Thanks to all the commenters asking us about whether our response is different depending on the person’s perceived value to the community and world. The community health team discussed responding to these questions when this post was first written, but we wanted all relevant team members to be able to carefully check and endorse our statements, and it was a very busy time. So we put our response on hold for a bit. Apologies for the delay.
First, I want to say that our team cares a lot about the culture of EA. It would be a terrible loss to EA’s work if bad behaviour were tolerated here, both because of the harm that would do to individuals and because of the effect on people’s interest in getting involved and staying involved with EA projects. We care about the experience of individuals who go through any kind of harm, but there’s a reason we focus on people in EA. We do this work in EA and not in some other community because we think EA has a real chance at making a difference on very serious problems in the world, and we think it’s especially important that this community be a healthy one that doesn’t lose people because they don’t feel safe. We’ve changed some wording on our website to better reflect this.
I’ll give some examples of how this looks in practice.I don’t want to convey that we’ve developed the ideal policy here—it’s definitely a work in progress andI think it is likely that we’ve made mistakes.
I do want to be clear on one thing: If we believe someone had committed a violent crime then we would take serious action (including, if the victim wished) helping the victim navigate the police and justice system. It doesn’t matter how valuable the person’s work is. No one is above the law. Tolerating this kind of behaviour would erode basic norms that allow people to cooperate.
If we had good reason to think someone had committed a serious offence against another person (e.g. assault) it wouldn’t matter the value of their work, we would not want them at CEA events.
Exceptions we have made a handful of times (~5 times in thousands of conference applications over 7 years):
If the victim/​survivor did not want action taken, for example because they believed it would increase danger to themselves.
if the assault happened a long time ago and there is strong reason to believe the person is not at risk of causing problems now (e.g. if the victim doesn’t believe other people are at risk and doesn’t want the person banned.)
In situations where the action was minor (e.g. by being quite argumentative with people, or making a person feel uncomfortable by flirting but without a significant power difference) or when we can’t get much information (i.e. the reports are hearsay/​rumour) then our approach has been:
If the grantmaker/​events admissions team already think it is borderline whether the person should be given the opportunity, we might recommend the person not get the opportunity.
But if the grantmaker/​events admissions team think there is a lot of value from this person getting the opportunity and still want to proceed knowing our concerns, we’ll aim to do harm reduction e.g. by
talking to the person about how their actions weren’t received well and giving them suggestions to prevent this happening. We try to do this in cases where we have reason to think the person is well intentioned but unaware of the effect they sometimes have on others.
suggesting some alterations to the project (e.g. by suggesting a different person working on their project does some of the tasks)
trying to find more information about the person or incident. For example, we might talk to the person directly, the people who reported the concern, or ask one of their colleagues or the organiser of their EA group if they have any concerns about this person in other contexts. If we’re not able to share the identity of the person, we might just ask how their group/​workplace is going and if there are any worries they have—which is something we commonly do whether or not there are concerns about a member of their group/​workplace).
If we are only concerned about someone’s in-person actions, we generally don’t try to block remote or intellectual work like research funding.
Thanks to all the commenters asking us about whether our response is different depending on the person’s perceived value to the community and world. The community health team discussed responding to these questions when this post was first written, but we wanted all relevant team members to be able to carefully check and endorse our statements, and it was a very busy time. So we put our response on hold for a bit. Apologies for the delay.
First, I want to say that our team cares a lot about the culture of EA. It would be a terrible loss to EA’s work if bad behaviour were tolerated here, both because of the harm that would do to individuals and because of the effect on people’s interest in getting involved and staying involved with EA projects. We care about the experience of individuals who go through any kind of harm, but there’s a reason we focus on people in EA. We do this work in EA and not in some other community because we think EA has a real chance at making a difference on very serious problems in the world, and we think it’s especially important that this community be a healthy one that doesn’t lose people because they don’t feel safe. We’ve changed some wording on our website to better reflect this.
I’ll give some examples of how this looks in practice. I don’t want to convey that we’ve developed the ideal policy here—it’s definitely a work in progress and I think it is likely that we’ve made mistakes.
I do want to be clear on one thing: If we believe someone had committed a violent crime then we would take serious action (including, if the victim wished) helping the victim navigate the police and justice system. It doesn’t matter how valuable the person’s work is. No one is above the law. Tolerating this kind of behaviour would erode basic norms that allow people to cooperate.
If we had good reason to think someone had committed a serious offence against another person (e.g. assault) it wouldn’t matter the value of their work, we would not want them at CEA events.
Exceptions we have made a handful of times (~5 times in thousands of conference applications over 7 years):
If the victim/​survivor did not want action taken, for example because they believed it would increase danger to themselves.
if the assault happened a long time ago and there is strong reason to believe the person is not at risk of causing problems now (e.g. if the victim doesn’t believe other people are at risk and doesn’t want the person banned.)
In situations where the action was minor (e.g. by being quite argumentative with people, or making a person feel uncomfortable by flirting but without a significant power difference) or when we can’t get much information (i.e. the reports are hearsay/​rumour) then our approach has been:
If the grantmaker/​events admissions team already think it is borderline whether the person should be given the opportunity, we might recommend the person not get the opportunity.
But if the grantmaker/​events admissions team think there is a lot of value from this person getting the opportunity and still want to proceed knowing our concerns, we’ll aim to do harm reduction e.g. by
talking to the person about how their actions weren’t received well and giving them suggestions to prevent this happening. We try to do this in cases where we have reason to think the person is well intentioned but unaware of the effect they sometimes have on others.
suggesting some alterations to the project (e.g. by suggesting a different person working on their project does some of the tasks)
trying to find more information about the person or incident. For example, we might talk to the person directly, the people who reported the concern, or ask one of their colleagues or the organiser of their EA group if they have any concerns about this person in other contexts. If we’re not able to share the identity of the person, we might just ask how their group/​workplace is going and if there are any worries they have—which is something we commonly do whether or not there are concerns about a member of their group/​workplace).
If we are only concerned about someone’s in-person actions, we generally don’t try to block remote or intellectual work like research funding.