Although I am on the board of Animal Charity Evaluators, everything I say on this thread is my own words only and represents solely my personal opinion of what may have been going on. Any mistakes here are my own and this should not be interpreted as an official statement from ACE.
I believe that the misunderstanding going on here might be a false dilemma. Hypatia is acting as though the two choices are to be part of the social justice movement or to be in favor of free open expression. Hypatia then gives evidence that shows that ACE is doing things like the former, and thus concludes that this is dangerous because the latter is better for EA.
But this is a false dichotomy. ACE is deliberately taking a nuanced position that straddles both sides. ACE is not in danger of becoming an org that just goes around canceling free thought thinkers. But nor is ACE is danger of ignoring the importance of providing safe spaces for black, indigenous, and people of the global majority (BIPGM) in the EAA community. ACE is doing both, and I think rightly so.
Many who read this likely don’t know me, so let me start out by saying that I wholeheartedly endorse the spirit of the quoted comment from Anna Salamon at the end of Hypatia’s post. I strongly believe that the ideals of the enlightenment (open discussion of ideas, free speech, believing ideas based on argumentation and evidence) are necessary in order to do and achieve better. I have been known, in the past, of arguing even for more open discussion of infohazardous ideas, given appropriate spaces.
But, at the same time, I simultaneously believe that the playing field in which we all live and work together is fundamentally biased against BIPGM. In order to ensure that BIPGM are able to also work in the EAA space, they can’t just be ignored; we have to take a positive effort in order to ensure that they are fairly included. As Howard Zinn once noted, you can’t stay neutral on a moving train.
(I really don’t want EA to fall into the trap that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony did when they threw Frederick Douglass under the bus. We can simultaneously fight for EAA while also providing a space for BIPGM in the EAA community.)
Hypatia made several points in the original post. I’ll reorganize them here, in their own words:
Blog Post on BLM
Making (in my view) poorly reasoned statements about anti-racism; and
encouraging supporters to support or donate to anti-racist causes and organizations of dubious effectiveness.
Withdrawal from 2020 CARE Conference
Attempting to cancel an animal rights conference speaker because of his (fairly liberal) views on Black Lives Matter;
withdrawing from that conference because the speaker’s presence allegedly made ACE staff feel unsafe; and
issuing a public statement supporting its staff and criticizing the conference organizers.
Penalizing Charities Based on Staff Statements
Penalizing charities in reviews for having leadership and/or staff who are deemed to be insufficiently progressive on racial equity; and
stating ACE will deny funding to projects from those who disagree with its views on diversity, equity and inclusion.
I’d like to respond to some of these points, as I think they are incorrect and/or misleading. I will not be responding to the Blog Post on BLM bullet because I believe that ACE would be better able to clarify that issue.
Withdrawal from 2020 CARE Conference
“Attempting to cancel an animal rights conference speaker because of his (fairly liberal) views on Black Lives Matter, withdrawing from that conference because the speaker’s presence allegedly made ACE staff feel unsafe”
My understanding is that ACE, as an organization, did not intend in any way to cancel this speaker in the sense that you mean here.
What happened is much more nuanced than you make it out to be. In another comment on this thread, anonymous00 writes up much more of the context behind what was going on. In short, ACE had staff that were going to present at the CARE conference. After they learned that the facebook commenter in question would be on a panel talking about BLM, they indicated to ACE leadership that they felt unsafe going to the conference, and they pulled out. There was no capacity to replace them with other speakers. ACE informed CARE that they were withdrawing.
At no point here did ACE as an organization deliberately decide to cancel anyone, even if some people affiliated with ACE did express dissatisfaction with him speaking on this topic at the conference. At no point do I think that ACE had any choice but to withdraw from the conference, given the feelings of ACE’s staff that pulled out. You might object that these staff members shouldn’t have felt unsafe. I can understand that point of view, because if I were in their position, I wouldn’t have felt unsafe, even though I am also a BIPGM. (I’m mixed indigenous, hispanic, and white, with the plurality being indigenous ancestry.) But you and I do not get to choose when others feel unsafe.
Hopefully, anonymous00′s writeup may give more context into why they felt unsafe. If not, I could try to explain further, perhaps with an analogy to make it more clear. But I believe this is beside the point. Organizations cannot tell their employees when they have to feel safe. It’s up to people to make such determinations, and then organizations have to work around those facts.
“issuing a public statement supporting its staff and criticizing the conference organizers.”
I agree that the way that ACE handled the communication surrounding these events was ultimately quite poor. While I believe that ACE took appropriate actions here, I don’t think that its communications about those actions were appropriate nor ultimately good.
In particular, ACE’s statement erred on the side of taking responsibility as an organization for the actions of its employees. I think this is generally good practice. But it gave an impression that ACE was trying to deplatform someone, when that is not what was going on at all. I think that the communications aspect of this situation could have been much better handled.
Penalizing Charities Based on Staff Statements
“Penalizing charities in reviews for having leadership and/or staff who are deemed to be insufficiently progressive on racial equity”
While your words here are technically correct, putting it like this is very misleading. Without breaking confidentiality, let me state unequivocally that if an organization had employees who had really bad views on DEI, that would be, in itself, insufficient for ACE to downgrade them from top to standout charity status. This doesn’t mean it isn’t a factor; it is. But the actions discussed in this EA forum thread would be insufficient on their own to cause ACE to make such a downgrade.
“stating ACE will deny funding to projects from those who disagree with its views on diversity, equity and inclusion.”
While this is true as stated, it is not as inappropriate as it sounds here. The text you pulled is from ACE Movement Grants, which is completely separate from the evaluations used for top and standout charities. This is relevant because the entire point of ACE Movement Grants is to foster the movement to become bigger and better through increased resiliency, and this includes being inclusive. It is entirely appropriate for ACE Movement Grants to have a clause like this, given what they are trying to do. There are further reasons why ACE has something like ACE Movement Grants in place, and that context might further explain why including a clause like this would be appropriate; but in the interest of brevity, I won’t include those reasons here.
Potentially Harmful to the EA Movement
“those who disagree with decisions to support that work shouldn’t be branded as racist or ignorant”
I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, and I believe ACE does as well. Please remember that ACE is unusually lenient about others who hold ideals contrary to what ACE does. Unlike global poverty work, there are actual real companies whose business depends entirely on killing and effectively torturing animals. Yet ACE is continually willing to promote organizations who do corporate outreach with these companies. If anything, ACE is extremely strong on allowing cooperation and promotion with individuals and groups who have views that are completely contrary to what ACE believes in.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I think the misunderstanding here is a false dilemma. ACE is deliberately taking a nuanced view on the supposed (false dichotomy) axis of free open discussion and the encouragement of safe spaces. At times, ACE might err on one side or the other; hopefully you can understand that organizations like ACE can and will sometimes fail to live up to their own ideals. But the intended position that ACE is taking is one where we try to foster free open discussion while also trying to make the EAA community a place where BIPGM can more fairly live and work.
Can you explain more about this part of ACE’s public statement about withdrawing from the conference:
We took the initiative to contact CARE’s organizers to discuss our concern, exchanging many thoughtful messages and making significant attempts to find a compromise.
If ACE was not trying to deplatform the speaker in question, what were these messages about and what kind of compromise were you trying to reach with CARE?
In general, organizations should respect confidentiality of communications with other groups. This is especially important for ACE, as they rely on animal advocacy organizations feeling comfortable enough to share their internal data with them. While transparency is one of its primary goals, and ACE is already extremely transparent about its charity evaluation process and the reasoning that led to the selection of each of the recommended charities in its reviews, I hope you can understand why ACE also values the importance of retaining a collaborative relationship with other organizations. As such, ACE retains a strong policy against publicly sharing private communications between ACE and the charities they evaluate.
The only thing of interest here is what sort of compromise ACE wanted. What CARE said in response is not of immediate interest, and there’s certainly no need to actually share the messages themselves.
Perhaps you can understand why one might come away from this conversation thinking that ACE tried to deplatform the speaker? To me at least it feels hard to interpret “find a compromise” any other way.
[Note that I have no idea whatsoever about what actually happened here. This is purely hypothetical.]
FWIW if I was in a position similar to ACE’s here are a few potential “compromises” I would have explored. (Of course, which of these would be acceptable to me would depend on exactly why I’m concerned and how strongly, etc.) I think some of them wouldn’t typically be considered deplatforming, though I would imagine that people who are against deplatforming would find many if not all of them at least somewhat objectionable (I would also guess that some who are pro maximal deplatforming in this case would find many if not all of these objectionable):
Changing the topic of the relevant speaker’s talk
Adding a talk with a different perspective on BLM etc. to the conference program
Replacing the talk with a panel that also includes different perspectives
Removing the talk from the ‘official’ program but explicitly or implicitly allowing it to take part ‘informally’
Adding some sort of disclaimer to the talk/program saying the conference organizers are aware this is a sensitive topic and they disagree with the speaker
I could probably generate a bunch of other ideas if I spent more time generating them.
Perhaps more fundamentally, in the spirit of the ‘Harvard method’ for negotiations I wouldn’t have sent a list of demands or acceptable outcomes to CARE but would have stated my interests. I.e. roughly which properties of possible outcomes I care about. E.g. these might be things like “my staff members feel comfortable attending”, “avoiding a perception by attendees or the public that CARE, or the animal advocacy movement more broadly, are” (or even “sending a signal that CARE/the animal advocacy movement support anti-racism/BLM”), etc.
I would then encourage CARE to state their interests, and then try to make sure they and I consider the full space of possible outcomes (which includes the potential compromises listed above and many more), and work with them to see if there is any outcome in there that is acceptable to both of us.
If this went well (even if there was no deal in the end) I would imagine such a conversation would involve a lot of back-and-forth, hinge on details, and that it would be quite hard to give outsiders an accurate picture of what the parties wanted. Certainly I wouldn’t expect that “here is a list of compromises we wanted” would do a good job at this.
There is a separate question of whether even if it was possible it would be a good idea. I’m not sure. I think that on one hand various stakeholders have an interested in understanding at least roughly what interests the parties were pursuing. E.g. if I was a donor to ACE b/c I want ACE to generally maximize the effectiveness of the animal advocacy movement then I would want to know if the interests ACE was pursuing in this and similar negotiation situations were consistent with that mission. However, this may be covered by fairly general statements (e.g. the general goals and strategy of ACE) and accountability/governance mechanisms (e.g. ACE’s board holding org leadership accountable to pursuing those goals and not others in all their dealings). On the other hand, too much transparency about specifics of the conversation can easily jeopardize the parties’ ability to reach a Pareto-preferred outcome, in particular if outside observers are irrational or prefer to ‘punish’ the other party. I also think it’s generally conducive to a constructive conversation if the parties don’t have to worry that in the case of no deal the other party will try to paint them in a bad light (since such worries increase the expected cost of bargaining); and unfortunately even disclosing just what oneself said might have this effect, or at least create pressure on the other party to reveal more about their bargaining strategy. (E.g. if party A is like “we proposed X but B wouldn’t accept”, and B seems at first glance reasonable, this will create pressure on party B to explain why they thought X wasn’t acceptable, which might rely on confidential or costly-to-disclose information, etc.) It just seems like there are a bunch of tricky principal-agent and other problems to navigate here, and my impression is that certain norms of confidentiality have evolved around negotations that often seem reasonable to me (though I don’t feel highly confident, and I also don’t have a great picture of how exactly the common norms look like). I’m definitely not convinced that it would be good to create public pressure on organizations that would prevent them from entering confidential conversations with other parties in the future. If I know that you have supporters who will pressure you into disclosing what we talk about, I might prefer to not negotiate with you in the first place, and we might both be worse off as a result.
Again, I have absolutely no idea how close any of my hypotheticals are to what actually went down here.
[ETA: I wasn’t trying to comment on the object level, but for the record based on this comment by Anima International leadership staff it does sound like ACE may in fact not have approached the dispute in the way I outlined here. I’m specifically referring to claims that (1) ACE started the conversation by freezing funds and (2) them to some extent having violated strict confidentiality themselves by having disclosed that some of the ‘negotiations’ were about racism, attitudes toward DEI, etc. - I think that (2) may actually be a dynamic of the problem I pointed to, i.e., that by disclosing partial information you can create pressures on the involved parties to disclose even more information or otherwise justify their behavior. However, note that ACE may dispute these claims.
To be clear, I also think that accurately assessing such situations “from the outside” is very tricky, and I don’t think I can reasonably have a strong view on whether or not any detail such as disclosing the topic of some conversation was or wasn’t a mistake. I also think that ACE is in a particularly tricky situation when navigating such matters because it’s not some “random” actor who has a dispute with the conference organizers but also by virtue of their mission is committed to evaluating the conference organizer’s performance. I think this raises some interesting more general question about good practices for how to navigate disputes between charity evaluators and charities.]
FWIW if I was in a position similar to ACE’s here are a few potential “compromises” I would have explored.
Inferring from the list you wrote, you seem to be under the impression that the speaker in question was going to deliver a talk at the conference, but according to Eric Herboso’s top-level comment, “the facebook commenter in question would be on a panel talking about BLM”. Also, the following sentence from ACE’s Facebook post makes it sound like the only way ACE staff members would attend the conference was if the speaker would not be there at all, which I think rules out all of the compromise ideas you generated.
In fact, asking our staff to participate in an event where a person who had made such harmful statements would be in attendance, let alone presenting, would be a violation of our own anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy.
Inferring from the list you wrote, you seem to be under the impression that the speaker in question was going to deliver a talk at the conference, but according to Eric Herboso’s top-level comment, “the facebook commenter in question would be on a panel talking about BLM”.
Yes, I had been under that impression (based on my vague memory of having heard about this situation when Buck had posted about it on Facebook). Given what Eric wrote, it sounds like you’re probably right that the “baseline plan” was a panel rather than a talk, so obviously my list of potential compromises would need to be modified (change topic of the panel, move the person from the panel to a talk on another topic, make the panel “informal” etc.). I don’t think this by itself matters much for the key points I was trying to make in my comment.
Separately, I agree that the second quote at least suggests that maybe what in fact happened was that ACE asked CARE to ban this person from even attending the conference. I haven’t followed this situation enough to have an object-level view of whether I think that would have been a reasonable/good demand. I also didn’t mean to say that the hypothetical compromises I suggested in my earlier comment would have in fact been good for the world overall.
I still think that (i) negotiation by demanding/suggesting particular outcomes (as opposed to first getting on the same page on both parties’ interests) is usually instrumentally bad even for one’s own interests [so no matter the content of the demand, if ACE’s negotiation strategy had been of that type, I’d think they probably made a mistake], (ii) confidentiality norms for specifics of negotiations are often good, would often be undermined even by disclosing just what one said oneself (i.e. without directly revealing anything the other party did or said) and (iii) while somewhat uncertain I would tentatively push back pretty strongly against outside demands to break confidentiality or outside signals that discourage an org from entering into confidential negotiations in the future
Indeed, (iii) was the main reason why I commented at all. I’m not that interested in what happens in the animal advocacy world, but I tentatively don’t want incentives that punish EA-ish orgs for utilizing dispute resolution mechanisms that involve confidentiality because I think eroding the norm that confidentiality is OK in such situations could be pretty bad.
[ETA: I wasn’t trying to comment on the object level, but for the record based on this comment by Anima International leadership staff it does sound like ACE may in fact not have approached the dispute in the way I outlined here. I’m specifically referring to claims that (1) ACE started the conversation by freezing funds and (2) them to some extent having violated strict confidentiality themselves by having disclosed that some of the ‘negotiations’ were about racism, attitudes toward DEI, etc. - I think that (2) may actually be a dynamic of the problem I pointed to, i.e., that by disclosing partial information you can create pressures on the involved parties to disclose even more information or otherwise justify their behavior. However, note that ACE may be disputing these claims.
To be clear, I also think that accurately assessing such situations “from the outside” is very tricky, and I don’t think I can reasonably have a strong view on whether or not any detail such as disclosing the topic of some conversation was or wasn’t a mistake. I also think that ACE is in a particularly tricky situation when navigating such matters because it’s not some “random” actor who has a dispute with the conference organizers but also by virtue of their mission is committed to evaluating the conference organizer’s performance. I think this raises some interesting more general question about good practices for how to navigate disputes between charity evaluators and charities.]
I agree that being part of the social justice movement can be compatible with supporting free expression, and I added a note in my post to clarify that.
Speaking as an insider, I can explicitly say that ACE, as an organization, did not intend in any way to cancel this speaker in the sense that you mean here.
That’s a relief to hear, but it also seems hard to reconcile with the public Facebook post. ACE wrote (emphasis mine):
In fact, asking our staff to participate in an event where a person who had made such harmful statements would be in attendance, let alone presenting, would be a violation of our own anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy. Naturally, we want to abide by our own policy and support our staff in feeling comfortable in all of their workspaces, including the online sphere of virtual conferences and Facebook forums.
We took the initiative to contact CARE’s organizers to discuss our concern, exchanging many thoughtful messages and making significant attempts to find a compromise. We view our dialogue as healthy, productive, and collaborative, and we are grateful for CARE’s openness to and participation in our conversation.
Unfortunately, despite our joint efforts—and despite the fact that the presenter in question chose to rescind his own speaking engagement for reasons of which we are not aware—we ultimately decided on Monday to withdraw our ACE representatives
The post really does suggest that ACE didn’t want this person speaking at the conference, and contacted CARE seeking some type of concession.
But this might make sense in light of what you say here:
In particular, ACE’s statement erred on the side of taking responsibility as an organization for the actions of its employees. I think this is generally good practice. But it gave an impression that ACE was trying to deplatform someone, when that is not what was going on at all. I think that the communications aspect of this situation could have been much better handled.
Is the implication here that some ACE staff member(s), but not ACE as an organization, attempted to cancel this speaker’s talk? Clarifying this would be helpful.
After they learned that the facebook commenter in question would be on a panel talking about BLM, they indicated to ACE leadership that they felt unsafe going to the conference, and they pulled out. ACE then had no choice but to allow them to do this. There was no capacity to replace them with other speakers. ACE had to inform CARE that they were withdrawing.
I wouldn’t expect an organization to force staff to speak at a conference they’re uncomfortable attending. But my main concern here was that ACE contacted CARE organizers to voice concerns (and ask for some type of concession) and wrote a public post that heavily implied the conference organizers did something wrong by inviting this person to speak.
I’m also somewhat concerned that all three ACE employees scheduled to speak withdrew. I think that, combined with some other information available, suggests there’s a bit of an intellectual monoculture at ACE surrounding DEI issues.
Regarding the alleged penalization in charity reviews, you say:
While your words here are technically correct, putting it like this is very misleading. Without breaking confidentiality, let me state unequivocally that if an organization had employees who had really bad views on DEI, that would be, in itself, insufficient for ACE to downgrade them from top to standout charity status. This doesn’t mean it isn’t a factor; it is. But the actions discussed in this EA forum thread would be insufficient on their own to cause ACE to make such a downgrade.
I’m a bit confused how to interpret this.
Does this mean an organization receiving a “Weak” rating on Leadership and Culture caused by DEI concerns couldn’t be given a lower status compared to the same organization with a “Strong” rating?
Or would bad views on DEI not be enough by itself to give a charity a “Weak” rating there?
Or am I misunderstanding something about ACE’s charity review process?
I think it would be helpful for ACE to clarify this.
Note that I didn’t mean to imply that Anima would have received “Top” status if it weren’t for comments from leadership on DEI.
Regarding movement grants:
While this is true as stated, it is not as inappropriate as it sounds here. The text you pulled is from ACE Movement Grants, which is completely separate from the evaluations used for top and standout charities. This is relevant because the entire point of ACE Movement Grants is to foster the movement to become bigger and better through increased resiliency, and this includes being inclusive.
Thanks for raising the distinction; I edited the post to make it more clear. This still seems like harmful policy to me. Even if the overall goal of the grants is to make the movement stronger (including by becoming more inclusive), it’s plausible that there could be some really promising projects from people/groups who don’t fully align with ACE on DEI.
Clarifying [the specifics of the CARE conference decision] would be helpful.
Regarding the CARE conference decision, I want to give a disclaimer that I was not closely involved in this decision, so I’m not clear on what the exact reasoning was. I’ve shared my opinions above on the situation, but as this conference took place eight months ago and isn’t related to the core of ACE’s work, I don’t expect ACE to make any further official statements on the matter.
In my response to Wei Dai, I explain that it’s just not possible for me nor for ACE to share confidential details of this type. I’ve tried to strike the best balance I can of relieving some of the fears that you and others have about ACE’s reasoning in this case, while simultaneously respecting ACE’s policies around how we treat private communication with other charities. I suspect that I have been unsuccessful at this. I’m sorry that I can’t share more on this topic.
Does this mean…? …Or am I misunderstanding something about ACE’s charity review process?
It is difficult for me to go into detail here without breaking confidentiality. I’ve tried several times to draft something that I could say generally here, without reference to anything specific. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be possible. All I can do in this case is to refer you to ACE’s Charity Evaluation Criteria, which goes into more detail about Criterion 5: Leadership and Culture.
[The ACE Movement Grants DEI policy] still seems like harmful policy to me. Even if the overall goal of the grants is to make the movement stronger (including by becoming more inclusive), it’s plausible that there could be some really promising projects from people/groups who don’t fully align with ACE on DEI.
I agree that projects can be promising, regardless of the ideals of the people running them. But I disagree that ACE Movement Grants should fund such projects. The most important thing that ACE Movement Grants is trying to do is to help direct the shape of the larger movement. This is important because, unlike GiveWell with global poverty (for example), ACE and other EA funders direct at least 25% of the available funding for farmed animal advocacy. Whereas GiveWell can afford to solely advocate for top and standout charities, ACE is in the unique position of being responsible for a significant percentage of the money moved in some of these cause areas.
I’m not averse to all kinds of people doing promising projects. If they succeed, hopefully they can one day be recognized by ACE in its top or standout charity lists, as former AMG grantees Wild Animal Initiative, Vegetarianos Hoy, and Essere Animali are now. But while they are still in the ‘promising’ stage, I don’t think it is needed nor even appropriate for ACE Movement Grants to fund them if their values actively turn away BIPGM.
While your words here are technically correct, putting it like this is very misleading. Without breaking confidentiality, let me state unequivocally that if an organization had employees who had really bad views on DEI, that would be, in itself, insufficient for ACE to downgrade them from top to standout charity status. This doesn’t mean it isn’t a factor; it is. But the actions discussed in this EA forum thread would be insufficient on their own to cause ACE to make such a downgrade.
Just to clarify, this currently sounds to me like you are saying “the actions discussed in this forum thread would be insufficient, but would likely move an organization about halfway to being demoted from top to standout charity”, which presumably makes this a pretty big factor that explains a lot of the variance in how different organizations score on the total evaluation. This seems very substantial, but I want to give you the space to say it plays a much less substantial role than that.
A lot goes into ACE’s evaluation decisions. ACE’s charity evaluation process is extremely transparent; I welcome you to read ACE’s official description of that process if you want more detail generally on this kind of thing.
Regarding specifics, I’m unfortunately not at liberty to discuss any confidential details of this case beyond what is already explained in our 2020 evaluation of Anima International.
I am familiar with ACE’s charity evaluation process. The hypothesis I expressed above seems compatible with everything I know about the process. So alas, this didn’t really answer my question.
I am concerned that although I explained that the views I put forward here are my own, they are being taken as though it is some official response from ACE. This is not the case. To eliminate any potential further misunderstanding on this, I will not be engaging further on this thread.
Although I am on the board of Animal Charity Evaluators, everything I say on this thread is my own words only and represents solely my personal opinion of what may have been going on. Any mistakes here are my own and this should not be interpreted as an official statement from ACE.
I believe that the misunderstanding going on here might be a false dilemma. Hypatia is acting as though the two choices are to be part of the social justice movement or to be in favor of free open expression. Hypatia then gives evidence that shows that ACE is doing things like the former, and thus concludes that this is dangerous because the latter is better for EA.
But this is a false dichotomy. ACE is deliberately taking a nuanced position that straddles both sides. ACE is not in danger of becoming an org that just goes around canceling free thought thinkers. But nor is ACE is danger of ignoring the importance of providing safe spaces for black, indigenous, and people of the global majority (BIPGM) in the EAA community. ACE is doing both, and I think rightly so.
Many who read this likely don’t know me, so let me start out by saying that I wholeheartedly endorse the spirit of the quoted comment from Anna Salamon at the end of Hypatia’s post. I strongly believe that the ideals of the enlightenment (open discussion of ideas, free speech, believing ideas based on argumentation and evidence) are necessary in order to do and achieve better. I have been known, in the past, of arguing even for more open discussion of infohazardous ideas, given appropriate spaces.
But, at the same time, I simultaneously believe that the playing field in which we all live and work together is fundamentally biased against BIPGM. In order to ensure that BIPGM are able to also work in the EAA space, they can’t just be ignored; we have to take a positive effort in order to ensure that they are fairly included. As Howard Zinn once noted, you can’t stay neutral on a moving train.
(I really don’t want EA to fall into the trap that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony did when they threw Frederick Douglass under the bus. We can simultaneously fight for EAA while also providing a space for BIPGM in the EAA community.)
Hypatia made several points in the original post. I’ll reorganize them here, in their own words:
Blog Post on BLM
Making (in my view) poorly reasoned statements about anti-racism; and
encouraging supporters to support or donate to anti-racist causes and organizations of dubious effectiveness.
Withdrawal from 2020 CARE Conference
Attempting to cancel an animal rights conference speaker because of his (fairly liberal) views on Black Lives Matter;
withdrawing from that conference because the speaker’s presence allegedly made ACE staff feel unsafe; and
issuing a public statement supporting its staff and criticizing the conference organizers.
Penalizing Charities Based on Staff Statements
Penalizing charities in reviews for having leadership and/or staff who are deemed to be insufficiently progressive on racial equity; and
stating ACE will deny funding to projects from those who disagree with its views on diversity, equity and inclusion.
I’d like to respond to some of these points, as I think they are incorrect and/or misleading. I will not be responding to the Blog Post on BLM bullet because I believe that ACE would be better able to clarify that issue.
Withdrawal from 2020 CARE Conference
My understanding is that ACE, as an organization, did not intend in any way to cancel this speaker in the sense that you mean here.
What happened is much more nuanced than you make it out to be. In another comment on this thread, anonymous00 writes up much more of the context behind what was going on. In short, ACE had staff that were going to present at the CARE conference. After they learned that the facebook commenter in question would be on a panel talking about BLM, they indicated to ACE leadership that they felt unsafe going to the conference, and they pulled out. There was no capacity to replace them with other speakers. ACE informed CARE that they were withdrawing.
At no point here did ACE as an organization deliberately decide to cancel anyone, even if some people affiliated with ACE did express dissatisfaction with him speaking on this topic at the conference. At no point do I think that ACE had any choice but to withdraw from the conference, given the feelings of ACE’s staff that pulled out. You might object that these staff members shouldn’t have felt unsafe. I can understand that point of view, because if I were in their position, I wouldn’t have felt unsafe, even though I am also a BIPGM. (I’m mixed indigenous, hispanic, and white, with the plurality being indigenous ancestry.) But you and I do not get to choose when others feel unsafe.
Hopefully, anonymous00′s writeup may give more context into why they felt unsafe. If not, I could try to explain further, perhaps with an analogy to make it more clear. But I believe this is beside the point. Organizations cannot tell their employees when they have to feel safe. It’s up to people to make such determinations, and then organizations have to work around those facts.
I agree that the way that ACE handled the communication surrounding these events was ultimately quite poor. While I believe that ACE took appropriate actions here, I don’t think that its communications about those actions were appropriate nor ultimately good.
In particular, ACE’s statement erred on the side of taking responsibility as an organization for the actions of its employees. I think this is generally good practice. But it gave an impression that ACE was trying to deplatform someone, when that is not what was going on at all. I think that the communications aspect of this situation could have been much better handled.
Penalizing Charities Based on Staff Statements
While your words here are technically correct, putting it like this is very misleading. Without breaking confidentiality, let me state unequivocally that if an organization had employees who had really bad views on DEI, that would be, in itself, insufficient for ACE to downgrade them from top to standout charity status. This doesn’t mean it isn’t a factor; it is. But the actions discussed in this EA forum thread would be insufficient on their own to cause ACE to make such a downgrade.
While this is true as stated, it is not as inappropriate as it sounds here. The text you pulled is from ACE Movement Grants, which is completely separate from the evaluations used for top and standout charities. This is relevant because the entire point of ACE Movement Grants is to foster the movement to become bigger and better through increased resiliency, and this includes being inclusive. It is entirely appropriate for ACE Movement Grants to have a clause like this, given what they are trying to do. There are further reasons why ACE has something like ACE Movement Grants in place, and that context might further explain why including a clause like this would be appropriate; but in the interest of brevity, I won’t include those reasons here.
Potentially Harmful to the EA Movement
I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, and I believe ACE does as well. Please remember that ACE is unusually lenient about others who hold ideals contrary to what ACE does. Unlike global poverty work, there are actual real companies whose business depends entirely on killing and effectively torturing animals. Yet ACE is continually willing to promote organizations who do corporate outreach with these companies. If anything, ACE is extremely strong on allowing cooperation and promotion with individuals and groups who have views that are completely contrary to what ACE believes in.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I think the misunderstanding here is a false dilemma. ACE is deliberately taking a nuanced view on the supposed (false dichotomy) axis of free open discussion and the encouragement of safe spaces. At times, ACE might err on one side or the other; hopefully you can understand that organizations like ACE can and will sometimes fail to live up to their own ideals. But the intended position that ACE is taking is one where we try to foster free open discussion while also trying to make the EAA community a place where BIPGM can more fairly live and work.
Can you explain more about this part of ACE’s public statement about withdrawing from the conference:
If ACE was not trying to deplatform the speaker in question, what were these messages about and what kind of compromise were you trying to reach with CARE?
In general, organizations should respect confidentiality of communications with other groups. This is especially important for ACE, as they rely on animal advocacy organizations feeling comfortable enough to share their internal data with them. While transparency is one of its primary goals, and ACE is already extremely transparent about its charity evaluation process and the reasoning that led to the selection of each of the recommended charities in its reviews, I hope you can understand why ACE also values the importance of retaining a collaborative relationship with other organizations. As such, ACE retains a strong policy against publicly sharing private communications between ACE and the charities they evaluate.
The only thing of interest here is what sort of compromise ACE wanted. What CARE said in response is not of immediate interest, and there’s certainly no need to actually share the messages themselves.
Perhaps you can understand why one might come away from this conversation thinking that ACE tried to deplatform the speaker? To me at least it feels hard to interpret “find a compromise” any other way.
[Note that I have no idea whatsoever about what actually happened here. This is purely hypothetical.]
FWIW if I was in a position similar to ACE’s here are a few potential “compromises” I would have explored. (Of course, which of these would be acceptable to me would depend on exactly why I’m concerned and how strongly, etc.) I think some of them wouldn’t typically be considered deplatforming, though I would imagine that people who are against deplatforming would find many if not all of them at least somewhat objectionable (I would also guess that some who are pro maximal deplatforming in this case would find many if not all of these objectionable):
Changing the topic of the relevant speaker’s talk
Adding a talk with a different perspective on BLM etc. to the conference program
Replacing the talk with a panel that also includes different perspectives
Removing the talk from the ‘official’ program but explicitly or implicitly allowing it to take part ‘informally’
Adding some sort of disclaimer to the talk/program saying the conference organizers are aware this is a sensitive topic and they disagree with the speaker
I could probably generate a bunch of other ideas if I spent more time generating them.
Perhaps more fundamentally, in the spirit of the ‘Harvard method’ for negotiations I wouldn’t have sent a list of demands or acceptable outcomes to CARE but would have stated my interests. I.e. roughly which properties of possible outcomes I care about. E.g. these might be things like “my staff members feel comfortable attending”, “avoiding a perception by attendees or the public that CARE, or the animal advocacy movement more broadly, are” (or even “sending a signal that CARE/the animal advocacy movement support anti-racism/BLM”), etc.
I would then encourage CARE to state their interests, and then try to make sure they and I consider the full space of possible outcomes (which includes the potential compromises listed above and many more), and work with them to see if there is any outcome in there that is acceptable to both of us.
If this went well (even if there was no deal in the end) I would imagine such a conversation would involve a lot of back-and-forth, hinge on details, and that it would be quite hard to give outsiders an accurate picture of what the parties wanted. Certainly I wouldn’t expect that “here is a list of compromises we wanted” would do a good job at this.
There is a separate question of whether even if it was possible it would be a good idea. I’m not sure. I think that on one hand various stakeholders have an interested in understanding at least roughly what interests the parties were pursuing. E.g. if I was a donor to ACE b/c I want ACE to generally maximize the effectiveness of the animal advocacy movement then I would want to know if the interests ACE was pursuing in this and similar negotiation situations were consistent with that mission. However, this may be covered by fairly general statements (e.g. the general goals and strategy of ACE) and accountability/governance mechanisms (e.g. ACE’s board holding org leadership accountable to pursuing those goals and not others in all their dealings). On the other hand, too much transparency about specifics of the conversation can easily jeopardize the parties’ ability to reach a Pareto-preferred outcome, in particular if outside observers are irrational or prefer to ‘punish’ the other party. I also think it’s generally conducive to a constructive conversation if the parties don’t have to worry that in the case of no deal the other party will try to paint them in a bad light (since such worries increase the expected cost of bargaining); and unfortunately even disclosing just what oneself said might have this effect, or at least create pressure on the other party to reveal more about their bargaining strategy. (E.g. if party A is like “we proposed X but B wouldn’t accept”, and B seems at first glance reasonable, this will create pressure on party B to explain why they thought X wasn’t acceptable, which might rely on confidential or costly-to-disclose information, etc.) It just seems like there are a bunch of tricky principal-agent and other problems to navigate here, and my impression is that certain norms of confidentiality have evolved around negotations that often seem reasonable to me (though I don’t feel highly confident, and I also don’t have a great picture of how exactly the common norms look like). I’m definitely not convinced that it would be good to create public pressure on organizations that would prevent them from entering confidential conversations with other parties in the future. If I know that you have supporters who will pressure you into disclosing what we talk about, I might prefer to not negotiate with you in the first place, and we might both be worse off as a result.
Again, I have absolutely no idea how close any of my hypotheticals are to what actually went down here.
[ETA: I wasn’t trying to comment on the object level, but for the record based on this comment by Anima International leadership staff it does sound like ACE may in fact not have approached the dispute in the way I outlined here. I’m specifically referring to claims that (1) ACE started the conversation by freezing funds and (2) them to some extent having violated strict confidentiality themselves by having disclosed that some of the ‘negotiations’ were about racism, attitudes toward DEI, etc. - I think that (2) may actually be a dynamic of the problem I pointed to, i.e., that by disclosing partial information you can create pressures on the involved parties to disclose even more information or otherwise justify their behavior. However, note that ACE may dispute these claims.
To be clear, I also think that accurately assessing such situations “from the outside” is very tricky, and I don’t think I can reasonably have a strong view on whether or not any detail such as disclosing the topic of some conversation was or wasn’t a mistake. I also think that ACE is in a particularly tricky situation when navigating such matters because it’s not some “random” actor who has a dispute with the conference organizers but also by virtue of their mission is committed to evaluating the conference organizer’s performance. I think this raises some interesting more general question about good practices for how to navigate disputes between charity evaluators and charities.]
Inferring from the list you wrote, you seem to be under the impression that the speaker in question was going to deliver a talk at the conference, but according to Eric Herboso’s top-level comment, “the facebook commenter in question would be on a panel talking about BLM”. Also, the following sentence from ACE’s Facebook post makes it sound like the only way ACE staff members would attend the conference was if the speaker would not be there at all, which I think rules out all of the compromise ideas you generated.
Yes, I had been under that impression (based on my vague memory of having heard about this situation when Buck had posted about it on Facebook). Given what Eric wrote, it sounds like you’re probably right that the “baseline plan” was a panel rather than a talk, so obviously my list of potential compromises would need to be modified (change topic of the panel, move the person from the panel to a talk on another topic, make the panel “informal” etc.). I don’t think this by itself matters much for the key points I was trying to make in my comment.
Separately, I agree that the second quote at least suggests that maybe what in fact happened was that ACE asked CARE to ban this person from even attending the conference. I haven’t followed this situation enough to have an object-level view of whether I think that would have been a reasonable/good demand. I also didn’t mean to say that the hypothetical compromises I suggested in my earlier comment would have in fact been good for the world overall.
I still think that (i) negotiation by demanding/suggesting particular outcomes (as opposed to first getting on the same page on both parties’ interests) is usually instrumentally bad even for one’s own interests [so no matter the content of the demand, if ACE’s negotiation strategy had been of that type, I’d think they probably made a mistake], (ii) confidentiality norms for specifics of negotiations are often good, would often be undermined even by disclosing just what one said oneself (i.e. without directly revealing anything the other party did or said) and (iii) while somewhat uncertain I would tentatively push back pretty strongly against outside demands to break confidentiality or outside signals that discourage an org from entering into confidential negotiations in the future
Indeed, (iii) was the main reason why I commented at all. I’m not that interested in what happens in the animal advocacy world, but I tentatively don’t want incentives that punish EA-ish orgs for utilizing dispute resolution mechanisms that involve confidentiality because I think eroding the norm that confidentiality is OK in such situations could be pretty bad.
[ETA: I wasn’t trying to comment on the object level, but for the record based on this comment by Anima International leadership staff it does sound like ACE may in fact not have approached the dispute in the way I outlined here. I’m specifically referring to claims that (1) ACE started the conversation by freezing funds and (2) them to some extent having violated strict confidentiality themselves by having disclosed that some of the ‘negotiations’ were about racism, attitudes toward DEI, etc. - I think that (2) may actually be a dynamic of the problem I pointed to, i.e., that by disclosing partial information you can create pressures on the involved parties to disclose even more information or otherwise justify their behavior. However, note that ACE may be disputing these claims.
To be clear, I also think that accurately assessing such situations “from the outside” is very tricky, and I don’t think I can reasonably have a strong view on whether or not any detail such as disclosing the topic of some conversation was or wasn’t a mistake. I also think that ACE is in a particularly tricky situation when navigating such matters because it’s not some “random” actor who has a dispute with the conference organizers but also by virtue of their mission is committed to evaluating the conference organizer’s performance. I think this raises some interesting more general question about good practices for how to navigate disputes between charity evaluators and charities.]
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Eric.
I agree that being part of the social justice movement can be compatible with supporting free expression, and I added a note in my post to clarify that.
That’s a relief to hear, but it also seems hard to reconcile with the public Facebook post. ACE wrote (emphasis mine):
The post really does suggest that ACE didn’t want this person speaking at the conference, and contacted CARE seeking some type of concession.
But this might make sense in light of what you say here:
Is the implication here that some ACE staff member(s), but not ACE as an organization, attempted to cancel this speaker’s talk? Clarifying this would be helpful.
I wouldn’t expect an organization to force staff to speak at a conference they’re uncomfortable attending. But my main concern here was that ACE contacted CARE organizers to voice concerns (and ask for some type of concession) and wrote a public post that heavily implied the conference organizers did something wrong by inviting this person to speak.
I’m also somewhat concerned that all three ACE employees scheduled to speak withdrew. I think that, combined with some other information available, suggests there’s a bit of an intellectual monoculture at ACE surrounding DEI issues.
Regarding the alleged penalization in charity reviews, you say:
I’m a bit confused how to interpret this.
Does this mean an organization receiving a “Weak” rating on Leadership and Culture caused by DEI concerns couldn’t be given a lower status compared to the same organization with a “Strong” rating?
Or would bad views on DEI not be enough by itself to give a charity a “Weak” rating there?
Or am I misunderstanding something about ACE’s charity review process?
I think it would be helpful for ACE to clarify this.
Note that I didn’t mean to imply that Anima would have received “Top” status if it weren’t for comments from leadership on DEI.
Regarding movement grants:
Thanks for raising the distinction; I edited the post to make it more clear. This still seems like harmful policy to me. Even if the overall goal of the grants is to make the movement stronger (including by becoming more inclusive), it’s plausible that there could be some really promising projects from people/groups who don’t fully align with ACE on DEI.
Regarding the CARE conference decision, I want to give a disclaimer that I was not closely involved in this decision, so I’m not clear on what the exact reasoning was. I’ve shared my opinions above on the situation, but as this conference took place eight months ago and isn’t related to the core of ACE’s work, I don’t expect ACE to make any further official statements on the matter.
In my response to Wei Dai, I explain that it’s just not possible for me nor for ACE to share confidential details of this type. I’ve tried to strike the best balance I can of relieving some of the fears that you and others have about ACE’s reasoning in this case, while simultaneously respecting ACE’s policies around how we treat private communication with other charities. I suspect that I have been unsuccessful at this. I’m sorry that I can’t share more on this topic.
It is difficult for me to go into detail here without breaking confidentiality. I’ve tried several times to draft something that I could say generally here, without reference to anything specific. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be possible. All I can do in this case is to refer you to ACE’s Charity Evaluation Criteria, which goes into more detail about Criterion 5: Leadership and Culture.
I agree that projects can be promising, regardless of the ideals of the people running them. But I disagree that ACE Movement Grants should fund such projects. The most important thing that ACE Movement Grants is trying to do is to help direct the shape of the larger movement. This is important because, unlike GiveWell with global poverty (for example), ACE and other EA funders direct at least 25% of the available funding for farmed animal advocacy. Whereas GiveWell can afford to solely advocate for top and standout charities, ACE is in the unique position of being responsible for a significant percentage of the money moved in some of these cause areas.
I’m not averse to all kinds of people doing promising projects. If they succeed, hopefully they can one day be recognized by ACE in its top or standout charity lists, as former AMG grantees Wild Animal Initiative, Vegetarianos Hoy, and Essere Animali are now. But while they are still in the ‘promising’ stage, I don’t think it is needed nor even appropriate for ACE Movement Grants to fund them if their values actively turn away BIPGM.
Just to clarify, this currently sounds to me like you are saying “the actions discussed in this forum thread would be insufficient, but would likely move an organization about halfway to being demoted from top to standout charity”, which presumably makes this a pretty big factor that explains a lot of the variance in how different organizations score on the total evaluation. This seems very substantial, but I want to give you the space to say it plays a much less substantial role than that.
A lot goes into ACE’s evaluation decisions. ACE’s charity evaluation process is extremely transparent; I welcome you to read ACE’s official description of that process if you want more detail generally on this kind of thing.
Regarding specifics, I’m unfortunately not at liberty to discuss any confidential details of this case beyond what is already explained in our 2020 evaluation of Anima International.
I am familiar with ACE’s charity evaluation process. The hypothesis I expressed above seems compatible with everything I know about the process. So alas, this didn’t really answer my question.
I am concerned that although I explained that the views I put forward here are my own, they are being taken as though it is some official response from ACE. This is not the case. To eliminate any potential further misunderstanding on this, I will not be engaging further on this thread.