Thanks for sharing this Frances, really harrowing to read. Echoing Liv/âMaxâs comments above. đ
After I was raped (outside of and unrelated to work), a colleague at CEA wrote and circulated a document that included a sexualised description of my rape, speculation about my mental health, and commentary on my personal life, all without my consent. Several senior leaders, including the CEO and the now-former COO, received this document and took no safeguarding action for approximately nine months. I was never officially informed of its existence; I only learned about it informally through one of the recipients.
This seems wild? Can someone at CEA comment on why at no point anyone thought to say something like âthis is an extremely inappropriate message to write about your co-workerâ, and notify Frances? What was HR /â leadership doing over these 9 months? It also seems like action only seemed to be prompted by Frances going to the board that she was going to share her experience?
Even if someone had a conversation with claude 6 months in, while having 0 empathy, understanding of HR, or legal obligations, it seems like youâd have done better than what happened in practice. Is there an alternative explanation to this being (at least) gross incompetence on the HR +/â- leadership front at CEA?
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Other things in the post I wanted to highlight:
Some people seemed to believe that my trauma was a mitigating factor in this harassment. That because I was already traumatised by the rape, my reaction was âinflated,â and therefore Riley was somehow less culpable.
And finally: If you ever find yourself defending an action by reminding the victim that it isnât as bad as a violent felony, it might be time to take a long and reflective walk.
Really wild to read this coming from people working at an org in the centre of a movement intending to think thoughtfully about the most important and stakes-y problems in the world.
EA organisations love to foster an attitude of âweâre all on the same team.â But informal processes are more likely to fail victims and enable perpetrators. âSame teamâ does not work in the face of power imbalances. I would strongly encourage women not to defer to their organisations in these cases. Seek external support, trust what you have experienced, and if applicable, know the law.
I strongly agree with this even in general. EA often strongly selects for âvalue alignmentâ and âmission alignmentâ. This isnât an excuse for the organisations and their leaders not to do the bare minimum in terms of basic competence, legal obligations, and just being an empathetic human, but it is surprising (and disappointing) that these things like this seem to happen, and I definitely know other scenarios where assuming this high-trust culture would include trusting you would have made things worse for the people involved.
If you cannot discuss your feelings in the workplace without sexually harassing another person, itâs time to sit down and learn the difference between honest, meaningful, relevant communication and the nonconsensual sexualisation of a colleague.
If you decide, by default, that everyone in your group is self-aware, well-intentioned, and telling the truth, and you then make their intent a central factor in assessing misconduct, you will almost never find abuse. Youâve made it structurally impossible.
The messages in the Claude conversation are beyond horrifyingâparticularly:
i am HR i donât want to make a big deal out of this, it doesnât seem like that big of a deal?
If 20% of CEA couldnât do the trivial good (report the incident) for months on end, and the most responsible role to handle this (HR) is getting begged by an AI to do the right thing and still not doing it, then a re-evaluation of the entire structure of CEA might be necessary.
This is very unfortunate and shocking.
Unrelated: how did you get access to this conversation? Are shared Claude conversations publicly searchable/âlisted somewhere?
To be clear that claude conversation was not a conversation from a CEA staff member! I was just very surprised about what seems to have happened here. I had a conversation with claude to show that even if you knew nothing about HR or workplace practices, youâd get to a better set of recommendations than what happened in practice if you just asked an LLM.
Thanks for sharing this Frances, really harrowing to read. Echoing Liv/âMaxâs comments above. đ
This seems wild? Can someone at CEA comment on why at no point anyone thought to say something like âthis is an extremely inappropriate message to write about your co-workerâ, and notify Frances? What was HR /â leadership doing over these 9 months? It also seems like action only seemed to be prompted by Frances going to the board that she was going to share her experience?
Even if someone had a conversation with claude 6 months in, while having 0 empathy, understanding of HR, or legal obligations, it seems like youâd have done better than what happened in practice. Is there an alternative explanation to this being (at least) gross incompetence on the HR +/â- leadership front at CEA?
======
Other things in the post I wanted to highlight:
Really wild to read this coming from people working at an org in the centre of a movement intending to think thoughtfully about the most important and stakes-y problems in the world.
I strongly agree with this even in general. EA often strongly selects for âvalue alignmentâ and âmission alignmentâ. This isnât an excuse for the organisations and their leaders not to do the bare minimum in terms of basic competence, legal obligations, and just being an empathetic human, but it is surprising (and disappointing) that these things like this seem to happen, and I definitely know other scenarios where assuming this high-trust culture would include trusting you would have made things worse for the people involved.
The messages in the Claude conversation are beyond horrifyingâparticularly:
If 20% of CEA couldnât do the trivial good (report the incident) for months on end, and the most responsible role to handle this (HR) is getting begged by an AI to do the right thing and still not doing it, then a re-evaluation of the entire structure of CEA might be necessary.
This is very unfortunate and shocking.
Unrelated: how did you get access to this conversation? Are shared Claude conversations publicly searchable/âlisted somewhere?
To be clear that claude conversation was not a conversation from a CEA staff member! I was just very surprised about what seems to have happened here. I had a conversation with claude to show that even if you knew nothing about HR or workplace practices, youâd get to a better set of recommendations than what happened in practice if you just asked an LLM.
Oh that was a complete misunderstanding on my part. Thank you