EV is winding down and being on this board is quite a lot of work. This makes it very hard to recruit for! The positive flip side though of the fact of the wind-down means that the cultural leadership we are doing is a bit less impactful than it was say a year or two ago.
When we faced the decision of whether to keep searching or accept the candidates in front of us, I considered many factors but eventually agreed that it was ok to prioritize allowing the existing board members to leave (which they couldn’t do until we found replacements), even if the new folks were not ideal in every conceivable way. I wished we had a better gender balance too, but ultimately since projects are spinning out, it’s going to be much more on those individual projects and less on EV central to figure that out!
(I’m very excited about our new trustees despite this!)
Thanks Lincoln that’s a good point—I had not considered that. I’m so used to thinking EV super big deal. Let’s hope there is good diversity in the leadership in the various spun out organisations.
ultimately since projects are spinning out, it’s going to be much more on those individual projects and less on EV central to figure that out!
The EVF Boards have to approve the new setup of the spun-out organizations, right? The projects themselves (e.g., CEA, GWWC) have no legal personality as of present. “Their” assets, IP, etc. belong to the EVFs, which must approve the spin-off proposals transferring those resources to a new organization.
It’s not obvious to me why the new-organization Board composition is for staff in the to-be-spun-off project to decide, rather than the EVF Boards. Staff picking Board members is not a best practice in the majority of cases; at a minimum, there should be less deference to the staff nominations than there would be to an independent nominations panel. In other words, the EVF Boards probably shouldn’t agree to transfer “the project’s” assets over to a new non-profit corporation unless it is satisfied that appropriate corporate governance procedures are in place.[1]
I think there are a number of presumptive criteria the EVF Boards could set for approval of a spin-off: spin-out Boards should have at least five members except for perhaps the smallest of new orgs; no more than 2⁄5 of Board members from one cluster of influence [2]; not all men; not all White people; not all US or all UK people, etc. If an would-be spinoff org wants a variance, it needs to make an affirmative case to the Boards as to why the advantages of a variance outweigh the reasons behind the presumptive criteria.
I would be more inclined to defer to, e.g., a non-binding GWWC director/trustee election conducted by GWWC pledgers even if I found the resulting slate a bit shaky.
I think there are a number of presumptive criteria the EVF Boards could set for approval of a spin-off: … not all men; not all White people; not all US or all UK people, etc.
This sounds like a bad idea to me. Board membership decisions should be made on the basis of merit, not discrimination. As EV/CEA previously said: “CEA is committed to building an EA community where racism is unacceptable”.
In addition to being immoral, I also think this would probably be illegal. The use of racial and sex-based quotas in employment is prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The case for boards is I think slightly less clear, but just last year a federal court struck down a California law that mandated racial quotas for corporate boards, and given the recent decision in Students for Fair Admissions vs Harvard I would expect SCOTUS to affirm this. While theoretically possible that racial discrimination quotas might be legal for board membership but not employment or education, I suspect the same rule will be applied in all cases.
If an would-be spinoff org wants a variance, it needs to make an affirmative case to the Boards as to why the advantages of a variance outweigh the reasons behind the presumptive criteria.
This seems quite backwards to me. Racial, sexual and national origin discrimination is presumptively immoral and presumptively illegal. We should require an affirmative case before engaging in discrimination.
In addition to being immoral, I also think this would probably be illegal.
I think this would likely be legal. Your analysis is US-focused; I’m not well-versed in other jurisdictions’ laws either, so I’ll leave that to the side. The California case (and the UNC portion of the Harvard case) involved state action, which is absent here. Students for Fair Admission involved the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.” In other words, Harvard agreed to play by those rules when it decided to accept federal funds.
As you mention, maybe one could stretch anti-employment discrimination law to cover board membership. But I think there’s a fundamental problem with that approach: in this scenario, the EVFs aren’t employing anyone! They are deciding whether or not to make grants of EVF assets and IP to wholly independent, newly formed organizations. You’d need a legal authority that made it illegal for EVF to adopt a policy of generally not making these kinds of grants to organizations whose boards were wholly lacking in certain forms of diversity.
That’s a tough sell to me, especially as EVF has elements of being an expressive association whose grantmaking decisions would thus be imbued with First Amendment protection. I tend to be pretty protective of non-profit organizations’ ability to govern themselves in a manner consistent with their values, and tentatively think it’s reasonable to say that an organization that values diversity should be able to have a diverse board if it so chooses.
Board membership decisions should be made on the basis of merit, not discrimination.
I am not, by default, friendly to hard quotas. I said “there are a number of presumptive criteria the EVF Boards could set” (emphasis added), not that I would necessarily support deploying each and every one of them. The main point of my comment was actually to observe that the EVF Boards still were in the driver’s seat on diversity issues and should not passively deferring to the projects regarding spin-off board composition.
I submit that Board membership decisions should be made based on the organization’s best interests (and the public interest), rather than abstract “merit” per se. No one is entitled to be a board member. (I think the argument for an individual entitlement to university admission and especially to desired employment are stronger than for non-profit board membership.) I think a reasonable person could conclude that organizations and the public interest are generally better off when a non-profit’s board does not consist, e.g., exclusively of White men like myself.
At the same time, I think that seeing a proposal for a board full of White males would be at least some evidence that the Board selection process had gone awry. Based on priors, what would the odds be that—e.g. -- the best group of seven Board candidates available just happened to be a group of seven White men (like me)? A recent EA survey had 66% men, 76% White—although to be fair the numbers were a bit higher for more established EAs. In that hypo: at a minimum, I’d want to see strong reasons to believe that the recruitment and evaluation processes gave everyone a fair and equal opportunity to be selected. I would not merely assume that the selection processes had no disparate impact on other groups or that unconscious bias had not seeped into the process somehow.
I am behind at life (having had major surgery earlier this week), so will likely not be in a position to engage further on this one.
But I think there’s a fundamental problem with that approach: in this scenario, the EVFs aren’t employing anyone! They are deciding whether or not to make grants of EVF assets and IP to wholly independent, newly formed organizations. You’d need a legal authority that made it illegal for EVF to adopt a policy of generally not making these kinds of grants to organizations whose boards were wholly lacking in certain forms of diversity.
This does not seem to be a stretch to me. Your proposed strategy would allow for widespread circumvention of anti-discrimination laws; rather than directly discriminating in employment, organizations could repeatedly reincarnate themselves into a series of new organizations selected on racist criteria, thereby avoiding legal responsibility. I’m not an expert on the subject but it seems far more likely that this sort of ‘discrimination by proxy’ would also be ruled illegal; at best EVF avoids violating the rules, but all the assets and IP are now owned by a new organization which did violate anti-discrimination law and remains liable.
I am behind at life (having had major surgery earlier this week), so will likely not be in a position to engage further on this one.
(My personal opinion, not EV’s:)
EV is winding down and being on this board is quite a lot of work. This makes it very hard to recruit for! The positive flip side though of the fact of the wind-down means that the cultural leadership we are doing is a bit less impactful than it was say a year or two ago.
When we faced the decision of whether to keep searching or accept the candidates in front of us, I considered many factors but eventually agreed that it was ok to prioritize allowing the existing board members to leave (which they couldn’t do until we found replacements), even if the new folks were not ideal in every conceivable way. I wished we had a better gender balance too, but ultimately since projects are spinning out, it’s going to be much more on those individual projects and less on EV central to figure that out!
(I’m very excited about our new trustees despite this!)
Thanks Lincoln that’s a good point—I had not considered that. I’m so used to thinking EV super big deal. Let’s hope there is good diversity in the leadership in the various spun out organisations.
The EVF Boards have to approve the new setup of the spun-out organizations, right? The projects themselves (e.g., CEA, GWWC) have no legal personality as of present. “Their” assets, IP, etc. belong to the EVFs, which must approve the spin-off proposals transferring those resources to a new organization.
It’s not obvious to me why the new-organization Board composition is for staff in the to-be-spun-off project to decide, rather than the EVF Boards. Staff picking Board members is not a best practice in the majority of cases; at a minimum, there should be less deference to the staff nominations than there would be to an independent nominations panel. In other words, the EVF Boards probably shouldn’t agree to transfer “the project’s” assets over to a new non-profit corporation unless it is satisfied that appropriate corporate governance procedures are in place.[1]
I think there are a number of presumptive criteria the EVF Boards could set for approval of a spin-off: spin-out Boards should have at least five members except for perhaps the smallest of new orgs; no more than 2⁄5 of Board members from one cluster of influence [2]; not all men; not all White people; not all US or all UK people, etc. If an would-be spinoff org wants a variance, it needs to make an affirmative case to the Boards as to why the advantages of a variance outweigh the reasons behind the presumptive criteria.
I would be more inclined to defer to, e.g., a non-binding GWWC director/trustee election conducted by GWWC pledgers even if I found the resulting slate a bit shaky.
A bit challenging to define, but “the Open Phil cluster” might be an example.
This sounds like a bad idea to me. Board membership decisions should be made on the basis of merit, not discrimination. As EV/CEA previously said: “CEA is committed to building an EA community where racism is unacceptable”.
In addition to being immoral, I also think this would probably be illegal. The use of racial and sex-based quotas in employment is prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The case for boards is I think slightly less clear, but just last year a federal court struck down a California law that mandated racial quotas for corporate boards, and given the recent decision in Students for Fair Admissions vs Harvard I would expect SCOTUS to affirm this. While theoretically possible that racial discrimination quotas might be legal for board membership but not employment or education, I suspect the same rule will be applied in all cases.
This also applies to ‘US or UK’ because national origin is also a protected characteristic.
This seems quite backwards to me. Racial, sexual and national origin discrimination is presumptively immoral and presumptively illegal. We should require an affirmative case before engaging in discrimination.
I think this would likely be legal. Your analysis is US-focused; I’m not well-versed in other jurisdictions’ laws either, so I’ll leave that to the side. The California case (and the UNC portion of the Harvard case) involved state action, which is absent here. Students for Fair Admission involved the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.” In other words, Harvard agreed to play by those rules when it decided to accept federal funds.
As you mention, maybe one could stretch anti-employment discrimination law to cover board membership. But I think there’s a fundamental problem with that approach: in this scenario, the EVFs aren’t employing anyone! They are deciding whether or not to make grants of EVF assets and IP to wholly independent, newly formed organizations. You’d need a legal authority that made it illegal for EVF to adopt a policy of generally not making these kinds of grants to organizations whose boards were wholly lacking in certain forms of diversity.
That’s a tough sell to me, especially as EVF has elements of being an expressive association whose grantmaking decisions would thus be imbued with First Amendment protection. I tend to be pretty protective of non-profit organizations’ ability to govern themselves in a manner consistent with their values, and tentatively think it’s reasonable to say that an organization that values diversity should be able to have a diverse board if it so chooses.
I am not, by default, friendly to hard quotas. I said “there are a number of presumptive criteria the EVF Boards could set” (emphasis added), not that I would necessarily support deploying each and every one of them. The main point of my comment was actually to observe that the EVF Boards still were in the driver’s seat on diversity issues and should not passively deferring to the projects regarding spin-off board composition.
I submit that Board membership decisions should be made based on the organization’s best interests (and the public interest), rather than abstract “merit” per se. No one is entitled to be a board member. (I think the argument for an individual entitlement to university admission and especially to desired employment are stronger than for non-profit board membership.) I think a reasonable person could conclude that organizations and the public interest are generally better off when a non-profit’s board does not consist, e.g., exclusively of White men like myself.
At the same time, I think that seeing a proposal for a board full of White males would be at least some evidence that the Board selection process had gone awry. Based on priors, what would the odds be that—e.g. -- the best group of seven Board candidates available just happened to be a group of seven White men (like me)? A recent EA survey had 66% men, 76% White—although to be fair the numbers were a bit higher for more established EAs. In that hypo: at a minimum, I’d want to see strong reasons to believe that the recruitment and evaluation processes gave everyone a fair and equal opportunity to be selected. I would not merely assume that the selection processes had no disparate impact on other groups or that unconscious bias had not seeped into the process somehow.
I am behind at life (having had major surgery earlier this week), so will likely not be in a position to engage further on this one.
This does not seem to be a stretch to me. Your proposed strategy would allow for widespread circumvention of anti-discrimination laws; rather than directly discriminating in employment, organizations could repeatedly reincarnate themselves into a series of new organizations selected on racist criteria, thereby avoiding legal responsibility. I’m not an expert on the subject but it seems far more likely that this sort of ‘discrimination by proxy’ would also be ruled illegal; at best EVF avoids violating the rules, but all the assets and IP are now owned by a new organization which did violate anti-discrimination law and remains liable.
Sure, happy to leave it here then.