, or deserved it. Sometimes, even the child who is bullied begins to internalize this idea. For many years, there has been a general acceptance and collective shrug when it comes to a child or adolescent with greater social capital or power pushing around a child perceived as subordinate. But bullying is not developmentally appropriate; it should not be considered a normal part of the typical social grouping that occurs throughout a child's life.

Although bullying behavior endures through generations, the milieu is changing. Historically, bulling has occurred at school, the physical setting in which most of childhood is centered and the primary source for peer group formation. In recent years, however, the physical setting is not the only place bullying is occurring. Technology allows for an entirely new type of digital electronic aggression, cyberbullying, which takes place through chat rooms, instant messaging, social media, and other forms of digital electronic communication.

Composition of peer groups, shifting demographics, changing societal norms, and modern technology are contextual factors that must be considered to understand and effectively react to bullying in the United States. Youth are embedded in multiple contexts and each of these contexts interacts with individual characteristics of youth in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and bullying perpetration or victimization. Recognizing that bullying behavior is a major public health problem that demands the concerted and coordinated time and attention of parents, educators and school administrators, health care providers, policy makers, families, and others concerned with the care of children, this report evaluates the state of the science on biological and psychosocial consequences of peer victimization and the risk and protective factors that either increase or decrease peer victimization behavior and consequences.

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Using Qualitative Methods to Measure and Understand Key Features of Adolescent Bullying: A Call to Action

Original Article
Published: 16 February 2022
Volume 4 , pages 230–241, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

Natalie Spadafora ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8498-1712 1 ,
Anthony A. Volk 1 &
Andrew V. Dane 2

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Bullying is a significant problem that has received a great amount of research attention, yet a basic definition of bullying has proven challenging for researchers to agree upon. Differences of definitions between academics and the public pose additional problems for the ongoing study and prevention of bullying. Qualitative methodologies may afford unique insights into the conceptualization of bullying and how we might reconcile existing definitional differences. In particular, we focus on the theoretically derived definition created by Volk et al. ( 2014 ). In this definition, three main aspects of bullying behavior are considered: (1) there is a power imbalance between the perpetrator and the victim, (2) the behavior is goal-directed, and (3) the behavior has a harmful impact. We review the qualitative evidence in support of the definition while simultaneously drawing attention to the potentials of qualitative research for furthering our understanding of all definitions of bullying. We argue that qualitative methods provide researchers with a unique perspective that cannot be practically obtained by the more common use of quantitative methods and offer suggestions for future methodological practices to study bullying.

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Q Methodology as an Innovative Addition to Bullying Researchers’ Methodological Repertoire

Do Research Definitions of Bullying Capture the Experiences and Understandings of Young People? A Qualitative Investigation into the Characteristics of Bullying Behaviour

Adolescents’ definitions of bullying: the contribution of age, gender, and experience of bullying, data availability.

Not applicable.

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Spadafora, N., Volk, A.A. & Dane, A.V. Using Qualitative Methods to Measure and Understand Key Features of Adolescent Bullying: A Call to Action. Int Journal of Bullying Prevention 4 , 230–241 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-022-00116-y

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Looking toward the future of bullying research: recommendations for research and funding priorities, additional details, availability, related topics.

Psychologist Offers Insight on Bullying and How to Prevent It

Child development expert Dorothy Espelage, PhD, discusses recent research

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October is National Bullying Prevention Month, an annual campaign launched in 2006 by the Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights to raise awareness of and prevent bullying. Bullying is aggressive, repeated and intentional behavior designed to show an imbalance of power. One out of three students is bullied during the school year, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. The September issue of APA’s journal School Psychology Quarterly focused exclusively on bullying. (For full text of articles, please contact APA Public Affairs .)

Child development expert Dorothy Espelage, PhD

APA recently asked Espelage the following questions:

APA: What causes some children to be bullies? Are there risk factors (e.g., home environment, violent media or personality)? If so, what can parents and educators do to address them?

Espelage: Not all children engage in bullying for the same reason. It is complex and depends on the age of the child. In elementary school, children who bully others often have difficulty regulating their emotions and do so in reaction to peer rejection or peer exclusion. As kids move into middle school, some engage in bullying behaviors in order to look cool, to make friends or because they think it will make them more popular. Youth might also engage in bullying if they are exposed to aggression in their homes, including among siblings or adults who manage conflict through aggression. Schools play a role as well. When youth attend middle schools where there are concerted, authentic efforts to prevent bullying, they report bullying others less. Students in middle schools where sexual harassment is not tolerated by teachers or other staff also report less bullying. It’s important to consider how bullying looks different in elementary school than in middle school. Youth exposed to community violence also show increases in bullying over the course of middle school. To prevent youth bullying, prevention efforts must teach children and adolescents individual emotion regulation skills, how to foster peer acceptance and ways to counter any detrimental effects of exposure to violence in their homes and communities. We must recognize that schools play a critical role in reducing these behaviors.

APA: In your recent research, you found that the school environment plays an important role in understanding bullying behaviors. What does this research tell us?

Espelage: If you spend any time in middle schools, you know that each school has its own unique school climate. Thus, we wanted to identify how school environment could be related to bullying, fighting, victimization and students’ willingness to intervene. So, we surveyed staff and students in 36 middle schools in the Midwest. As predicted, we found that as teachers and other staff perceived aggression as a problem in their school, students reported more bullying, fighting, peer victimization and less willingness to intervene. Further, as teachers and staff report greater commitment to prevent bullying and viewed positive teacher/student relationships, there was less bullying, fighting and peer victimization and greater willingness to intervene. In a model school environment with the all right factors, a school commitment to prevent bullying was associated with less bullying, fighting and peer victimization. Research published in the September issue of APA’s School Psychology Quarterly found that bullying and peer victimization can be reduced through programs and approaches that focus on improving school climate.

APA: What is the difference between child or adolescent aggression and bullying?

Espelage: A debate has emerged about how best to define bullying and how to distinguish it from other forms of aggression and/or peer victimization. One of the first, predominant definitions is: “A student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more students.” More recent definitions emphasize observable or non-observable aggressive behaviors, the repetitive nature of these behaviors, and the imbalance of power between the individual or group perpetrator and the victim. An imbalance of power exists when the perpetrator or group of perpetrators has more physical, social or intellectual power than the victim. In a recent examination of a nationally representative study, early and late adolescents who perceived their perpetrator as having more power reported greater adverse mental health issues, such as depression and suicidal ideation, than victims who did not perceive a difference in power. In 2010, the Department of Education and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collaborated to develop this uniform research definition: “Bullying is any unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another youth or group of youths that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be repeated.”

Bullying may inflict physical, psychological, social or educational harm on a victim. Behaviors include verbal and physical aggression that ranges in severity from making threats, spreading rumors and social exclusion, to physical attacks causing injury. Bullying can occur face-to-face or through technology such as cellphones and computers. Finally, some bullying behaviors may overlap with aggression that meets the legal definition of harassment, but not all incidents of harassment constitute bullying. Given that bullying co-occurs with other forms of aggression and school violence, educators and scholars should not limit themselves to collecting data only on bullying, but should include all forms of aggression and victimization. Educators and scholars should also comply with clear and accepted distinctions of “bullying,” “aggression” and “harassment.”

APA: What are the most effective ways to deal with bullies in order to change their behavior?

Espelage: Prevention of bullying in schools requires a number of components. Simply focusing on individual youth without attention to the larger social environment that is contributing to these behaviors is short-sighted and is simply a Band-Aid approach. Indeed, the most rigorous review of bully prevention programs across the world identified the types of things that have to happen to reduce bully perpetration among children and adolescents. These include parent training/meetings, improved playground supervision, non-punitive disciplinary methods, classroom management, teacher training, classroom rules, whole-school anti-bullying policy, school conferences, information for parents and cooperative group work among students. The more of these components that a school adopts, the greater the reduction in bullying. So, it is not surprising that schools in the U.S. are not seeing the level of reductions in bullying that some other countries are enjoying. Approaches need to target individual student skills, peer interactions, classroom- and school-level factors. Only when we create safe spaces for youth who engage in these behaviors to learn more prosocial ways of managing conflicts among peers and at the same time create school environments that are not tolerant of mean and cruel behavior will we witness reductions in bullying. This problem is bigger than an individual child or adolescent who engages in bullying.

Espelage can be contacted by email or by phone at (217) 766-6413.

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA's membership includes nearly 130,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives.

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Research evidence on bullying prevention at odds with what schools are doing

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I would like to suggest adding situational immediate assertiveness to deal with each behavioral situation of bullying. The bully’s behavior should be addressed with an assertive response against that behavior while remaining positive toward the bully as a person. Follow that up with how student bystanders can use this to help make bullying behaior unacceptable. Each time the teacher hears a student being assertive the teacher should praise that behavior and encourage that behavior to also be used outside of the playground. I think that is important because every time bullying behavior is allowed to occur without being confronted it allows that behavior to be part of what is accepted as appropriate by the whole class. It seems that social emotional teaching programs take to long for immediate changing of the bullying climate. Teamed with the immediate assertiveness, it should make a difference.

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Media Guidelines

About These Recommendations

Increased media attention to bullying has elevated this issue to the forefront of public opinion. Although little scholarly attention has been devoted to studying media coverage of bullying, qualitative research and expert opinion suggest that the intensity and possible inaccuracies in some of this coverage may be negatively affecting the public. In response, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, created a Media Coverage of Bullying Task Force, which produced the recommendations and resources on this site.

Need for Media Guidance or Education on Bullying

After reviewing the available literature and conducting an analysis of the past year’s media coverage, Task Force members agreed unanimously on:

Potential for harm in some current bullying media coverage
Benefits of creating recommendations and resources to help journalists and other content creators produce accurate coverage of bullying
The need to actively disseminate information on best practices and to help journalists and other content creators employ them in coverage of bullying
Importance of honoring the independence of journalists

Check out the recommendations:

Bullying Coverage Best Practices
What to Avoid

Media Coverage of Bullying Task Force

These distinguished panelists helped SAMHSA clarify needs and develop resources to meet them.

Catherine Bradshaw

Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Anne Collier

Executive Director/Editor, Net Family News;
Co-Director, ConnectSafely.org

Ingrid Donato

Chief, Mental Health Promotion Branch, Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
Executive Vice President, Program Services & Government Relations and Co-executive producer, the PRISM Awards, Entertainment Industries Council, Inc.

Dorothy Espelage

Professor, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Madelyn Gould

Professor, Epidemiology and Psychiatry, Columbia University School of Public Health and College of Physicians and Surgeons

Kelly McBride

Senior Faculty, Ethics, Reporting and Writing, Poynter Institute

Daryl Presgraves

Director of Communications, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)

Dan Reidenberg

Executive Director, Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE)

Erin Reiney

Public Health Analyst, Health Resources and Services Administration
Director, Adolescent Communication Institute, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania

Karen Siris

Principal at WS Boardman Elementary
Professor at Adelphi University, Garden City, NY
Public Relations Manager, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Nancy Willard

Director, Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use

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Reporter, Star Tribune

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1 School of Health in Social Science, The University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, UK; [email protected]

2 Department of Psychology, Seton Hall University, 400 S Orange Ave, South Orange, NJ 07079, USA

Despite research on anti-bullying interventions, there is no systemic approach or resources for teachers to address ethnic and race-related bullying in schools. In this article, we selectively reviewed theories and programs to help teachers identify and address ethnic bullying in their classrooms. We provide recommendations for workshops (e.g., cultural awareness training, empathy-building activities, bystander intervention, and stigma-based intervention). These anti-ethnic bullying workshops should promote understanding of different cultures, strengthen empathy for those who are different, encourage bystanders to take action, and reduce stigma and stereotypes. Through the sharing of diverse perspectives, expertise, and experiences, we hope this article can cultivate interactive dialogues and collaborations between educators and researchers to effectively address ethnic and race-related bullying.

1. Introduction

Globalization has facilitated the more frequent movement of people between countries in the present day, enhancing the process of migration. Approximately 1 out of 30 people in a global population of 7.7 billion were international migrants in 2019. Furthermore, a growing number of children and teenagers are members of ethnic minorities attending school today [ 1 ]. Globalization and migration processes have created a more diverse and multicultural society, with an ever-increasing number of children and adolescents from ethnic minority backgrounds attending schools around the world [ 1 ]. Our communities have benefited from this diversity, but it has also brought about new challenges, such as ethnic bullying [ 2 , 3 ]. Students who are members of racial or ethnic minorities may be bullied, victimized, and excluded by their peers [ 4 ].

As cultural and ethnic diversity increases in school settings, ethnic bullying is a growing concern [ 5 , 6 ]. Ethnic bullying is a type of aggression directed at individuals based on their ethnic origins [ 7 ]. In turn, this can negatively impact a student’s mental health and academic performance, effects which may last into adulthood [ 8 , 9 ]. As global migration continues to increase and school environments become more diverse, the urgency of addressing this issue has been highlighted [ 3 ].

Positive school environments have been shown to reduce bullying and victimization across diverse groups through a greater disciplinary structure, high academic standards, and teacher support [ 10 ]. In addition to respecting differences among students, exposure to racial and ethnic diversity is associated with a reduction in bullying reports [ 11 , 12 ]. Creating a respectful culture and maintaining a diverse student population can help prevent bullying in schools. The negative opinions and expectations about ethnic minority students in schools may negatively impact bullying and school culture. The prevalence of ethnic bullying decreased in schools with a positive climate and more diverse teachers [ 13 , 14 ].

Although researchers have developed anti-bullying interventions, there is no specific strategy in place to address ethnic and race-related bullying at the school level [ 15 , 16 ]. In addition, many anti-bullying programs were not culturally appropriate nor accessible to schools with a diverse student population [ 17 ]. An anti-ethnic bullying program implemented by schools should clearly outline steps to provide teachers with the tools and resources necessary to identify and prevent ethnic bullying. In this article, we discuss both classic theories and recent studies on traditional and ethnic bullying. By combining theories and practices, we can create a comprehensive and dynamic framework for understanding and combating ethnic bullying. In the following sections, we selectively review the literature of ethnic bullying and recommended four anti-ethnic bullying programs, including (1) cultural awareness training, (2) empathy-building activities, (3) bystander intervention workshops, and (4) stigma-based interventions. We intend to cultivate interactive dialogues and partnerships between educators and researchers through the discussion of diverse outlooks, expertise, and experiences.

2. The Risk of Ethnic Bullying in Schools

Ethnic bullying, a form of bias-based bullying, targets an individual’s race, ethnicity, or cultural background, which can result in more serious and lasting consequences than non-biased bullying [ 18 ]. A variety of detrimental physical, emotional, and mental outcomes have been linked to this type of bullying [ 19 , 20 ], including depression, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and substance abuse. Ethnic bullying can also negatively impact a victim’s academic performance and school-related problems, illustrating the importance of addressing this issue in educational settings [ 21 , 22 , 23 ].

The most common example of bias-based peer victimization is racial harassment and bullying [ 15 , 24 , 25 ]. When compared with general bullying, ethnic, racial, or bias-based bullying has a greater impact on mental health, harmful behaviors, and adjustment issues. According to Carter’s theory of race-based traumatic stress [ 15 , 19 , 20 , 26 ], racial discrimination may cause emotional, psychological, and even physical harm to its targets. Bullying can have negative health effects when combined with additional stressors, such as race-based trauma [ 15 , 16 ]. It has been observed that bullying at school is associated with poorer mental health outcomes in Canadian adolescents, particularly among immigrant children (as compared with non-immigrant children) [ 27 ]. Additionally, white students were less likely to drop out of school as a result of peer victimization, compared with African American and Latino students, who were more likely to do so [ 28 ]. It has also been shown that Chinese and other ethnic minority adolescents experiencing bias-based bullying were more likely to experience depression, suicidal ideation, and injury because of victimization [ 29 ]. In U.S. schools, Black and Latino students experience poor self-esteem, self-harm, illegal drug use, and depression [ 15 , 24 , 30 , 31 ].

In addition to adversely affecting health outcomes, ethnic bullying may also negatively affect academic and school performance. Several studies have highlighted the negative consequences experienced by ethnic minority students in relation to their educational experiences and outcomes. In a study conducted by D’hondt and colleagues [ 21 ] in Belgium, ethnic minority students who faced ethnic harassment were more likely to feel a diminished sense of belonging at school. This feeling of exclusion and alienation can have a significant impact on their academic engagement, motivation, and overall school performance. In addition, longitudinal studies conducted in Sweden have demonstrated that prolonged exposure to ethnic bullying can result in a decrease in self-esteem and lowered academic expectations among immigrant students [ 32 ]. Experiencing discrimination and victimization on a regular basis can undermine their confidence, diminish their aspirations, and hinder their progress in the classroom.

Furthermore, the cultural context and knowledge of students plays a significant role in their experience of ethnic bullying. Research conducted by Rivas-Drake and colleagues [ 33 ] found that Latino students who had a strong connection to either Latino or American culture reported more positive experiences and a reduced perception of prejudice within their schools. On the other hand, students with limited cultural knowledge or identification with either culture were more likely to perceive high levels of prejudice and to have fewer positive experiences within the school environment. It is likely that these negative experiences will further exacerbate the impact of ethnic bullying on their academic performance and overall school experience.

3. Developing Anti-Ethnic Bullying Intervention Programs

Schools have implemented anti-bullying programs to combat the harm caused by bullying [ 34 ]. Traditional bullying was prevented and reduced by roughly 19–20% in most of these anti-bullying programs. Approximately 15–16 percent of victimization was reduced by the programs [ 35 ]. For example, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) is a comprehensive, school-based intervention program that reduces bullying in schools, prevents the recurrence of bullying problems, and improves peer relations [ 32 , 36 , 37 ]. The school environment has been restructured in order to achieve these goals. As described by Olweus [ 36 , 37 ], the purpose of this restructuring is to reduce the opportunities and rewards for bullying within the school environment while fostering a sense of community. Four major principles underlie the OBPP. When teaching students at school (and at home), adults should (a) maintain a warm and positive relationship; (b) set clear limits on unacceptably aggressive behavior; (c) enforce rules in a consistent, nonphysical manner; (d) provide positive role models and authority figures [ 36 , 37 , 38 ]. Four levels of intervention have been developed based on these principles: school, classroom, individual, and community, across different cultural contexts [ 38 ].

While these programs may be attributed to the relatively small number of ethnic minority students in comparison to their native counterparts, the effectiveness of these anti-bullying programs does not extend to reducing victimization among students from ethnic minority communities [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 21 , 39 , 40 ]. In the following section, we provide suggestions and resources regarding theoretical, methodological, and practical aspects of anti-ethnic bullying program design. These suggestions are not comprehensive, and alternative tools can be considered based on the requirements of the specific programs and cultures in schools. A multidisciplinary approach involving mental health professionals, teachers, and families will be crucial to the success of the intervention.

4. Theoretical Orientation of Anti-Ethnic Bullying Programs

The theoretical framework for designing effective ethnic bullying prevention programs should take into account social, cognitive, and environmental influences on student behavior. We selected several well-established theories and models, including Social Learning Theory, Contact Theory, Stigma Theory, and the Proactive Bystander Intervention Model. Based on these theories, it is possible to understand the complex mechanisms underlying ethnic bullying, in addition to devising strategies for addressing and preventing such acts.

According to the Social Learning Theory [ 41 ], individuals learn and model behaviors by observing others, particularly those they perceive as influential or similar to them. Family members could serve as role models in anti-bullying programs. In an intervention program titled “Working with Parents in Creating a Please school”, van Niejenhuis et al. [ 42 ] designed a training course with a toolkit for teachers to cooperate with parents to reduce bullying behaviors. Although the program did not yield a change to teachers’ competence or students’ victimization, parent-school cooperation had a positive effect on parents’ perception and communication with their child regarding bullying. Similarly, Gomez et al. [ 43 ] invited family members with minority backgrounds (Romanian and Arab Muslim adults) as role models to schools and worked with children (e.g., participating in learning activities, sharing cultural stories, et cetera). They found that participation in these activities as role models helped reduce cultural stereotypes and bullying at school.

Contact Theory [ 44 ] proposes that increased interaction and positive contact between individuals from diverse backgrounds can reduce prejudice and improve intergroup relations. Intergroup contact, cooperation, and communication among students of various ethnic backgrounds is incorporated as part of the intervention design, fostering a more inclusive school environment. For example, Ruck et al. [ 45 ] and Killen et al. [ 46 ] found that intergroup contact raised the awareness of stereotypes and reduced interracial peer exclusion (e.g., lunch, party, dance). Killen et al. [ 46 , 47 , 48 ] argued that schools should design programs to promote intergroup friendships and encourage students to reflect on interracial peer experiences, which in turn promotes mutual respect. In their Developing Inclusive Youth program across 48 classrooms and six schools, they used the interactive web-based course for intergroup contacts across races and ethnicities (e.g., excluding a peer who is an immigrant at bowling games). Following each video, several prompts such as feeling, judgment, decision, and reasoning were asked. They found that the intervention program was effective at changing children’s attitudes and recognizing the wrongfulness of interracial peer exclusion.

According to Tajfel et al. [ 49 ], stigmatized attitudes and behaviors are shaped by social norms, stereotypes, and individual beliefs. Intervention design should include stigma-based interventions that aim to reduce ethnic bullying by addressing social norms, stereotypes, and prejudice. Through activities that challenge biases and promote inclusivity, the intervention aims to modify the cognitive and social factors that contribute to ethnic bullying. For example, Earnshaw et al. [ 17 ] conducted a systematic review of stigma-based bullying intervention. They found 21 intervention programs (between 2000–2015) that were associated stigma-based bullying (e.g., disability, sexual minority, and physical appearance), but only one program focused on racial/ethnic bullying.

A bystander intervention model [ 50 ] emphasizes the importance of bystanders’ involvement in the prevention and resolution of ethnic bullying. During the intervention design, students are exposed to activities designed to enhance their understanding of their roles as bystanders and provide them with the necessary tools to intervene effectively in cases of racial discrimination or ethnic bullying. For example, Moran et al. [ 51 ] conducted a brief bystander intervention for anti-ethnic bullying toward Hispanic students. The program included using culturally relevant language, role-playing bullying experiences, and training in diverse values and norms. The researchers found that students participating in the anti-bullying intervention reported an increase of knowledge and confidence to intervene in ethnic bullying. Priest et al. [ 52 ] designed a “Speak Out against Racism” program to promote effective bystander responses to racial bullying in schools. The program included school policies, community involvement, curriculum designs, and training for teachers, parents, and students regarding knowledge and practical skills to reduce racism at school. They found the program effectively increased the proactive bystander responses to intervening in racial bullying.

Through the integration of these theoretical perspectives, the intervention design should attempt to address and prevent ethnic bullying in schools in a comprehensive manner. By promoting positive intergroup relationships, challenging stereotypes, encouraging inclusion, and empowering students to become proactive bystanders, the potential program should promote positive intergroup relationships. By combining these elements, the goal of any intervention programs should aim to create an academic and social environment that is supportive of students of all backgrounds and free from the damaging effects of ethnic bullying.

5. Recommendations of Anti-Ethnic Bullying Programs

The tasks and programs for anti-ethnic bullying were generated through a selective review above. Our aim was to make recommendations based on both traditional anti-bullying programs and recent research on racial bullying. There is a common interest among these programs in providing students with the necessary knowledge, skills, and strategies that will enable them to effectively deal with bullying situations. Additionally, these programs emphasize the need to create a safe and supportive learning environment and a culture of respect and acceptance of diversity for all students. By combining these two areas of expertise, we can formulate an effective strategy for dealing with and combating anti-ethnic bullying.

5.1. Cultural Awareness Workshops

Different cultures, customs, and traditions should be introduced to students at school through workshops that promote appreciation and respect for diversity. Understanding various cultures and the unique characteristics of each should be expected of students.

This workshop includes five parts: group cultural presentations, individual storytelling, cultural trivia, cultural food tasting, and a world map activity. Using a combination of experiential learning [ 53 ] and cooperative learning [ 54 ], this workshop has been developed based on a concept known as social identity theory [ 55 ], which posits that individuals derive a sense of belonging from belonging to a social group. During the workshop, students participate in hands-on activities, such as food tastings and cultural presentations, which allow them to actively engage with and learn about diverse cultures [ 53 ]. Students benefit from activities such as group presentations and cultural trivia, which promote teamwork, interdependence, and shared responsibility among them [ 54 ]. It aims to establish an inclusive and diverse environment where students from minority cultures feel accepted and welcomed, thereby reinforcing a positive social identity and reducing ethnic bullying [ 56 ].

Students can be divided into groups for a presentation on a specific culture. Next, students will share stories, folktales, or personal experiences reflecting their culture. They will be encouraged to ask questions and listen actively in order to learn about the speaker’s culture. Afterward, students will answer questions about the speaker’s culture in a trivia game. This activity promotes friendly competition and teamwork in addition to teaching new information. A cultural food tasting will follow, where students can sample and learn about traditional dishes. Each dish will be discussed in relation to its ingredients, preparation methods, and cultural significance. At the end of the lesson, students will be provided with a world map and asked to locate and label countries from which classmates, school personnel, or members of the community originate. Students from minority cultures can feel peer support, become aware that their ethnic background is accepted and welcomed, reduce their negative feelings, and establish a sense of belonging. Additionally, students can develop a newfound understanding and respect for different cultures, which can help prevent and decrease ethnic bullying in schools.

5.2. Empathy and Perspective Building Activities

A study by McLoughlin and Over [ 57 ] demonstrated that encouraging children to mentalize about perceived outgroup results in increased prosocial behavior towards outgroup members. This study suggests that when children were asked about the thoughts and feelings of members of immigrant groups or to explain their actions, there was an increase in their willingness to share with a novel member of the immigrant group who had been the victim of a minor transgression. This finding led to empathy-building activities. The section can be held on a weekly basis, divided into multiple sessions. Each weekly event begins with a session in identifying different feelings and how others may feel. Students will be divided into pairs or small groups. Each group will be given a list of emotions (such as happiness, sadness, anger, fear, embarrassment, etc.), and instructed to take turns acting out an emotion while their group members attempt to guess what emotion they are portraying. A component of this activity will assist students in developing their emotional literacy. They will become more aware of other people’s feelings when they recognize and understand different emotions [ 58 ].

The next part of the activity is a perspective-taking task. Students will be divided into small groups by their teachers, and each group will be assigned a scenario relating to ethnic bullying. Teachers will instruct groups to discuss the scenario from the perspective of the target, perpetrator, and bystander. Following the discussion, each group will present their findings to the entire class. The purpose of this activity is to encourage students to consider multiple perspectives and foster empathy for those who have been victimized by ethnic bullying. Students are encouraged to consider multiple perspectives in scenarios related to ethnic bullying, fostering empathy toward those involved [ 59 , 60 ].

The next activity will be the empathy mapping activity. Each group will be provided with poster paper and markers by the teachers. The teacher will instruct students to create an empathy map for a person experiencing ethnic bullying, addressing the following questions: (i) What do they think? (ii) What do they feel? (iii) What do they say? (iv) What do they do? Teachers will encourage groups to think about the emotional, physical, and social consequences of ethnic bullying. Students will be asked to present their empathy maps to the whole class after they have completed the empathy maps. Through this activity, students will gain a better understanding of the impact of ethnic bullying on individuals, as well as foster empathy. Empathy maps can help students understand the emotional, physical, and social consequences of ethnic bullying, fostering empathy for those who are affected. This activity was developed based on the concept and techniques of empathy mapping, which helps teams develop a deep, shared understanding and empathy for others [ 61 ].

Finally, there will be a reflection and action planning session [ 62 ]. Each teacher will distribute sticky notes to students and instruct them to write one thing they learned from the workshop, as well as one action they will take in order to promote empathy and prevent ethnic bullying in their school. All students will be invited to share their reflections and action plans with the class. As a reminder of the students’ commitments, teachers will collect the sticky notes and distribute them in a prominent location.

5.3. Bystander Intervention Training

According to Moran et al. [ 51 ], an ethnically mixed group may benefit from a brief implementation of a bystander bullying intervention. This intervention is based on Bandura’s Social Learning Theory [ 41 ], which suggests that children imitate influential individuals’ behaviors to shape their own behavior. In their six-weekly program, researchers found a significant decrease in ethnic bullying victimization. As another example, Priest et al.’s “Speak Out Against Racism” (SOAR) initiative aims to educate primary school students about bystander responses to racism and discrimination. Students in this program learn about racism, its effects, and how to intervene when it occurs. After conducting a mixed-methods evaluation, researchers found that students gained a better understanding of racism, were able to recognize racial discrimination, and were more likely to intervene.

In line with the research, we recommend a school-wide program that focuses on proactive bystander intervention. This program will be divided into two sections: role plays and reflections. In this program, teachers will present a definition of ethnic bullying and discuss its impact on individuals and communities. Case studies and real-life examples of ethnic bullying will be encouraged by students. Teachers will encourage students to reflect on their own experiences and discuss them in pairs or small groups.

Role-plays and Scenarios: Oyekoya et al. [ 63 ] recommended that interventions reflect the perspective of the student who bullies and the student who is bullied, as well as that of the bystander, in order to demonstrate desirable intervention behaviors. Through role-playing, the students are expected to explore different perspectives and learn how to respond to bullying situations [ 63 ]. Role-playing is an effective method for teaching bystander intervention skills, as it provides individuals with the opportunity to practice intervening in a safe environment [ 64 ]. In the second part of the activity, teachers will present participants with multiple scenarios related to ethnic bullying and bystander intervention opportunities. Participants will be divided into small groups and assigned a scenario. They will analyze the situation and then participate in a role-playing exercise to demonstrate their selected strategy. Following each role-play, a group discussion will provide feedback, identify alternative strategies, and share insights.

5.4. Stigma-Based Intervention

A stigma-based intervention targets bullying perpetrated against individuals based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability. The approach targets the social precursors of stigmatized behavior and shared social norms and individual beliefs that contribute to the maintenance of stigma-based attitudes [ 17 ]. However, in a systematic review, twenty-two stigma-based bullying interventions were evaluated, but only one focused on ethnic minorities [ 17 , 65 , 66 ]. For example, Aboud and colleagues [ 65 ] have demonstrated that interventions informed by intergroup contacts [ 44 ] led to positive changes in attitudes, particularly among youth from racial and ethnic minorities. McCown [ 66 ] also stated that stigma can be reduced when these conditions are met among members from different backgrounds within the group. Therefore, a stigma reduction workshop can aim to reduce ethnic bullying by interacting with peers from different racial groups.

Understanding stigma and challenging bias: As a first step, teachers will provide a brief overview of stigmas, stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination. Ethnic bullying can be described in real-life examples with its consequences. During the discussion period, students will be encouraged to discuss how stigma and ethnic bullying harm individuals and schools alike. As a next step, students will participate in a small group activity designed to challenge stereotypes and biases related to ethnicity that may appear in schools. Based on the contact hypothesis [ 44 , 67 ], interactive workshops can provide students with opportunities to participate in discussions and activities that challenge stereotypical beliefs, prejudices, and discriminatory attitudes. Each group will present their findings and engage in a discussion about strategies for countering biases and stereotypes.

According to Pettigrew and Tropp [ 67 ], intergroup contact can lead to reduced prejudice when conditions such as equal status and cooperation are met. Students from different ethnicities will participate in a collaborative problem-solving activity. Teachers will divide participants into diverse groups (5–6 students per group), ensuring that each group includes students from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. In addition, each group will receive a group number for easy identification, and the problem-solving task will immediately follow. Groups will receive handouts containing problem-solving scenarios. Teachers will explain the task to the groups: they must collaboratively develop solutions to the scenarios presented in their handouts. Cultural perspectives and experiences should be incorporated into problem-solving, and teachers will instruct students to discuss scenarios, share cultural perspectives, and find a solution together. All group members will be encouraged to communicate openly, listen actively, and respect each other. Teachers will move between groups, offering support and guidance as required.

Parents & Community Involvement Campaign: Sanders and Epstein’s [ 68 ] study on the National Network of Partnership Schools demonstrated that parental and community involvement is essential for promoting positive school outcomes, including reducing stigma and ethnic bullying. The purpose of this activity is to challenge misperceptions regarding the prevalence and acceptability of certain behaviors, such as ethnic bullying, and to promote positive, inclusive behaviors [ 68 ]. Students can feel more connected and committed to inclusivity if they are involved in the creation of campaign materials. It is expected that students will reflect on their experiences and formulate their own strategies to promote diversity and inclusivity in the classroom. Positive intergroup contact, intercultural understanding, and inclusivity can be promoted in schools to reduce and prevent ethnic bullying.

6. Conclusions

In a multicultural society, schools play a critical role in promoting tolerance, understanding, and mutual respect. In this article, we review different frameworks that incorporate theories, programs, and practical materials to cultivate students’ empathy, compassion, and a sense of responsibility. These frameworks should enable students to proactively counter bullying while reducing discrimination and stigma. We also intend to provide schools and teachers with the resources they need to implement an effective anti-ethnic bullying program. They can prevent ethnic bullying through empathy, diversity promotion, and targeted interventions. Indeed, many schools have already established such programs. For example, Mt. Olive School District in New Jersey (where the second author resides) implemented the Equity Task Force in 2020. A wide range of topics were reported in the initiative, including creating an inclusive curriculum, reviewing disciplinary policies, fostering relationship building through social-emotional learning, and diversifying recruitments of teachers and staff [ 69 , 70 ]. In 2023, Dr. Sumit Bangia and her colleagues in the school district also introduced a student-led Equity & Inclusion Student Council to ensure all students have a voice and promote an inclusive learning environment. However, anti-ethnic bullying programs cannot solely rely on the participation of teachers and schools. Salmivalli et al. [ 71 ] argue that curriculum-based, class-level work is insufficient to prevent bullying behaviors in schools. Educating students about ethnic bullying requires collaboration between teachers, parents, administrators, and community members. It is possible to establish an inclusive and healthy school environment by revising curriculums to include multicultural content, providing staff training on how to handle ethnic bullying, and providing parents with guidebooks on how to promote respect and tolerance at home [ 15 , 16 ]. Anti-ethnic bullying can be raised by organizing programs and workshops that teach effective interventions and prevention strategies.

In conclusion, we hope that this article will provide a selective review of ethnic/racial-related bullying in schools and serve as a starting point for further research and collaboration. We would also like to emphasize that the primary purpose of this article is not to provide an exhaustive review of the literature. As an alternative, we advocate for specific programs that address both traditional bullying and racial bullying in schools and provide educators with the necessary resources to effectively implement anti-ethnic bullying programs. Future research should examine the effectiveness of the recommended tasks in specific contexts. A systematic review or meta-analysis of existing interventions could provide additional evidence of their effectiveness. Finally, we hope that the article will serve as an informative tool for guiding policy decisions and for creating more effective strategies for preventing and addressing ethnic bullying.

Acknowledgments

The authors express their gratitude to the administrators (especially Sumit Bangia and Antoine Gayles) and teachers at Mt. Olive School District in New Jersey, USA, for their efforts in fostering conversations and providing additional resources pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, Q.W. and F.J.; formal analysis, Q.W.; investigation, Q.W.; resources, F.J.; writing—original draft preparation, Q.W.; writing—review and editing, F.J.; supervision, F.J. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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YouTube's algorithm more likely to recommend users right-wing and religious content, research finds

YouTube has a pattern of recommending right-leaning and Christian videos, even to users who haven’t previously interacted with that kind of content, according to a recent study of the platform’s suggestions to users.

The four-part research project, conducted by a London-based nonprofit organization that researches extremism called the Institute for Strategic Dialogue , explored video recommendations served to accounts designed to mimic users interested in four topic areas: gaming, male lifestyle gurus, mommy vloggers and Spanish-language news.

“We wanted to, for the most part, look at topics that don’t generally direct people into extremist worlds or anything along those lines,” said Aoife Gallagher, the project’s lead analyst.

Researchers created accounts and built mock user personas by searching for content, subscribing to channels and watching videos using those accounts. After having built personas for five days, researchers recorded the video recommendations displayed on each account’s homepage for a month.

The study noted that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm “drives 70% of all video views.”

In one investigation, the most frequently recommended news channel for both child and adult accounts interested in “male lifestyle guru” content was Fox News, even though neither account had watched Fox News during the persona-building stage. Instead, the accounts watched Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson and searched for the term “alpha male.”

“This suggests that YouTube associated male lifestyle videos and creators with conservative topics,” the study said.

In another experiment, researchers created two accounts interested in mommy vloggers — mothers who make video diaries about parenting — that they trained to have different political biases. One of the accounts watched Fox News, and the other watched MSNBC. Despite having watched their respective channels for equal amounts of time, the right-leaning account was later more frequently recommended Fox News than the left-leaning account was recommended MSNBC.

A mommy vlogger account that the left-leaning user had already subscribed to was the most recommended channel.

“These results suggest that right-leaning news content is more frequently recommended than left-leaning,” the study said. Both accounts were also recommended videos by an anti-vaccine influencer.

Jessie Daniels, a professor of sociology at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, and the author of a 2018 article titled “The Algorithmic Rise of the ‘Alt-Right,’” said the project’s main findings were in line with her previous research. She has examined the rise of the internet in the 1990s and how the far right saw an opening to share its beliefs with larger audiences by bypassing the traditional media gatekeepers.

Daniels said she believes the findings suggest that YouTube has made continued engagement and profits its top priorities rather than concerns around reinforcing existing political biases or echo chambers.

Videos with religious themes — primarily Christianity — were also recommended to all the accounts, even though none of them had watched religious content during the persona-building stage. The accounts interested in mommy vloggers, for example, were shown videos with Bible verses.

The researchers also found that YouTube recommended videos including sexually explicit content to the child account and videos featuring influencer Andrew Tate, who has been charged with human trafficking and rape (allegations that he has denied) in Romania, even though he is banned from the platform.

Heading into this year’s presidential race, concerns about the spread of election misinformation on social media are only growing. In 2022, a study by researchers at New York University found that after the last presidential election, YouTube recommended videos that pushed voter fraud claims to Donald Trump supporters.

“One of the main issues that we’re seeing is polarization across society, and I think that social media is contributing an awful lot to that kind of polarization,” Gallagher said.

This isn’t the first time YouTube has faced scrutiny for its algorithm. Researchers have repeatedly found that YouTube has recommended extremist and conspiracy theory videos to users.

“We welcome research on our recommendation system, but it’s difficult to draw conclusions based on the test accounts created by the researchers, which may not be consistent with the behavior of real people,” YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez said in a statement to NBC News. “YouTube’s recommendation system is trained to raise high-quality content on the home page, in search results, and the Watch Next panel for viewers of all ages across the platform. We continue to invest significantly in the policies, products, and practices to protect people from harmful content, especially younger viewers.”

For years, there have also been concerns that social media platforms may create echo chambers where users engage only in content that reinforces their beliefs. However, other recent research has also suggested that users’ own preferences, not the YouTube recommendation system, play the primary role in what they decide to watch and that YouTube may even have a moderating influence.

“This goes back to a lack of transparency and a lack of access that we have to data on YouTube,” Gallagher said. “YouTube is one of the most cloaked of the platforms. It’s very, very difficult to analyze YouTube at scale.”

Victoria Feng is an intern on the NBC News technology desk.

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Harvard antisemitism task force finds ‘dire’ situation for Israelis on campus, urges swift action

Israeli students at Harvard University are facing “dire” exclusion on campus and other students are suffering because of “political litmus tests” to participate in clubs and activities, a task force charged with reporting on antisemitism at Harvard has concluded.

The task force was convened by the school’s Jewish interim president, Alan Garber, in January, shortly after the school’s president resigned following criticism of her handling of anti-Israel protests on campus. It released a set of preliminary recommendations on Wednesday, making Harvard the second elite college to receive official guidance to address campus antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, after Stanford University last week.

Stanford’s report ran 146 pages and included detailed examples of Jewish students’ anguished experiences on campus . Harvard’s, by contrast, was brief — just six pages, including a page-long appendix listing Jewish holidays — and focused on what the task force said were “short-term actionable items.” The task force released it alongside a parallel report by the school’s task force on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias . A more detailed report, including a more intensive study of Jewish life on campus, is expected in the fall , but the group said it did not want to wait before sharing its initial findings.

“The situation over the past year has been quite grave, and unless we take significant steps forward by the beginning of the coming academic year, we could be in a position similar to last year, which we want to prevent,” Derek Penslar, co-chair of the antisemitism task force, said in an interview published by Harvard’s newswire.

Despite the report’s brevity, the task force led by Penslar, a historian, and law professor Jared Ellias said its research was thorough. It said it conducted more than 40 listening sessions with more than 500 members of the Harvard community, representatives from the school’s Hillel and Chabad centers among them.

And some of its initial conclusions were blunt.

“The situation of Israeli students at Harvard has been dire,” the report reads. “They have frequently been subject to derision and social exclusion. Discrimination, bullying, or harassment based on an individual’s Israeli nationality is a gross violation of University policy and, beginning immediately, must be both publicly condemned and subject to substantive disciplinary action.”

The report also condemned what it described as “disturbing reports” of Harvard faculty and teaching fellows harassing or discriminating against students “because they are Israeli or have pro-Israel views,” without elaborating on specific incidents. Many Jewish students also said they feared “litmus tests” for their views on Israel when engaging in extracurricular activities with peers.

Its recommendations included better communication around harassment reporting and disciplinary measures when it comes to the school’s handling of claims of antisemitism. Harvard should also more prominently incorporate antisemitism training into its diversity, equity and inclusion practices and establish better norms of civic engagement, the report said.

“Training for instructional staff and at student orientation programs must clarify the difference between a challenging classroom atmosphere, which is healthy and constructive, and a threatening one, which is toxic,” Penslar said in the Harvard interview. “Guidelines for co-curricular organizations and residences should stress the importance of inclusivity, however contentious conversations within them may be.”

More practical recommendations for Jewish students were on the report, too, including increasing kosher dining options and providing more accommodations for observant Jewish students when classes conflict with holidays or Shabbat.

The Muslim inclusion task force, meanwhile, included among its recommendations that the school clarify “ambiguity” on its policies around how it disciplines protests. The report also stated many pro-Palestinian students were afraid of “doxxing” — having their personal information leaked to the public, which several right-wing and pro-Israel groups did last school year to students who had signed an open letter blaming Israel entirely for the Oct. 7 attacks .

In a statement, Garber welcomed the two task forces’ reports without specifically referring to their findings.

“We must strengthen our ties with a sustained commitment to engaging each other with tact, decency, and compassion,” he said. “Our learning cannot be limited to purely academic pursuits if we hope to fulfill our responsibilities to one another and to the institution that is our intellectual home.”

Harvard’s handling of Jewish student concerns came under intense criticism from Jewish circles after Oct. 7. President Claudine Gay resigned following a congressional hearing at which she did not say whether “calls for the genocide of Jews” violated university conduct; the school has also been the site of several Title VI investigations at the U.S. Department of Education . At commencement last month, the Harvard Chabad director publicly confronted an invited speaker over what he believed was an antisemitic comment in her speech .

And the task force itself has been rocky. At least two members , including a co-chair, resigned before the report’s publication , while Penslar, who directs Harvard’s Jewish studies center, weathered criticism from pro-Israel groups who believed his views were too progressive to moderate antisemitism .

In addition, the novelist Dara Horn, who sat on an earlier iteration of the group, has since distanced herself from it and become a vocal critic of Harvard’s handling of antisemitism. In March she sat for a congressional interview on the topic , intended to give the Republican-led House education subcommittee more fodder for legal action against the school.

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Presidential task forces deliver preliminary recommendations to garber.

Co-chairs of initiatives to combat anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian bias and antisemitism outline recommendations for near-term action — with final reports expected in the fall

Andrea Perera

Harvard Correspondent

Aerial view of Harvard's campus from Eliot House tower.

From the Eliot House tower, a canopy of foliage frames the Mac quad and Lowell house. On the left is Kirkland House and the Malkin Athletic Center. Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

File photo by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

The two presidential task forces focused on combating anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian bias and antisemitism have delivered their preliminary recommendations to Harvard’s interim president, Alan M. Garber. The recommendations focus on 13 thematic areas where the University can act soon.

In a message sharing the preliminary recommendations with the Harvard community, Garber wrote: “We must strengthen our ties with a sustained commitment to engaging each other with tact, decency, and compassion. Our learning cannot be limited to purely academic pursuits if we hope to fulfill our responsibilities to one another and to the institution that is our intellectual home.”

“I am profoundly grateful to [the co-chairs of the task forces] Ali Asani, Jared Ellias, Wafaie Fawzi, Asim Ijaz Khwaja, and Derek Penslar for their candor, thoughtfulness, and, most important, their optimism. The work ahead of us will require a concerted effort. As both task forces work toward final recommendations, their preliminary recommendations offer a path forward. We will commence detailed review and implementation of the shorter-term recommendations over the summer. Those that are longer-term will be developed, refined, and implemented in due course.”

The Gazette sat down with the five co-chairs of the task forces to learn more about the recommendations and what the co-chairs learned in a combined 85 listening sessions with close to 900 members of the Harvard community this spring.

Each co-chair spoke about the immense responsibility they felt while navigating the collective grief and pain on campus after the attack of Oct. 7; the ways that different communities experienced bias, hatred, exclusion, and fear; the values Harvard community members shared; and their joint effort to model collaboration and dialogue across the two task forces.

The preliminary recommendations “provide an opportunity to share with the community what the effort has been up to, regain some trust, and show that these task forces are actually acting in a way that the community expects,” said Fawzi, co-chair of the Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias and Richard Saltonstall Professor of Population Sciences and professor of nutrition, epidemiology, and global health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Memos from each task force outline the preliminary recommendations and serve as a prelude to the final reports from the task forces, which are expected to be delivered to Garber in the fall semester. The co-chairs have shared the preliminary recommendations with the deans and with the Corporation. The University administration is working with the Schools to implement the recommendations throughout campus.

The task forces will work through the summer to further refine some of the recommendations, assist in the development of programs, and position the University for a better fall semester.

“The situation over the past year has been quite grave, and unless we take significant steps forward by the beginning of the coming academic year, we could be in a position similar to last year, which we want to prevent,” said Derek Penslar, co-chair of the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Common themes

While each task force reported hearing very different experiences from community members, some common themes emerged. These included the feeling that the University has fallen short of its stated values , specifically those that celebrate diversity while respecting differences.

Asani, co-chair of the Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias and Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said that seeking to understand different identities and perspectives is not just core to Harvard’s values, it is core to what a university education is supposed to provide.

“Intentional engagement with diversity is a very important skill that all our students should have, regardless of what School they attend. Not having those skills and the tools to engage has serious consequences for our world as it leads to polarization,” Asani said. “It’s recognizing difference and respecting it, but at the same time acknowledging that there are shared values that we as a community hold.”

Time and again, the co-chairs returned to the idea that a university should provide its students with the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate an increasingly complex world and that this is the very mission of Harvard — to bring together a diverse community whose members challenge and teach one another about new and sometimes conflicting ideas.

“We have to return to our foundational principles as an educational institution and recognize both the potential that we have, but also the inherent limitations as a university that’s in the business of admitting students, teaching them, and giving them a degree,” said Jared Ellias, co-chair of the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Scott C. Collins Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. “We must also appreciate that the global ambitions of the University mean that we’re going to bring together a gigantically different group of people where what they have in common is their excellence. And we’re going to, hopefully, let them meet each other, form meaningful friendships and relationships, and then help them become leaders in the world that they’re going to graduate into.”

Teaching students doesn’t mean sugarcoating conflict among current peers and instructors, and future colleagues, neighbors, and friends, Ellias said. “I think we have to start being more intentional in saying that we aren’t going to agree with every idea that everybody has, and we’re not going to agree with every version of the world that people might want to create.”

For the co-chairs, this focus on thoughtful and constructive debate felt like a natural and first-order recommendation from a group of faculty focused on educating future world leaders.

“As a university, we should be focusing on what we do best. We do research. We teach. We enable each other to have serious, substantive, and constructive conversations on all issues,” said Khwaja, co-chair, Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias and Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development at Harvard Kennedy School. “In many ways, what we’re responding to is both what we’re hearing our community say, but also what we feel the University can and should actually effectively deliver on as well — which is to create a safe and supportive space to learn, educate, and grow.”

The co-chairs from both task forces said they meet regularly to coordinate efforts and share what they’re hearing from Harvard students, staff, and faculty. While they see commonalities, they also recognize that the communities they represent have some very distinct needs.

Recommendation highlights: Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias

The recommendations of the Task Force to Combat Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias focus on seven core areas:

Safety and security
Recognition and representation
Institutional response
Freedom of expression
Transparency and trust
Relationships among affinity groups
Intellectual excellence

File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Wafaie Fawzi.

Photo by Harvard Chan School Communications

Asim Ijaz Khwaja.

Photo by Martha Stewart

The recommendations emphasize the need to create a safe environment for community members by expanding protective and counseling services and publicly denouncing and helping mitigate the consequences of various forms of harassment, including doxxing.

The task force also made recommendations to address the perceived lack of recognition felt by members of the community on issues they care about. This includes an expansion of the name of the task force itself to add a focus on anti-Palestinian bias experienced both by Palestinian members of the Harvard community and by those who ally with Palestine. The suggestion to rename it the Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias was made in response to numerous reports from these individuals on campus about how the Palestinian identity has often felt “erased” or unrecognized.

“While Palestinians face Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism like other groups, they hail from a variety of religious backgrounds and also encounter unique challenges stemming from their status as Palestinians seeking national rights,” Fawzi said. “Highlighting anti-Palestinian bias would also promote inclusiveness of the voice of a large segment of our community that considers themselves allies of Palestinian aspirations, including South Asians, African Americans, whites, and other groups.”

The task force also recommended a Harvard-wide audit of academic resources related to Islam, the Middle East, and Palestine studies, as well as Arab, Middle Eastern, and Islamic studies across the University’s faculties.

“Teaching and research in these areas are critical to understanding the historical and contemporary challenges and opportunities facing these communities and to enabling constructive dialogue on the problems and on potential solutions,” Fawzi said. “We have consistently heard an immediate need for expanding curricular offerings related to Palestinian studies and seeking to recruit tenure-track faculty to enable this effort.”

According to the task force, many Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and pro-Palestinian Harvard affiliates also said they felt unsafe physically and in terms of their careers as students, faculty, and staff in expressing their opinions on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“It’s clear that the issues and constraints around free speech have weighed heavily and directly impacted many in the community. They feel not only have the University and Schools often fallen short in protecting these values, but have also sent mixed messages about upholding them,” said Khwaja. “We are looking forward to the efforts of the Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group and hope that they will be supported by our findings about how consequential these values are to the sense of safety, well-being, and effective discourse an academic community should have.”

The task force called on the University and the Schools to reaffirm their commitment to free expression and open debate while also ensuring that their policies on protest and dissent are clear to students upon their return in the fall.

“The University and Schools need to clearly communicate their policies on protest and dissent and clarify any ambiguity about them. Doing so will also allow us to collectively and constructively deliberate on what should be considered as legitimate and permissible protest and what is not. It will also help clarify procedural fairness and perceptions of equity, especially if such policies are seen to disproportionately apply to some groups or differ from past practice,” Khwaja said.

Recommendation highlights: Combating Antisemitism

The task force on combating antisemitism focused their memo on six areas for immediate action:

Clarify Harvard’s values
Act against discrimination, bullying, harassment, and hate
Improve disciplinary processes
Implement education and training
Foster constructive dialogue
Support Jewish life on campus

Jared Ellias.

Photo by Jessica Scranton

Derek Penslar.

Photo by Robin Levin Penslar

The memo asks the University to take action against the derision, social exclusion, and hostility that Jewish, Israeli, and pro-Israel community members have experienced. Penslar said that the administration, faculty, and staff need to establish norms of civil engagement, communicate those norms to students, and practice them themselves.

“Training for instructional staff and at student orientation programs must clarify the difference between a challenging classroom atmosphere, which is healthy and constructive, and a threatening one, which is toxic,” Penslar said. “Guidelines for co-curricular organizations and residences should stress the importance of inclusivity, however contentious conversations within them may be.”

The task force also calls for greater antisemitism awareness training as part of the University’s efforts to promote diversity, inclusion, and belonging. For example, the task force suggests offering anti-harassment training for students that includes examples of antisemitism and ensuring that orientation programs for new students include antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias in broader discussions of oppression and injustice.

“Our students are certain to encounter peers from backgrounds that they know little about,” Ellias said. “We want Harvard to tell our new students from day one, you are here to be with each other. We do not expect you to recognize all the ways you might offend each other, but we do expect you to be generous with each other, assume good intentions, and listen to what your fellow students say to you.”

What’s next

Some common recommendations emerged from both task forces related to everyday activities that many Harvard affiliates might take for granted. These include creating new calendars with information about Jewish and Muslim religious holidays (and those of other groups), reviewing accommodation policies, and improving kosher and halal food offerings in the dining halls.

“All of our students deserve convenient access to tasty and nutritious food. Depriving religiously observant students of that access is a violation of the most basic standards of equity. The same is true for denying students reasonable accommodation for religious holidays,” Penslar said. “So long as Harvard does not provide these forms of accommodation, it is signaling that religiously observant Jewish and Muslim students are not welcome here. That is a terrible message, and I am confident that it is not one that this University would ever endorse.”

And, finally, in an atmosphere rife with offensive and hateful social media posts and doxxing trucks circling campus, both task forces endorsed more deliberate — albeit more challenging — formal dialogues, such as high-profile talks and even in-classroom discussions between individuals who disagree respectfully and productively.

It’s these kinds of efforts that the co-chairs hope the University will pursue long after their final reports are delivered in the fall.

“One of the main reasons for conflict around the world is the inability to engage with and understand difference,” Asani said. “We should aspire to provide every student who is graduating from Harvard with the tools to engage with and understand all kinds of difference and in so doing enable them to make a positive difference in the world.”

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Empowering Students against Ethnic Bullying: Review and Recommendations of Innovative School Programs

1. Introduction

2. The Risk of Ethnic Bullying in Schools

3. Developing Anti-Ethnic Bullying Intervention Programs

4. Theoretical Orientation of Anti-Ethnic Bullying Programs

5. Recommendations of Anti-Ethnic Bullying Programs

5.1. Cultural Awareness Workshops

5.2. Empathy and Perspective Building Activities

5.3. Bystander Intervention Training

5.4. Stigma-Based Intervention

6. Conclusions

Acknowledgments

Funding Statement

Author Contributions

Institutional Review Board Statement

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