General Discussion

although (and this is not intended to be any sort of justification at all), academia is a brutal, toxic cesspool of exploitation (I know this being a 2nd generation academic). My own PhD granting department was known as the "shark tank" for their poor treatment of graduate students. One division of my unit had to be dissolved because the faculty could not get along!

Dig deep enough into any workplace/school shooting and you are likely to find a mix of an unstable perp with (as you suggest) some elements of inappropriate external blame and a toxic environment involving bullying and favoritism.

Graduate students are often treated like indentured servants and are so dependent on their abusers that they have no recourse but to take what is dished out. Academia is a caste system as strict and brutal as any other caste system, and while grad students are not the "untouchables" (that is reserved for PhDs who stayed in academia but never had a faculty position - like myself), they are the next lowest rung. What is worse is that they like to strut around and pretend to be so egalitarian and merit based.