Zemiology of Academic Misconducts; Criminological Criticism of the Imbalance of University Power Relations

The predominance of power relations in academic environments, including deviations from the worthy path of thought, leads to the consecration of the position of thinkers and the epistemological reflection of their scientific achievements. Power is not used without knowledge and it is rare that power is not the source of knowledge. All sciences are mature and synergistic based on the premise and establishment of knowledge and power relations. Measuring the discourses related to power and knowledge reveals a special effect in the reflection of power and knowledge relations, which is the power-seeking of a few academics in some educational and research centers of the world. A rare but dangerous manifestation of the wide field of power-seeking is bully-like academic misbehavior, which, in the form of white-collar workers who are not criminalized, causes an imbalance in the relations between power actors in academic environments; it is a type of purposeful, complex and mostly hidden behavior in some academic environments, which is committed with the aim of threatening, subjugating or rejecting the victim's softness.With the aim of knowing the manifestations and legal-structural factors of the phenomenon of "academic bullying" from the zoological-criminological perspective, this research investigates the hypothesis that the lack of amendment and approval of the "Mental Health" bill, the lack of formulation of the "Job Design Bill" (especially in the department of academic staff members), failure to amend disciplinary laws and regulations and promotion of academic staff members of educational and research institutions of the Ministry of Science, the continuation of defects and gaps in the "instructions on how to deal with the abandonment of the legal duties of managers and employees and its prevention" and laxity in the implementation That along with weakness of competent legal policy in preventing academic violations and reacting to them, is a significant distance from the rule of "legal state" and "knowledge preservation" among the inadequacies of Iran's criminal policy in maintaining the health of academic relations. The increasing growth of this challenge causes the flow of pseudo-science to increase and to strengthen the suspicion of fabrication and unreality of a significant part of the created knowledge according to the claim of some scientific institutions of the country.The most important cultural-attitudinal factors of academic corruption can be considered as follows: the incorrect understanding of the place of knowledge in the development of society and governance, mass and degree-oriented higher education, the disorganization of the major unemployability crisis of graduates, the big market of scientific fraud and its spread from fraudulent students to professors applying for fraud, the discourse of commodification of higher education, populism and managerial populism, the decline of scientific creativity in society, the reduction of public trust in scientific mechanisms, the weakness of the knowledge and skills of graduates, and the effect of corruption in other forms on misconduct in academic behavior."Criminal personality theory", "interactionism theory", "organizational critical theory", "anomie theory", "social strain theory", "labeling theory", "weakness of self-control theory", are among the most prominent critical criminological theories which, in connection with the teachings of organizational behavior and human resource management, have the ability to explain the reasons for "academic bullying". These theories also have the ability to provide solutions for situational and social crime prevention methods, primary and secondary and prevention methods, and specific and criminal/non-criminal prevention methods to reduce power imbalance factors in academic relations. On the other hand, and from the perspective of victimological criminology, victims of academic bullying, in addition to being victims of abuse of power by their academic colleagues, are also considered victims of governmental crime; because the lack of legal regulations to prevent academic bullying is a feature of the neglect of the government system in protecting academic freedom and peace, and it encourages academic bullies in this non-criminalized bullying. Also, the existence of administrative regulations and organizational procedures for promotion of scientific rank of university scholars, whose gross defects and major inadequacies have been widely criticized, are other manifestation of government crime.This article, in the context of zemiology, discusses what capacity critical criminology has in strengthening criminal policy to control academic bullying (severe abuses that are highly contrary to the dignity and ethics expected from the environment of educational and research institutions). Therefore, after examining the research background of the subject and describing the effects of this phenomenon that violates the ethics of knowledge, and by explaining the theoretical foundations help reduce the imbalance of power in academic relations, and discuses ability of some criminological theories in the etiology of academic bullying.