I liked this post so much. Thanks. I think I’d like to see future discussion on 3 and 4 (which will probably just happen naturally in the coming weeks but I’ll note some curiosities and differences here for now)
On 3. Changing Leadership: I wonder what to do with leaders who have not done misconduct themselves but have mismanaged reports of it. Do we hope to get rid of them, and is this permenant or temporary while they learn their lesson and they can be revisited as leadership candidates later? Also, is there a set of acts we expect them to take whereby we can then trust them more, like take a course on sexual misconduct and a sort of HR training on handling victim reports?
A similar question for leaders who have done the misconduct. Obviously it depends on badness of the act(s)), but I wonder if they might ever be allowed back to leadership positions and in what cases? Here it is important we are talking about people’s careers, not a hobby. Someone’s career and career trajectory is (1) one of the most precious things in the world to most people (especially leaders) and (2) a role they may be especially well-suited to, example: given they are leaders they may even have designed the role themselves from the ground up. I hope we do view this with more nuance because it is careers and not hobby. It might make sense to having victim’s opinions involved heavily here from the start (eg, do you think this person should be in leadership role of X kind? What about Y? Is there anything which would make you think they were well-fitted for it, or were even worse wellfitted than you currently expect?). Like, why not ask complainants/victims how they feel about it?[1]
On 4. Changing Norms:(Trying to not say so much like I did accidentally above) I wonder how the social reception was. I’d be interested to hear how conversations went and whether any resentment was stewing or successfully avoided from overtly sex-positive people, and how. Maybe this didn’t come up because your leadership did not open things up for discussion in the same way as occurs on the EA Forum? But if so I’d be interested to hear about it or similar stories from others
[Final note: It’s amazing to hear a case report like this and whil I appreciate you summing it up so well I expect you know a lot more little bits that might come in handy, enough that I wonder if even the CH team might interview you. You might consider if you have more to say, and if so requesting a call with them, if you have not already]
of course you have to be sure they have the whole story, eg if the leader had 3 incidents, but each complainant thinks the leader only did something to them, they will be more permissive
No one has a right to be a leader. If leaders mismanaged abuse situations they should be removed from positions of leadership. The point of leadership is supposed to be service.
Okay I expect that is the default consensus, and is my default general desire too from a point of ignorance about any given case. I was just surprised that actors such as that weren’t listed in this writeup.
I would also like to say though, that depending how many cases you take, a case will be handled in a way that you could call mismanagement eventually. Extreme mismanagement is one thing and generally having poor policies, but slight mismanagement now and again is a bug of the world. I don’t expect 1000/1000 cases to be handled perfectly. Handling sexual misconduct cases is insanely hard. I mean, look, now we are even looking at cases where women at the time of reporting said they were satisfied with the CH Team’s handling but who went elsewhere anyway after saying that? So for example I’m not comfortable saying we should remove Julia Wise if an independent investigation says she mismanaged one case. I’m pretty sure hardly any EA wants that. It’s cases like that which make me very uncomfortable to speak in definite terms about anything.
On 3 (as applied to those who have committed misconduct), I think people’s views on the relevant importance of various reasons why we should take action against people who committed misconduct will significantly influence their opinion of how the opinion of the wronged person should factor into what happens to the wrongdoer. It seems that opinion would have great weight on some rationales, but significantly less on others.
As applied to those who mismanaged misconduct reports, I suspect the appropriate response will often depend on why mismanagement happened (and the nature of the mismanagement). If someone failed to take appropriate action due to ignorance of what proper management would have been, then HR training (with good policy development and organizational structure) should redress that. If someone actively attempted to conceal misconduct to protect a friend, was knowingly complicit in retaliation against a survivor, etc., those are not fundamental fitness-for-role problems, not training-deficiency problems.
I liked this post so much. Thanks. I think I’d like to see future discussion on 3 and 4 (which will probably just happen naturally in the coming weeks but I’ll note some curiosities and differences here for now)
On 3. Changing Leadership: I wonder what to do with leaders who have not done misconduct themselves but have mismanaged reports of it. Do we hope to get rid of them, and is this permenant or temporary while they learn their lesson and they can be revisited as leadership candidates later? Also, is there a set of acts we expect them to take whereby we can then trust them more, like take a course on sexual misconduct and a sort of HR training on handling victim reports?
A similar question for leaders who have done the misconduct. Obviously it depends on badness of the act(s)), but I wonder if they might ever be allowed back to leadership positions and in what cases? Here it is important we are talking about people’s careers, not a hobby. Someone’s career and career trajectory is (1) one of the most precious things in the world to most people (especially leaders) and (2) a role they may be especially well-suited to, example: given they are leaders they may even have designed the role themselves from the ground up. I hope we do view this with more nuance because it is careers and not hobby. It might make sense to having victim’s opinions involved heavily here from the start (eg, do you think this person should be in leadership role of X kind? What about Y? Is there anything which would make you think they were well-fitted for it, or were even worse wellfitted than you currently expect?). Like, why not ask complainants/victims how they feel about it?[1]
On 4. Changing Norms: (Trying to not say so much like I did accidentally above) I wonder how the social reception was. I’d be interested to hear how conversations went and whether any resentment was stewing or successfully avoided from overtly sex-positive people, and how. Maybe this didn’t come up because your leadership did not open things up for discussion in the same way as occurs on the EA Forum? But if so I’d be interested to hear about it or similar stories from others
[Final note: It’s amazing to hear a case report like this and whil I appreciate you summing it up so well I expect you know a lot more little bits that might come in handy, enough that I wonder if even the CH team might interview you. You might consider if you have more to say, and if so requesting a call with them, if you have not already]
of course you have to be sure they have the whole story, eg if the leader had 3 incidents, but each complainant thinks the leader only did something to them, they will be more permissive
No one has a right to be a leader. If leaders mismanaged abuse situations they should be removed from positions of leadership. The point of leadership is supposed to be service.
Okay I expect that is the default consensus, and is my default general desire too from a point of ignorance about any given case. I was just surprised that actors such as that weren’t listed in this writeup.
I would also like to say though, that depending how many cases you take, a case will be handled in a way that you could call mismanagement eventually. Extreme mismanagement is one thing and generally having poor policies, but slight mismanagement now and again is a bug of the world. I don’t expect 1000/1000 cases to be handled perfectly. Handling sexual misconduct cases is insanely hard. I mean, look, now we are even looking at cases where women at the time of reporting said they were satisfied with the CH Team’s handling but who went elsewhere anyway after saying that? So for example I’m not comfortable saying we should remove Julia Wise if an independent investigation says she mismanaged one case. I’m pretty sure hardly any EA wants that. It’s cases like that which make me very uncomfortable to speak in definite terms about anything.
On 3 (as applied to those who have committed misconduct), I think people’s views on the relevant importance of various reasons why we should take action against people who committed misconduct will significantly influence their opinion of how the opinion of the wronged person should factor into what happens to the wrongdoer. It seems that opinion would have great weight on some rationales, but significantly less on others.
As applied to those who mismanaged misconduct reports, I suspect the appropriate response will often depend on why mismanagement happened (and the nature of the mismanagement). If someone failed to take appropriate action due to ignorance of what proper management would have been, then HR training (with good policy development and organizational structure) should redress that. If someone actively attempted to conceal misconduct to protect a friend, was knowingly complicit in retaliation against a survivor, etc., those are not fundamental fitness-for-role problems, not training-deficiency problems.
Agree :)