Da cobrança ao adoecimento: a cultura acadêmica na perpetuação da violência hierárquica

Abstract

The university represents a paradoxical space: simultaneously a site of formation and a reproducer of social inequalities. This study analyzes how academic culture, marked by excessive demands and rigid power hierarchies, perpetuates moral harassment in higher education. The objective was to understand how authoritarian relationships, institutional pressures, and practices of symbolic violence manifest in undergraduate life, affecting students’ mental health and academic persistence. The research was conducted with undergraduate students from the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM). A qualitative approach was adopted through semi-structured interviews, and the data were analyzed using the Iramuteq software through Descending Hierarchical Classification (DHC). The results identified six semantic classes that reveal: strategies of self-care as forms of resistance against psychological distress; concrete experiences of moral harassment, mostly perpetrated by faculty members; institutional demands for effective protection and support policies; emotional impacts associated with harassment; personal trajectories marked by multiple forms of violence; and the intersectionality of gender, race, and class-based oppressions within the university context. The findings indicate that the exacerbated academic pressure, reinforced by institutional structure, legitimizes invisible forms of violence such as humiliation, overload, and silencing.It is concluded that addressing moral harassment in the university requires transforming the cultural foundations that sustain it, rather than focusing solely on isolated incidents. Institutional policies must involve prevention, support, accountability of perpetrators, and the guarantee of students’ rights.