This post has now been edited, but we would like to address some of the original claims, since many people have read them. In particular, the author claims:
They have identified 30 incidents of rape or abuse with strong ties to EA, as well as 14 that are âEA adjacentâ
They have been fighting assault in EA since 2016
Here is some context:
The author emailed the Community Health team about 7 months ago, when she shared some information about interpersonal harm; someone else previously forwarded us some anonymous information that she may have compiled. Before about 7 months ago, we hadnât been in contact with her.
The information from her included serious concerns about various people in the Bay Area, most of whom had no connection to EA as far as we know. 4 of the accused seemed to be possibly or formerly involved with EA. CEA will not allow those 4 people at our events (though for context most of them havenât applied). As weâve said before, weâre grateful to her for this information.
In addition, she later sent us some information that we had also previously received from other sources and we were already taking action on. We appreciate people sharing information even when it turns out we already have it, but it is relevant for clarifying the degree to which she is counterfactually responsible for our actions.
Based on our records, this is the extent of the relevant information she has shared with us.
She referred to some other situations both on the Forum and privately, which did not contain enough information for us to identify the situation or learn more.
We have emailed the author to tell her we will not be contracting her services.
We donât think itâs productive to go into more depth about the authorâs specific claims or engage in a back and forth with her, but we wanted to publicly flag that we disagree with many of her claims.
Catherine, thanks for taking the time to respond to this.
I think both the TIME story and this thread underscore the need to devote some additional resources to transparent, proactive reporting about incoming reports [1] (in a way that protects the privacy of everyone involved). Every report should be accounted for in some fashion (e.g., âclosed due to reported personâs non-involvement in EAâ is fine; âreported person was an EA, but not enough information was provided even after a follow-up to open a matterâ is fine). [2]
For example, hearing that at least four people will not be allowed at CEA events as a result of reports about sexual assault last year is helpful. Arguably the most significant effect of CEAâs actions in reducing future misconduct is general deterrence (i.e., convicing other people that they should not commit misconduct lest they suffer the same consequences), and that only works if the consequences are publicized (as well as they can be).
In addition to some apparent factual disagreements between CH and the original poster, I get the sense that one of the cruxes here may be a lack of clarity about who is involved with EA. As Julia mentioned in her comments to TIME, that can be a tricky question.
I think it would be helpful to develop and publicize non-exhaustive criteria of who will be considered to be involved with EA for purposes of statistical reporting and potential action. For example, I would consider anyone meeting any of the following criteria to have been involved for statistical purposes (there are probably others):
Anyone who was accepted to EAG in the relevant time period;[3]
Anyone who worked for an organization during the relevant time period, if that organization received a grant from any of a specific list of funders and could reasonably be considered part of the EA movement (e.g., the Gates Foundation does not count);
Anyone who received a grant from any of those funders during the relevant time period;
Anyone who is in a position of leadership in an EA group during the relevant time period, where that group that has received funding from a specified funder.
The point of committing to non-exhaustive published inclusion criteria is that it provides something objective to help mitigate factual disagreements like the one we see here and promotes public confidence in the reported data. [4] When there are reports of misconduct in the media, I think it will be helpful to have published objective criteria to which we can refer to determine whether the person was clearly an EA.
There could also be criteria for individuals who are potentially involved, such anyone who applied for EAG at any time, or anyone who more than occasionally attends official functions of a group described above. Those could be decided on a case-by-case basis; the outcome should report the individual as âsomewhat involvedâ or âdetermined not to meet involvement criteria after individual-specific reviewâ depending on the exercise of judgment. In other words, there should be a distinction between people in the grey zone and people who are clearly not involved.
Finally, you could make clear that living in a âEA house,â attending parties thrown by EAs or with EAs in attendance, etc. do not count as involvement with EA for statistical or action purposes. Itâs understandable that the original poster may be looking at EA more as a social group, but as a practical matter CEA isnât in a position to take any action against these sorts of individuals. I also donât think itâs necessary for EA as a movement to somehow accept responsibility for these individuals.[5]
Given the nature of this thread, this comment focuses on reports relating to sexual assault. However, I think data on reports of non-assault sexual harassment also needs to be provided.
In my view, CH should encourage and log reports from individuals in the EA community even if the reporter does not wish to name the individual, as long as the reporter provides enough information to conclude that the individual counts as EA-involved as described below (e.g., âwas at EAG this yearâ or âworks for [Organization]â). I do think reports from outside the community generally need both an identified survivor who can be contacted and an identified perpetrator to count for statistics.
CH would not need to go through the specific exclusion criteria unless it was planning to no-action the matter on grounds that the person accused of misconduct was not involved in EA.
I default to trying to apply the same standards to EA as to other movements or organizations absent a good reason. I wouldnât (e.g.) generally view actions of a roommate of a member of a church, actions of someone who attends parties with a lot of church people present, or actions of someone who has attended a few worship services as âchargeableâ to that church.
Thanks for this! I would broaden this criteria somewhat.
Someone who meets any of the following criteria relevant time period (really like the way you defined the period as âthe year in which the incident occured, the year prior, and the following year (to the extent the following year has transpired)â):
Accepted to EA-branded events such as an EAG(x), retreat, summit or workshop
Worked (temporarily or full-time) for an EA-aligned organization or one that received a grant from a list of funders and could reasonably be considered part of the EA movement (e.g., the Gates Foundation does not count);
Received a grant, scholarship or fellowship from any of those funders or programs they have funded during the relevant time period;
Is an organizer or regular member (as defined by attending some number of events in the given period, or is considered as such by the group organizer) in an EA group that has received funding from EA funders
Rationale:
Expanded EAG to EA branded events because there are lots of other EA branded events, but didnât include e.g. cause-specific events that might have a large number of non-EAs
Mentioned temporary work (e.g. contractor) in case itâs unclear
Expanded grant to include scholarship /â fellowship
Expanded to include being a member of a group, because i think itâs really important to count that person as invovled in EA. Very uncertain of exact boundaries there.
ThanksâI figured my list was incomplete. I think thereâs a potential administrability tradeoff here. Itâs reasonable to expect CH to check certain internal, critical, and/âor easily accessible data. However, I suspect there are might be things that would auto-qualify for EA status under that proposal that CH might not pick up on after a reasonable inquiry into the alleged offenderâs status. So I think there are things that should auto-qualify, but for which I wouldnât necessarily call a failure to apply auto-qualification a miss.
I struggled with the group inclusion criteria. One challenge is that CH may need to be able to apply the statistical criterion without tipping off to anyone else that there has been a complaint about a specific person. In a large group, CH could get around that by asking for the full active-member list (although that might be a burden on group leaders depending on whether CH was asking for a pre-existing document or asking the leaders to create a list5 that met the statistical criterion). In a smaller group, they would need to find a way to get this information without arousing suspicion that there had been a complaint about a group member.
Finally, you could make clear that living in a âEA house,â attending parties thrown by EAs or with EAs in attendance, etc. do not count as involvement with EA for statistical or action purposes. Itâs understandable that the original poster may be looking at EA more as a social group, but as a practical matter CEA isnât in a position to take any action against these sorts of individuals. I also donât think itâs necessary for EA as a movement to somehow accept responsibility for these individuals.
I think that since CH does let peopel come to them with issues in scenarios like EA group house or events thrown by EAs (but not parties that EAs are in attendance at) , Iâm not sure this makes sense. I think the problem is you canât really separate EA as social group vs EA as professional group, especially in the Bay Area. But it can be really hard to figure out the boundaries here.
Yeah, I didnât mean to discourage CH from addressing any situations it thought should be addressed.
I think for statistical purposes the involvement of the alleged perpetrator in âofficialâ EA is a critical line, but other reports should still be catalogued and reported.
I personally find these kinds of updates and transparency useful, so thanks for the context + appreciate it!
It is a little surprising to hear that the numbers claimed by both sides differ so much from each otherâdid the total number of cases from them or attributed to them total 30 incidents? What do you define as âpossibly /â formerly involved with EAâ?
I guess Iâm wondering whether this difference is because they only shared, e.g. 5 /â 44 cases, or whether all 44 were shared but only 4 of them that fit the CH teamâs definition of âpossibly involved with EAâ?
They have been fighting assault in EA since 2016....We donât think itâs productive to go into more depth about the authorâs specific claims or engage in a back and forth with her,
Correct, I have been working on rape as an issue since 2016. It was only after the publication the Time article that I went back and counted the number/âpercent that relate to EA. Re: numbers, I have not shared most of the stories/âreports with Community Health. Further, as Catherine said, most of the informationâincluding the information I âsharedâ had been shared prior to my speaking to anyone at CEA, as confirmed via email by Julia Wise in August 2022.
I called myself a âreport takerâ not a âreport giverâ or âreport sharerâ (I know this is a small distinction and Iâm sorry for any confusion using it would cause) - and out of an abundance of caution and fear for survivor well-being and limiting my personal exposure to defamation, will not do so in the future.
My intent with âcalling outâ Community Health in a forum was in hope that they would take stronger action against rape. I felt that the forum was a more gentle approach than the media. Apologies for the harm Community Health felt in being called out by me. However, it feels to me that our approaches on rape diverge so greatly that there is no middle ground, and it is not productive for me to ask for stronger action.
Agreed that it would not be productive to engage or to adjudicate any of my/âCommunity Healthâs claims. When I realized that, I took down the original post.
Hi all -
This post has now been edited, but we would like to address some of the original claims, since many people have read them. In particular, the author claims:
They have identified 30 incidents of rape or abuse with strong ties to EA, as well as 14 that are âEA adjacentâ
They have been fighting assault in EA since 2016
Here is some context:
The author emailed the Community Health team about 7 months ago, when she shared some information about interpersonal harm; someone else previously forwarded us some anonymous information that she may have compiled. Before about 7 months ago, we hadnât been in contact with her.
The information from her included serious concerns about various people in the Bay Area, most of whom had no connection to EA as far as we know. 4 of the accused seemed to be possibly or formerly involved with EA. CEA will not allow those 4 people at our events (though for context most of them havenât applied). As weâve said before, weâre grateful to her for this information.
In addition, she later sent us some information that we had also previously received from other sources and we were already taking action on. We appreciate people sharing information even when it turns out we already have it, but it is relevant for clarifying the degree to which she is counterfactually responsible for our actions.
Based on our records, this is the extent of the relevant information she has shared with us.
She referred to some other situations both on the Forum and privately, which did not contain enough information for us to identify the situation or learn more.
We have emailed the author to tell her we will not be contracting her services.
We donât think itâs productive to go into more depth about the authorâs specific claims or engage in a back and forth with her, but we wanted to publicly flag that we disagree with many of her claims.
If you have concerns about our approach here, our reasoning etc., please let us know. Please reach out to me by email (catherine@centreforeffectivealtruism.org) or fill in this form (anonymously if you wish) to reach the whole Community Health team. You can read more about Julia Wise and my roles as contact people for the EA community here.
Catherine, thanks for taking the time to respond to this.
I think both the TIME story and this thread underscore the need to devote some additional resources to transparent, proactive reporting about incoming reports [1] (in a way that protects the privacy of everyone involved). Every report should be accounted for in some fashion (e.g., âclosed due to reported personâs non-involvement in EAâ is fine; âreported person was an EA, but not enough information was provided even after a follow-up to open a matterâ is fine). [2]
For example, hearing that at least four people will not be allowed at CEA events as a result of reports about sexual assault last year is helpful. Arguably the most significant effect of CEAâs actions in reducing future misconduct is general deterrence (i.e., convicing other people that they should not commit misconduct lest they suffer the same consequences), and that only works if the consequences are publicized (as well as they can be).
In addition to some apparent factual disagreements between CH and the original poster, I get the sense that one of the cruxes here may be a lack of clarity about who is involved with EA. As Julia mentioned in her comments to TIME, that can be a tricky question.
I think it would be helpful to develop and publicize non-exhaustive criteria of who will be considered to be involved with EA for purposes of statistical reporting and potential action. For example, I would consider anyone meeting any of the following criteria to have been involved for statistical purposes (there are probably others):
Anyone who was accepted to EAG in the relevant time period;[3]
Anyone who worked for an organization during the relevant time period, if that organization received a grant from any of a specific list of funders and could reasonably be considered part of the EA movement (e.g., the Gates Foundation does not count);
Anyone who received a grant from any of those funders during the relevant time period;
Anyone who is in a position of leadership in an EA group during the relevant time period, where that group that has received funding from a specified funder.
The point of committing to non-exhaustive published inclusion criteria is that it provides something objective to help mitigate factual disagreements like the one we see here and promotes public confidence in the reported data. [4] When there are reports of misconduct in the media, I think it will be helpful to have published objective criteria to which we can refer to determine whether the person was clearly an EA.
There could also be criteria for individuals who are potentially involved, such anyone who applied for EAG at any time, or anyone who more than occasionally attends official functions of a group described above. Those could be decided on a case-by-case basis; the outcome should report the individual as âsomewhat involvedâ or âdetermined not to meet involvement criteria after individual-specific reviewâ depending on the exercise of judgment. In other words, there should be a distinction between people in the grey zone and people who are clearly not involved.
Finally, you could make clear that living in a âEA house,â attending parties thrown by EAs or with EAs in attendance, etc. do not count as involvement with EA for statistical or action purposes. Itâs understandable that the original poster may be looking at EA more as a social group, but as a practical matter CEA isnât in a position to take any action against these sorts of individuals. I also donât think itâs necessary for EA as a movement to somehow accept responsibility for these individuals.[5]
Given the nature of this thread, this comment focuses on reports relating to sexual assault. However, I think data on reports of non-assault sexual harassment also needs to be provided.
In my view, CH should encourage and log reports from individuals in the EA community even if the reporter does not wish to name the individual, as long as the reporter provides enough information to conclude that the individual counts as EA-involved as described below (e.g., âwas at EAG this yearâ or âworks for [Organization]â). I do think reports from outside the community generally need both an identified survivor who can be contacted and an identified perpetrator to count for statistics.
The year in which the incident occured, the year prior, and the following year (to the extent the following year has transpired)
CH would not need to go through the specific exclusion criteria unless it was planning to no-action the matter on grounds that the person accused of misconduct was not involved in EA.
I default to trying to apply the same standards to EA as to other movements or organizations absent a good reason. I wouldnât (e.g.) generally view actions of a roommate of a member of a church, actions of someone who attends parties with a lot of church people present, or actions of someone who has attended a few worship services as âchargeableâ to that church.
Thanks for this! I would broaden this criteria somewhat.
Someone who meets any of the following criteria relevant time period (really like the way you defined the period as âthe year in which the incident occured, the year prior, and the following year (to the extent the following year has transpired)â):
Accepted to EA-branded events such as an EAG(x), retreat, summit or workshop
Worked (temporarily or full-time) for an EA-aligned organization or one that received a grant from a list of funders and could reasonably be considered part of the EA movement (e.g., the Gates Foundation does not count);
Received a grant, scholarship or fellowship from any of those funders or programs they have funded during the relevant time period;
Is an organizer or regular member (as defined by attending some number of events in the given period, or is considered as such by the group organizer) in an EA group that has received funding from EA funders
Rationale:
Expanded EAG to EA branded events because there are lots of other EA branded events, but didnât include e.g. cause-specific events that might have a large number of non-EAs
Mentioned temporary work (e.g. contractor) in case itâs unclear
Expanded grant to include scholarship /â fellowship
Expanded to include being a member of a group, because i think itâs really important to count that person as invovled in EA. Very uncertain of exact boundaries there.
ThanksâI figured my list was incomplete. I think thereâs a potential administrability tradeoff here. Itâs reasonable to expect CH to check certain internal, critical, and/âor easily accessible data. However, I suspect there are might be things that would auto-qualify for EA status under that proposal that CH might not pick up on after a reasonable inquiry into the alleged offenderâs status. So I think there are things that should auto-qualify, but for which I wouldnât necessarily call a failure to apply auto-qualification a miss.
I struggled with the group inclusion criteria. One challenge is that CH may need to be able to apply the statistical criterion without tipping off to anyone else that there has been a complaint about a specific person. In a large group, CH could get around that by asking for the full active-member list (although that might be a burden on group leaders depending on whether CH was asking for a pre-existing document or asking the leaders to create a list5 that met the statistical criterion). In a smaller group, they would need to find a way to get this information without arousing suspicion that there had been a complaint about a group member.
I think that since CH does let peopel come to them with issues in scenarios like EA group house or events thrown by EAs (but not parties that EAs are in attendance at) , Iâm not sure this makes sense. I think the problem is you canât really separate EA as social group vs EA as professional group, especially in the Bay Area. But it can be really hard to figure out the boundaries here.
Yeah, I didnât mean to discourage CH from addressing any situations it thought should be addressed.
I think for statistical purposes the involvement of the alleged perpetrator in âofficialâ EA is a critical line, but other reports should still be catalogued and reported.
Strong upvoted for visibility.
I personally find these kinds of updates and transparency useful, so thanks for the context + appreciate it!
It is a little surprising to hear that the numbers claimed by both sides differ so much from each otherâdid the total number of cases from them or attributed to them total 30 incidents? What do you define as âpossibly /â formerly involved with EAâ?
I guess Iâm wondering whether this difference is because they only shared, e.g. 5 /â 44 cases, or whether all 44 were shared but only 4 of them that fit the CH teamâs definition of âpossibly involved with EAâ?
Correct, I have been working on rape as an issue since 2016. It was only after the publication the Time article that I went back and counted the number/âpercent that relate to EA. Re: numbers, I have not shared most of the stories/âreports with Community Health. Further, as Catherine said, most of the informationâincluding the information I âsharedâ had been shared prior to my speaking to anyone at CEA, as confirmed via email by Julia Wise in August 2022.
I called myself a âreport takerâ not a âreport giverâ or âreport sharerâ (I know this is a small distinction and Iâm sorry for any confusion using it would cause) - and out of an abundance of caution and fear for survivor well-being and limiting my personal exposure to defamation, will not do so in the future.
My intent with âcalling outâ Community Health in a forum was in hope that they would take stronger action against rape. I felt that the forum was a more gentle approach than the media. Apologies for the harm Community Health felt in being called out by me. However, it feels to me that our approaches on rape diverge so greatly that there is no middle ground, and it is not productive for me to ask for stronger action.
Agreed that it would not be productive to engage or to adjudicate any of my/âCommunity Healthâs claims. When I realized that, I took down the original post.
Good luck :)
Iâm concerned that predators may be claiming EA affiliation to gain the trust of victims.
I havenât personally heard any instances of this, but itâs certainly possible :(