I want to explain my role in this situation, and to apologize for not handling it better. The role I played was in the context of my work as a community liaison at CEA.
(All parts that mention specific people were run past those people.)
In 2021, the woman who described traveling to a job interview in the TIME piece told me about her interactions with Owen Cotton-Barratt several years before. She said she found many aspects of his interactions with her to be inappropriate.
We talked about what steps she wanted taken. Based on her requests, I had conversations with Owen and some of his colleagues. I tried to make sure that Owen understood the inappropriateness of his behavior and that steps were taken to reduce the risk of such things happening again. Owen apologized to the woman. The woman wrote to me to say that she felt relieved and appreciated my help. Later, I wrote about power dynamics based partly on this situation.
However, I think I didnāt do enough to address the risk of his behavior continuing in other settings. I didnāt pay enough attention to what other pieces might need addressing, like the fact that, by the time I learned about the situation, he was on the board of EV UK (then called CEA UK), or the areas where he could influence funding and career opportunities for other people.
No other women raised complaints about him to me, but I learned (in some cases from him) of a couple of other situations where his interactions with women in EA were questionable. None of these seemed as serious on their own from what I knew ā one of the women summarized it as āHe apologized to me then, and I accepted it and things were /ā are totally fine.ā But they formed a pattern, and I should have taken that pattern more seriously.
A few months ago Owen told me about another more recent situation where, according to him, he had made another woman uncomfortable. I didnāt reach out to the woman about this at the time, which I now think was a mistake. I understand EV UK and EV USās external investigation will look into what happened here.
I also didnāt seek adequate backup given that I was friends with Owen. (Owen and I live in different countries and were not close friends, but we and our families have spent social time together.) When the woman in the TIME piece told me that her concern was about Owen, I flagged to her that I was friends with him. She and I decided to proceed anyway because we couldnāt think of a better option, although she felt it was unhealthy for EA that people who had power were entwined in these ways.
If I had flagged the situation earlier and more thoroughly to others, they might have recognized the parts of the situation that I hadnāt handled adequately. I should have thought more about how to get more help here or how to hand off the situation to someone else.
After reading the TIME piece, I flagged my worries about Owenās roles in EA to the EV UK and EV US boards. I had earlier flagged some parts of the situation to my manager, but not the whole picture.
Iām really sorry that I didnāt handle this better. Itās really important to me that women in the community can do their best work without wondering if theyāll be treated unfairly, be hit on in professional contexts, or worse.
I understand that EV UK and EV US will be working with external evaluators to assess my and my teamās processes here and evaluating the choices that I and my manager made in handling this situation. I will also be reflecting further on my own and with my team.
Iām guessing that my mistakes here may mean some people will feel less comfortable bringing problems to me. For unrelated reasons, over the last two months my team had moved most of our work on interpersonal harm to my colleague Catherine Low, who was not involved in this situation. If youād like to get help from the community health team but donāt want me involved, please feel free to contact Catherine or my other teammates (and you can ask them to not share information about the situation with me.)
Julia, I really appreciate you explaining your role here. I feel uneasy about the framing of what Iāve read. It sounds like the narrative is āOwen messed up, Julia knew, and Julia messed up by not saying moreā. But I feel strongly that we shouldnāt have one individual as a point of failure on issues this important, especially not as recently as 2021. I think the narrative should be something closer to āOwen messed up, and CEA didnāt (and still doesnāt) have the right systems in place to respond to these kinds of concernsā
I appreciate you sharing this additional info and reflections, Julia.
I notice you mention being friends with Owen, but, as far as I can tell, the post, your comment, and other comments donāt highlight that Owen was on the board of (whatās now called) EV UK when you learned about this incident and tried to figure out how to deal with it, and EV UK was the umbrella organization hosting the org (CEA) that was employing you (including specifically for this work).[1]This seems to me like a key potential conflict of interest, and like it may have warranted someone outside CEA being looped in to decide what to do about this incident. At first glance, I feel confused about this not having been mentioned in these comments. Iād be curious to hear whether you explicitly thought about that when you were thinking about this incident in 2021?
That is, if I understand correctly, in some sense Owen had a key position of authority in an organization that in turn technically had authority over the organization you worked at. That said, my rough impression from the outside is that, prior to November 2022, the umbrella organization in practice exerted little influence over what the organizations it hosted did. So this conflict of interest was probably in practice weaker than it wouldāve looked on paper. But still it seems noteworthy.
More generally, this makes me realise that it seems like it would be valuable for the community health team to:
have a standard protocol for dealing with reports/āincidents related to leadership or board members at CEA itself, EV UK, and EV US
And perhaps also to other staff at those orgs, and senior staff at any funder providing these orgs with (say) >10% of their funding (which Iād guess might just be Open Phil?)
have that protocol try to reduce reliance on the community health teamās own judgment/āactions in those cases
Probably meaning finding someone similarly suited to this kind of work but who sits outside of those lines of authority, who can deal with the small minority of cases that this protocol applies to. Or perhaps multiple people, each handling a different subset of cases.
(Iām not saying this should extend to the other orgs EV UK /ā EV US host, e.g. GWWC or 80k, just CEA and the umbrella orgs themselves.)
Iād be curious to hear whether such a thing is already in place, and if so what it looks like.
Iām certainly not an expert on how these sorts of things should be handled.
I think your team has a tricky job that has to involve many tradeoffs.
I think itās probably disproportionately common for the times when your actions were followed by bad outcomes (even if that wasnāt caused by your action, or was you making a good bet but getting unlucky) to become visible and salient.
I think there are likely many considerations Iām missing.
I didnāt saliently notice worries or ideas about how should the community health team should handle various conflicts of interest prior to November 2022, and didnāt saliently notice the question of what to do about incidents relating to senior staff at CEA /ā EV UK /ā EV US until this morning, and of course things tend to be easier to spot in hindsight. (OTOH I just hadnāt spent much time thinking about the community health team at all, since it wasnāt very relevant to my job.)
Iāve talked about February 3rd as the date I told the boards of EV US and EV UK, because thatās when I told everyone whoās on the current boards.
As I said, I had previously discussed some but not all of the situation with Nicole Ross, who was my manager and who is on the EV US board. And one of the staff at FHI I informed in 2021 about the situation described in TIME was Toby Ord, who at that time was on the EV UK (then called CEA UK) board. He was no longer on the board by the time I informed both boards about the full situation earlier this month. Our conversation focused on how he could reduce risk at FHI of further problems, and I donāt remember to what extent (if at all) we talked about the board. (Iām avoiding talking with him to see if he remembers more in order not to compromise the investigation.)
So thanks for the comment. And please let me maybe list some of my concerns here. I was going to contact Community Health Team directly, but then I thought that maybe I should write my opinion as a comment here as it may be a generally useful. It is a purely emotional reaction but like, I donāt feel fine with whatās going on. And because of that, this is also a burner account. For the record, Iām a woman.
TLTR: I feel that the reaction to the Times and Vox articles within the community starts to be abusive and highly problematic in itself. I feel unsafe and I may resign from being a part of the EA.
Let me check if I understand Owenās situation correctly ā he acted in an inappropriate way multiple times. If he was told that his behavior is not ok, he always would say sorry and stop interacting in an inappropriate way with this particular person.
In one of the situations, a woman (letās call her X) got hurt. X contacted Community Health Team. They reacted, in a way that X appreciated. She thanked. Owen apologized. Later on, X believed that the problem of sexual harassment within the community didnāt disappear, so messaged the TIMES to do something about it. She has, however, contacted Owen and i.e. helped him write his statement. He is sorry, and is going to work on himself to address the problem.
Am I right?
If no, please correct me.
If yes: Owen is sorry, got his consequences (life-breaking consequences), he is going to change. We know his side of the story, and if he is not lying, he seems to me as a creepy guy who really fucked up, but not uprooted rapist. And Iām saying ā yes, letās make sure he and similar people are not a danger to anyone. But I have a feeling that the community takes revenge on him for all the tension the recent events left. This is cruel. Iām honestly worried if the guy is ok. Hope he is.
And this is just one thing which shocks me. There are other attempts to suggest rigid rules for the whole community (i.e. suggesting not to āsleep aroundā in general), many comments are polyphobic, people make multiple ableist statements (āif you are socially awkward ā donāt have sexā, ābeing tolerant to weirdness is a problemā). This post is a great example, among others: https://āāforum.effectivealtruism.org/āāposts/āāaGkLx2hfr9s3mSdng/āāconsider-not-sleeping-around-within-the-community-1 At this point I donāt feel safe in the community and sexual harassment is not my main issue. Which in the perspective of recent event is an absurd. In general Iām shocked by the situation.
So please help. I have a couple of concerns.
I feel the community is on its best way to decide that sex is bad if itās not in closed monogamous relationships. I donāt want to function in such community. Iām polyamorous, I definitely tend to sleep around and I feel liberated by that, as Iām from a religious, conservative culture. I feel that people want to impose rigid rules not where they are needed and prevent harm, but also where they stop freedom of othersāmy freedomājust to feel safe. I think it wonāt work, but it will cause harm. Also, as a poly person, I feel quite bullied and shamed. Could you please help address the issue here? At least polyphobia please.
Should I treat EA community as my workplace and not have sex with people who are just my friends? If no, what about men who are (in some, not direct ways ā i.e. longer tenure in the EA) āabove meā in the EA power structure, who get my enthusiastic consent? Like, would it be not appropriate to ask them out?
Iām not from American culture. Cultural norms in my country are quite differentāalso those regarding sexual behavior, and multiple -isms. I am afraid of making some mistake which hurts someone ā but I always believed in this community people would communicate clearly, tell me what happened so I could apologize and address my behavior. Now, Iām afraid of being told that āeverything is fineā and getting burned to the ground later on. It may be stupid, but what do I even do about that? I would be scared to talk to some people now. And usually I pride myself to be very outspoken.
I know itās irrational, but currently I would be scared to report sexual misconduct to people I donāt know well, or even to share my experiences with people who are not really close to me, as they may react very strongly (or may feel obliged to act very strongly) without any consideration to otherās side basic well-being. I would never want to destroy personās life, I just want to be safe. Health Teamās reactions were what I would like to see if I ever was a victim of some misconduct(I know you think you could do more) - and yet, you got a backlash for it. People may be afraid of such backlash and may try to react very strongly each time to avoid it. What do I do?
I dunno, Iāve noticed myself feeling the same recently and it feels pretty rational to me.
As in I used to feel relatively comfortable sharing/ācomplaining about anything that made me feel uncomfortable in EA, but now when I try to imagine myself doing so Iām like, āHaha thereās no way in hell Iām ever reporting anything to Community Health now and I know I have to be pretty damn careful and selective these days if I want to tell any friends.ā
I think ādisproportionate reactions disincentivise opennessā is a really underappreciated phenomenon in a lot of areasāthanks for highlighting it here.
To be fair, I think these kind of over-reactions are happening in lots of places. I think itās particularly pronounced in social/āpolitical movements though because they attract a lot of people who are very passionate about social justice. And like, in a way I really admire that, and I think that energy can be very valuable when targeted at the most serious forms of human/ānonhuman rights abuses.
But like, if the bar for resignation is the harmful actions Owenās committed.....almost everyone in the world should resign?
(I realise I may have lost literally everyone reading this comment with that last sentence. Iāve only just noticed the extent to which I disagree with the community here and Iām pretty shocked myself, so I should flag that Iām feeling particularly skeptical of my inside view. Maybe best not to debate this in public though as I imagine a lot of details/āexamples could be triggering for a lot of us.)
Ubuntu, thanks for writing it even if itās hard, Iām sending you massive hugs. I disagree with a community to a huge extent and thatās why Iāve created a burner account to do it. I think a lot of people are scared of speaking up now, because we have a very vocal, and pretty aggressive group. A group-think consensus is not something we agree with, and thereās a strong rhetoric of you-are-a-bad-person-if-you-think-differently-than-us. In a long-term, however, Iām not willing to trade personal integrity for being a part of a group, because I think the values EA exhibits right now are harmful. So it may happen that Iāll leave the community, as stated in the post above.
I donāt think you disagree with the community. You disagree with a smallish number of people who are active on the forums, and who on average are younger and more newly entered the community.
āthe communityā as a whole does not have an opinion of this, but due to fear of being seen as defending bad behavior, I think there is a strong tendency to self censor on only one side of this discussion. At the very least I know I self censor.
But I have a feeling that the community takes revenge on him for all the tension the recent events left. This is cruel. Iām honestly worried if the guy is ok. Hope he is.
The key to Girardās anthropological theory is what he calls the scapegoat mechanism. Just as desires tend to converge on the same object, violence tends to converge on the same victim. The violence of all against all gives way to the violence of all against one. When the crowd vents its violence on a common scapegoat, unity is restored. Sacrificial rites the world over are rooted in this mechanism.
I guess, I think that people are upset and it will become clearer what the concensus is in time and I am confident we as a community can do better than the first ideas we suggest.
Yeah, but, where is a boundary? And how do we set it? Iām meanāitās not like things you say or do because you are upset have no effect. And in my opinion those reactions already went from āintenseā to ādangerous and cruelā.
Iām mindful that thereās an external investigation that is ongoing at present, but I had a few questions that I think would be useful transparency for the EA community, even if it may be detrimental to the CEA /ā the community health team. Iām sorry if this comes across as piling on in what Iām sure is a very stressful time for you and the team, and I want to emphasise and echo Kirstenās comment above about this ultimately being a ālack of adequate systemsā issue, and not a responsibility that should be fully borne by you as an individual.
Shortly after the article came out, Julia Wise (CEAās community liaison) informed the EV UK board that this concerned behaviour of Owen Cotton-Barratt; the incident occurred more than 5 years ago and was reported to her in 2021. (Owen became a board member in 2020.)
From the EV UK boardās statement, it sounds like the board did not know about this until Feb this year. Can you clarify the extent to which not informing the EV UK board was a result of the victim explicitly requesting something along these lines, and if so, whether you spoke to the victim before informing the EV UK board when the article came out?
What actions did you take to reduce the risks associated with these events (whether to individual /ā potential victims in the EA community, to CEA, or the EA movement more broadly)? It sounds like the actions consisted of the following, but I wanted to make sure I wasnāt missing anything important:[1]
Conversations with Owen Cotton-Barratt (OCB) and his colleagues
Some clarity here would be useful alsoāwhatās the role of OCBās colleagues here? Were they complicit, or was this for harm-mitigating reasons?
A written post about power dynamics
An update to Nicole when she became your manager in 2021
Are you also happy to comment on whether your CoI with OCB was disclosed with Nicole when you informed her of this situation, or with anyone else in the CH team at any stage? What details did you share with Nicole in 2021, when she became your manager?
Given OCBās status and position in the community, the seemingly direct access to potential victims via mentoring /ā āpicking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobsā /ā his role as Director for FHIās Research Scholars Programme, and your COIs with him (both from a friendship and EV /ā CEA organisational perspective), this seems to clearly tick many important boxes of where Iād expect to err on the side of full disclosure. Were there extenuating circumstances at the time that meant you didnāt feel comfortable sharing more than you did?
Did the complaints from the woman in the Time article come before or after other feedback you heard about OCB? The timeline sounds something like:
TIME magazine case, reported to you in 2021
Learnt about other situations (in the cases not from OCB, were these as a result of your investigation, or spontaneous reports by other community members?)
OCB raised concerns to you that he had made another woman uncomfortableāreported a few months ago.
Accordingly, I also just want to flag this set of questions as important, and has been raised in the past as a potential cause for insufficient action. When the TIME article came out, you clarified that one cause for confusion was that this consideration didnāt apply to sexual assault but to things like āsomeone has made some inappropriate comments and gotten feedback about itā. To what extent do you think these considerations played a role in the decisions you made around managing risk?
You mentioned that you had been ātaking a renewed look at possible steps to take hereā. When did this start? Iām mainly interested in clarifying whether this was something ongoing, (e.g., prompted by finding out about other situations or hearing from OCB himself about making another woman uncomfortable a few months ago), or was this prompted by knowledge of the existence (or possible existence) of the TIME article.
-notifying the EV board -a discussion with other CH colleagues around reducing his exposure to possible victims or level of risk, given his role as Director for FHIās Research Scholars Programme, such as considering a temporary ban to EAGs (also seems like shared responsibility around the decision made would be appropriate, and not a burden that should fall solely on your shoulders)
The TIME article is what prompted me to realize I hadnāt properly dealt with everything here.
Can you clarify the extent to which not informing the EV UK board was a result of the victim explicitly requesting something along these lines
She did not request that I not tell the boardāI donāt think we discussed that possibility.
What actions did you take to reduce the risks associated with these events
I had conversations with several of his colleagues alerting them to the situation so they could intervene if they thought something like this might be happening again.
An email was sent to researchers he mentored encouraging them to bring concerns to me if they had feedback about their experience in the program or how personal and professional relationships were intersecting in the workplace.
I talked with Owen about the problems I saw with his behavior, including the power dynamics.
whatās the role of OCBās colleagues here? Were they complicit, or was this for harm-mitigating reasons?
As far as I know, they did not previously know about any of this. The goal was harm mitigation.
Are you also happy to comment on whether your CoI with OCB was disclosed with Nicole when you informed her of this situation, or with anyone else in the CH team at any stage? What details did you share with Nicole in 2021, when she became your manager?
We expect that weāll be interviewed separately about what we recall of this conversation as part of the investigation, so I think itās best if I donāt go into detail here.
Did the complaints from the woman in the Time article come before or after other feedback you heard about OCB?
The order was: I learned about one situation from a third party, then learned the situation described in TIME, then learned of another situation because I asked the woman on a hunch, then learned the last case from Owen.
I donāt have a clear answer about the ways various considerations played into my decisions. I expect this is the kind of thing weāll be discussing as part of the investigation into our work here.
The order was: I learned about one situation from a third party, then learned the situation described in TIME, then learned of another situation because I asked the woman on a hunch, then learned the last case from Owen.
with
No other women raised complaints about him to me, but I learned (in some cases from him) of a couple of other situations where his interactions with women in EA were questionable.
Emphasis mine. (Highlighting your first statement implies he informed you of multiple cases and this statement implies he only informed you of one)
In the first case, I initially heard about the situation from a third party, but nearly all the information I knew came from Owen. (I asked the woman if she had concerns about the situation that she wanted to discuss, and I didnāt hear back.)
She did not request that I not tell the boardāI donāt think we discussed that possibility.
To clarifyādo you mean you didnāt tell them by because you hadnāt discussed the possibility that you would, or you did tell them because you didnāt discuss the possibility that you wouldnāt? Thatās an important ambiguity!
Either way, for all my recent disillusionment with EVF, I feel like youāve been the one constant Iāve continually heard good things about, so I hope you learn whatever lessons apply here and continue providing much needed support to the community :)
In 2021, the woman and I discussed who she wanted to know about the situation. Our focus was on his colleagues at that time and people he might have a mentorship relationship with. Iāve clarified here that this did include one person who was a board member of EV UK (then called CEA UK) at the time.
When the TIME piece publicly described the situation but not either of the peopleās identities, Nicole and I decided that the board should know that the account was about Owen (but not the identity of the woman).
Based on this comment and this excerpt from the UK EV board above, my interpretation is that the board as a whole did not know about this until Feb 2023.
I do think the comment doesnāt fully clarify between whether she considered telling the board but opted against this versus this option did not cross her mind back in 2021, but I suspect this is something that will also be part of the investigation, which is why I didnāt follow up on this.
I also didnāt seek adequate backup given that I was friends with Owen. (Owen and I live in different countries and were not close friends, but we and our families have spent social time together.) When the woman in the TIME piece told me that her concern was about Owen, I flagged to her that I was friends with him. She and I decided to proceed anyway because we couldnāt think of a better option, although she felt it was unhealthy for EA that people who had power were entwined in these ways.
This seems to be a recurring issue in a lot of the recent controversies, that decisions are made by a relatively small and close knit group of people. Is there any work going on on ways to reduce this problem in the future?
I want to explain my role in this situation, and to apologize for not handling it better. The role I played was in the context of my work as a community liaison at CEA.
(All parts that mention specific people were run past those people.)
In 2021, the woman who described traveling to a job interview in the TIME piece told me about her interactions with Owen Cotton-Barratt several years before. She said she found many aspects of his interactions with her to be inappropriate.
We talked about what steps she wanted taken. Based on her requests, I had conversations with Owen and some of his colleagues. I tried to make sure that Owen understood the inappropriateness of his behavior and that steps were taken to reduce the risk of such things happening again. Owen apologized to the woman. The woman wrote to me to say that she felt relieved and appreciated my help. Later, I wrote about power dynamics based partly on this situation.
However, I think I didnāt do enough to address the risk of his behavior continuing in other settings. I didnāt pay enough attention to what other pieces might need addressing, like the fact that, by the time I learned about the situation, he was on the board of EV UK (then called CEA UK), or the areas where he could influence funding and career opportunities for other people.
No other women raised complaints about him to me, but I learned (in some cases from him) of a couple of other situations where his interactions with women in EA were questionable. None of these seemed as serious on their own from what I knew ā one of the women summarized it as āHe apologized to me then, and I accepted it and things were /ā are totally fine.ā But they formed a pattern, and I should have taken that pattern more seriously.
A few months ago Owen told me about another more recent situation where, according to him, he had made another woman uncomfortable. I didnāt reach out to the woman about this at the time, which I now think was a mistake. I understand EV UK and EV USās external investigation will look into what happened here.
I also didnāt seek adequate backup given that I was friends with Owen. (Owen and I live in different countries and were not close friends, but we and our families have spent social time together.) When the woman in the TIME piece told me that her concern was about Owen, I flagged to her that I was friends with him. She and I decided to proceed anyway because we couldnāt think of a better option, although she felt it was unhealthy for EA that people who had power were entwined in these ways.
If I had flagged the situation earlier and more thoroughly to others, they might have recognized the parts of the situation that I hadnāt handled adequately. I should have thought more about how to get more help here or how to hand off the situation to someone else.
After reading the TIME piece, I flagged my worries about Owenās roles in EA to the EV UK and EV US boards. I had earlier flagged some parts of the situation to my manager, but not the whole picture.
Iām really sorry that I didnāt handle this better. Itās really important to me that women in the community can do their best work without wondering if theyāll be treated unfairly, be hit on in professional contexts, or worse.
I understand that EV UK and EV US will be working with external evaluators to assess my and my teamās processes here and evaluating the choices that I and my manager made in handling this situation. I will also be reflecting further on my own and with my team.
Iām guessing that my mistakes here may mean some people will feel less comfortable bringing problems to me. For unrelated reasons, over the last two months my team had moved most of our work on interpersonal harm to my colleague Catherine Low, who was not involved in this situation. If youād like to get help from the community health team but donāt want me involved, please feel free to contact Catherine or my other teammates (and you can ask them to not share information about the situation with me.)
[Edited to add: more info added below]
Julia, I really appreciate you explaining your role here. I feel uneasy about the framing of what Iāve read. It sounds like the narrative is āOwen messed up, Julia knew, and Julia messed up by not saying moreā. But I feel strongly that we shouldnāt have one individual as a point of failure on issues this important, especially not as recently as 2021. I think the narrative should be something closer to āOwen messed up, and CEA didnāt (and still doesnāt) have the right systems in place to respond to these kinds of concernsā
I appreciate you sharing this additional info and reflections, Julia.
I notice you mention being friends with Owen, but, as far as I can tell, the post, your comment, and other comments donāt highlight that Owen was on the board of (whatās now called) EV UK when you learned about this incident and tried to figure out how to deal with it, and EV UK was the umbrella organization hosting the org (CEA) that was employing you (including specifically for this work).[1] This seems to me like a key potential conflict of interest, and like it may have warranted someone outside CEA being looped in to decide what to do about this incident. At first glance, I feel confused about this not having been mentioned in these comments. Iād be curious to hear whether you explicitly thought about that when you were thinking about this incident in 2021?
That is, if I understand correctly, in some sense Owen had a key position of authority in an organization that in turn technically had authority over the organization you worked at. That said, my rough impression from the outside is that, prior to November 2022, the umbrella organization in practice exerted little influence over what the organizations it hosted did. So this conflict of interest was probably in practice weaker than it wouldāve looked on paper. But still it seems noteworthy.
More generally, this makes me realise that it seems like it would be valuable for the community health team to:
have a standard protocol for dealing with reports/āincidents related to leadership or board members at CEA itself, EV UK, and EV US
And perhaps also to other staff at those orgs, and senior staff at any funder providing these orgs with (say) >10% of their funding (which Iād guess might just be Open Phil?)
have that protocol try to reduce reliance on the community health teamās own judgment/āactions in those cases
Probably meaning finding someone similarly suited to this kind of work but who sits outside of those lines of authority, who can deal with the small minority of cases that this protocol applies to. Or perhaps multiple people, each handling a different subset of cases.
(Iām not saying this should extend to the other orgs EV UK /ā EV US host, e.g. GWWC or 80k, just CEA and the umbrella orgs themselves.)
Iād be curious to hear whether such a thing is already in place, and if so what it looks like.
Caveats in a footnote. [2]
(I wrote this just in a personal capacity. I didnāt run this by anyone.)
Iān not sure if this terminology is exactly right. Iām drawing on the post CEA Disambiguation.
:
Iām certainly not an expert on how these sorts of things should be handled.
I think your team has a tricky job that has to involve many tradeoffs.
I think itās probably disproportionately common for the times when your actions were followed by bad outcomes (even if that wasnāt caused by your action, or was you making a good bet but getting unlucky) to become visible and salient.
I think there are likely many considerations Iām missing.
I didnāt saliently notice worries or ideas about how should the community health team should handle various conflicts of interest prior to November 2022, and didnāt saliently notice the question of what to do about incidents relating to senior staff at CEA /ā EV UK /ā EV US until this morning, and of course things tend to be easier to spot in hindsight. (OTOH I just hadnāt spent much time thinking about the community health team at all, since it wasnāt very relevant to my job.)
I should add something that I forgot to include.
Iāve talked about February 3rd as the date I told the boards of EV US and EV UK, because thatās when I told everyone whoās on the current boards.
As I said, I had previously discussed some but not all of the situation with Nicole Ross, who was my manager and who is on the EV US board. And one of the staff at FHI I informed in 2021 about the situation described in TIME was Toby Ord, who at that time was on the EV UK (then called CEA UK) board. He was no longer on the board by the time I informed both boards about the full situation earlier this month. Our conversation focused on how he could reduce risk at FHI of further problems, and I donāt remember to what extent (if at all) we talked about the board. (Iām avoiding talking with him to see if he remembers more in order not to compromise the investigation.)
So thanks for the comment. And please let me maybe list some of my concerns here. I was going to contact Community Health Team directly, but then I thought that maybe I should write my opinion as a comment here as it may be a generally useful. It is a purely emotional reaction but like, I donāt feel fine with whatās going on. And because of that, this is also a burner account. For the record, Iām a woman.
TLTR: I feel that the reaction to the Times and Vox articles within the community starts to be abusive and highly problematic in itself. I feel unsafe and I may resign from being a part of the EA.
Let me check if I understand Owenās situation correctly ā he acted in an inappropriate way multiple times. If he was told that his behavior is not ok, he always would say sorry and stop interacting in an inappropriate way with this particular person.
In one of the situations, a woman (letās call her X) got hurt. X contacted Community Health Team. They reacted, in a way that X appreciated. She thanked. Owen apologized. Later on, X believed that the problem of sexual harassment within the community didnāt disappear, so messaged the TIMES to do something about it. She has, however, contacted Owen and i.e. helped him write his statement. He is sorry, and is going to work on himself to address the problem.
Am I right?
If no, please correct me.
If yes: Owen is sorry, got his consequences (life-breaking consequences), he is going to change. We know his side of the story, and if he is not lying, he seems to me as a creepy guy who really fucked up, but not uprooted rapist. And Iām saying ā yes, letās make sure he and similar people are not a danger to anyone. But I have a feeling that the community takes revenge on him for all the tension the recent events left. This is cruel. Iām honestly worried if the guy is ok. Hope he is.
And this is just one thing which shocks me. There are other attempts to suggest rigid rules for the whole community (i.e. suggesting not to āsleep aroundā in general), many comments are polyphobic, people make multiple ableist statements (āif you are socially awkward ā donāt have sexā, ābeing tolerant to weirdness is a problemā). This post is a great example, among others: https://āāforum.effectivealtruism.org/āāposts/āāaGkLx2hfr9s3mSdng/āāconsider-not-sleeping-around-within-the-community-1
At this point I donāt feel safe in the community and sexual harassment is not my main issue. Which in the perspective of recent event is an absurd. In general Iām shocked by the situation.
So please help. I have a couple of concerns.
I feel the community is on its best way to decide that sex is bad if itās not in closed monogamous relationships. I donāt want to function in such community. Iām polyamorous, I definitely tend to sleep around and I feel liberated by that, as Iām from a religious, conservative culture. I feel that people want to impose rigid rules not where they are needed and prevent harm, but also where they stop freedom of othersāmy freedomājust to feel safe. I think it wonāt work, but it will cause harm. Also, as a poly person, I feel quite bullied and shamed. Could you please help address the issue here? At least polyphobia please.
Should I treat EA community as my workplace and not have sex with people who are just my friends? If no, what about men who are (in some, not direct ways ā i.e. longer tenure in the EA) āabove meā in the EA power structure, who get my enthusiastic consent? Like, would it be not appropriate to ask them out?
Iām not from American culture. Cultural norms in my country are quite differentāalso those regarding sexual behavior, and multiple -isms. I am afraid of making some mistake which hurts someone ā but I always believed in this community people would communicate clearly, tell me what happened so I could apologize and address my behavior. Now, Iām afraid of being told that āeverything is fineā and getting burned to the ground later on. It may be stupid, but what do I even do about that? I would be scared to talk to some people now. And usually I pride myself to be very outspoken.
I know itās irrational, but currently I would be scared to report sexual misconduct to people I donāt know well, or even to share my experiences with people who are not really close to me, as they may react very strongly (or may feel obliged to act very strongly) without any consideration to otherās side basic well-being. I would never want to destroy personās life, I just want to be safe. Health Teamās reactions were what I would like to see if I ever was a victim of some misconduct(I know you think you could do more) - and yet, you got a backlash for it. People may be afraid of such backlash and may try to react very strongly each time to avoid it. What do I do?
āI know itās irrational...ā
I dunno, Iāve noticed myself feeling the same recently and it feels pretty rational to me.
As in I used to feel relatively comfortable sharing/ācomplaining about anything that made me feel uncomfortable in EA, but now when I try to imagine myself doing so Iām like, āHaha thereās no way in hell Iām ever reporting anything to Community Health now and I know I have to be pretty damn careful and selective these days if I want to tell any friends.ā
I think ādisproportionate reactions disincentivise opennessā is a really underappreciated phenomenon in a lot of areasāthanks for highlighting it here.
(Iām also a woman, for the record.)
To be fair, I think these kind of over-reactions are happening in lots of places. I think itās particularly pronounced in social/āpolitical movements though because they attract a lot of people who are very passionate about social justice. And like, in a way I really admire that, and I think that energy can be very valuable when targeted at the most serious forms of human/ānonhuman rights abuses.
But like, if the bar for resignation is the harmful actions Owenās committed.....almost everyone in the world should resign?
(I realise I may have lost literally everyone reading this comment with that last sentence. Iāve only just noticed the extent to which I disagree with the community here and Iām pretty shocked myself, so I should flag that Iām feeling particularly skeptical of my inside view. Maybe best not to debate this in public though as I imagine a lot of details/āexamples could be triggering for a lot of us.)
Ubuntu, thanks for writing it even if itās hard, Iām sending you massive hugs.
I disagree with a community to a huge extent and thatās why Iāve created a burner account to do it. I think a lot of people are scared of speaking up now, because we have a very vocal, and pretty aggressive group. A group-think consensus is not something we agree with, and thereās a strong rhetoric of you-are-a-bad-person-if-you-think-differently-than-us.
In a long-term, however, Iām not willing to trade personal integrity for being a part of a group, because I think the values EA exhibits right now are harmful. So it may happen that Iāll leave the community, as stated in the post above.
I donāt think you disagree with the community. You disagree with a smallish number of people who are active on the forums, and who on average are younger and more newly entered the community.
āthe communityā as a whole does not have an opinion of this, but due to fear of being seen as defending bad behavior, I think there is a strong tendency to self censor on only one side of this discussion. At the very least I know I self censor.
The scapegoat mechanism comes to mind:
Sorry to hear this.
And Iām glad someone said some of this.
I guess, I think that people are upset and it will become clearer what the concensus is in time and I am confident we as a community can do better than the first ideas we suggest.
Yeah, but, where is a boundary? And how do we set it? Iām meanāitās not like things you say or do because you are upset have no effect. And in my opinion those reactions already went from āintenseā to ādangerous and cruelā.
Thanks for the apology Julia.
Iām mindful that thereās an external investigation that is ongoing at present, but I had a few questions that I think would be useful transparency for the EA community, even if it may be detrimental to the CEA /ā the community health team. Iām sorry if this comes across as piling on in what Iām sure is a very stressful time for you and the team, and I want to emphasise and echo Kirstenās comment above about this ultimately being a ālack of adequate systemsā issue, and not a responsibility that should be fully borne by you as an individual.
From the EV UK boardās statement, it sounds like the board did not know about this until Feb this year. Can you clarify the extent to which not informing the EV UK board was a result of the victim explicitly requesting something along these lines, and if so, whether you spoke to the victim before informing the EV UK board when the article came out?
What actions did you take to reduce the risks associated with these events (whether to individual /ā potential victims in the EA community, to CEA, or the EA movement more broadly)? It sounds like the actions consisted of the following, but I wanted to make sure I wasnāt missing anything important:[1]
Conversations with Owen Cotton-Barratt (OCB) and his colleagues
Some clarity here would be useful alsoāwhatās the role of OCBās colleagues here? Were they complicit, or was this for harm-mitigating reasons?
A written post about power dynamics
An update to Nicole when she became your manager in 2021
Are you also happy to comment on whether your CoI with OCB was disclosed with Nicole when you informed her of this situation, or with anyone else in the CH team at any stage? What details did you share with Nicole in 2021, when she became your manager?
Given OCBās status and position in the community, the seemingly direct access to potential victims via mentoring /ā āpicking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobsā /ā his role as Director for FHIās Research Scholars Programme, and your COIs with him (both from a friendship and EV /ā CEA organisational perspective), this seems to clearly tick many important boxes of where Iād expect to err on the side of full disclosure. Were there extenuating circumstances at the time that meant you didnāt feel comfortable sharing more than you did?
Did the complaints from the woman in the Time article come before or after other feedback you heard about OCB? The timeline sounds something like:
TIME magazine case, reported to you in 2021
Learnt about other situations (in the cases not from OCB, were these as a result of your investigation, or spontaneous reports by other community members?)
OCB raised concerns to you that he had made another woman uncomfortableāreported a few months ago.
Accordingly, I also just want to flag this set of questions as important, and has been raised in the past as a potential cause for insufficient action. When the TIME article came out, you clarified that one cause for confusion was that this consideration didnāt apply to sexual assault but to things like āsomeone has made some inappropriate comments and gotten feedback about itā. To what extent do you think these considerations played a role in the decisions you made around managing risk?
You mentioned that you had been ātaking a renewed look at possible steps to take hereā. When did this start? Iām mainly interested in clarifying whether this was something ongoing, (e.g., prompted by finding out about other situations or hearing from OCB himself about making another woman uncomfortable a few months ago), or was this prompted by knowledge of the existence (or possible existence) of the TIME article.
(commenting in personal capacity etc)
For example:
-notifying the EV board
-a discussion with other CH colleagues around reducing his exposure to possible victims or level of risk, given his role as Director for FHIās Research Scholars Programme, such as considering a temporary ban to EAGs (also seems like shared responsibility around the decision made would be appropriate, and not a burden that should fall solely on your shoulders)
The TIME article is what prompted me to realize I hadnāt properly dealt with everything here.
She did not request that I not tell the boardāI donāt think we discussed that possibility.
I had conversations with several of his colleagues alerting them to the situation so they could intervene if they thought something like this might be happening again.
An email was sent to researchers he mentored encouraging them to bring concerns to me if they had feedback about their experience in the program or how personal and professional relationships were intersecting in the workplace.
I talked with Owen about the problems I saw with his behavior, including the power dynamics.
As far as I know, they did not previously know about any of this. The goal was harm mitigation.
We expect that weāll be interviewed separately about what we recall of this conversation as part of the investigation, so I think itās best if I donāt go into detail here.
The order was: I learned about one situation from a third party, then learned the situation described in TIME, then learned of another situation because I asked the woman on a hunch, then learned the last case from Owen.
I donāt have a clear answer about the ways various considerations played into my decisions. I expect this is the kind of thing weāll be discussing as part of the investigation into our work here.
How do you square:
with
Emphasis mine. (Highlighting your first statement implies he informed you of multiple cases and this statement implies he only informed you of one)
In the first case, I initially heard about the situation from a third party, but nearly all the information I knew came from Owen. (I asked the woman if she had concerns about the situation that she wanted to discuss, and I didnāt hear back.)
To clarifyādo you mean you didnāt tell them by because you hadnāt discussed the possibility that you would, or you did tell them because you didnāt discuss the possibility that you wouldnāt? Thatās an important ambiguity!
Either way, for all my recent disillusionment with EVF, I feel like youāve been the one constant Iāve continually heard good things about, so I hope you learn whatever lessons apply here and continue providing much needed support to the community :)
In 2021, the woman and I discussed who she wanted to know about the situation. Our focus was on his colleagues at that time and people he might have a mentorship relationship with. Iāve clarified here that this did include one person who was a board member of EV UK (then called CEA UK) at the time.
When the TIME piece publicly described the situation but not either of the peopleās identities, Nicole and I decided that the board should know that the account was about Owen (but not the identity of the woman).
Based on this comment and this excerpt from the UK EV board above, my interpretation is that the board as a whole did not know about this until Feb 2023.
I do think the comment doesnāt fully clarify between whether she considered telling the board but opted against this versus this option did not cross her mind back in 2021, but I suspect this is something that will also be part of the investigation, which is why I didnāt follow up on this.
This seems to be a recurring issue in a lot of the recent controversies, that decisions are made by a relatively small and close knit group of people. Is there any work going on on ways to reduce this problem in the future?