Link-post for the article "Effective Altruism Promises to Do Good Better. These Women Say It Has a Toxic Culture Of Sexual Harassment and Abuse"
A few quotes:
Three times in one year, she says, men at informal EA gatherings tried to convince [Keerthana Gopalakrishnan] to join these so-called “polycules.” When Gopalakrishnan said she wasn’t interested, she recalls, they would “shame” her or try to pressure her, casting monogamy as a lifestyle governed by jealousy, and polyamory as a more enlightened and rational approach.
After a particularly troubling incident of sexual harassment, Gopalakrishnan wrote a post on an online forum for EAs in Nov. 2022. While she declined to publicly describe details of the incident, she argued that EA’s culture was hostile toward women. “It puts your safety at risk,” she wrote, adding that most of the access to funding and opportunities within the movement was controlled by men. Gopalakrishnan was alarmed at some of the responses. One commenter wrote that her post was “bigoted” against polyamorous people. Another said it would “pollute the epistemic environment,” and argued it was “net-negative for solving the problem.”
This story is based on interviews with more than 30 current and former effective altruists and people who live among them. Many of the women spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid personal or professional reprisals, citing the small number of people and organizations within EA that control plum jobs and opportunities.
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Many of them asked that their alleged abusers not be named and that TIME shield their identities to avoid retaliation.
One recalled being “groomed” by a powerful man nearly twice her age who argued that “pedophilic relationships” were both perfectly natural and highly educational. Another told TIME a much older EA recruited her to join his polyamorous relationship while she was still in college. A third described an unsettling experience with an influential figure in EA whose role included picking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobs. After that leader arranged for her to be flown to the U.K. for a job interview, she recalls being surprised to discover that she was expected to stay in his home, not a hotel. When she arrived, she says, “he told me he needed to masturbate before seeing me.”
The women who spoke to TIME counter that the problem is particularly acute in EA. The movement’s high-minded goals can create a moral shield, they say, allowing members to present themselves as altruists committed to saving humanity regardless of how they treat the people around them. “It’s this white knight savior complex,” says Sonia Joseph, a former EA who has since moved away from the movement partially because of its treatment of women. “Like: we are better than others because we are more rational or more reasonable or more thoughtful.” The movement “has a veneer of very logical, rigorous do-gooderism,” she continues. “But it’s misogyny encoded into math.”
Several of the women who spoke to TIME said that EA’s polyamorous subculture was a key reason why the community had become a hostile environment for women. One woman told TIME she began dating a man who had held significant roles at two EA-aligned organizations while she was still an undergraduate. They met when he was speaking at an EA-affiliated conference, and he invited her out to dinner after she was one of the only students to get his math and probability questions right. He asked how old she was, she recalls, then quickly suggested she join his polyamorous relationship. Shortly after agreeing to date him, “He told me that ‘I could sleep with you on Monday,’ but on Tuesday I’m with this other girl,” she says. “It was this way of being a f—boy but having the moral high ground,” she added. “It’s not a hookup, it’s a poly relationship.” The woman began to feel “like I was being sucked into a cult,” she says.
Standard disclaimers apply about 'not all polyamory' - there are plenty of perfectly healthy polyamorous relationships out there - but its implementation in EA seems to play a significant role in many of the examples cited.
Perhaps more worrying is the fact that the women would only speak under conditions of anonymity due to EA's centralisation of power over funding and employment in a few (overwhelmingly male) hands.
I’m responding on behalf of the community health team at the Centre for Effective Altruism. We work to prevent and address problems in the community, including sexual misconduct.
I find the piece doesn’t accurately convey how my team, or the EA community more broadly, reacts to this sort of behavior.
We work to address harmful behavior, including sexual misconduct, because we think it’s so important that this community has a good culture where people can do their best work without harassment or other mistreatment. Ignoring problems or sweeping them under the rug would be terrible for people in the community, EA’s culture, and our ability to do good in the world.
My team didn’t have a chance to explain the actions we’ve already taken on the incidents described in this piece. The incidents described here include:
We’ll be going through the piece to see if there are any situations we might be able to address further, but in most of them there’s not enough information to do so. If you want to share any information about a problem you know of, you can always contact us (including anonymously).
When I first learned about the problems described in the piece, I felt disappointed and angry. I still feel that way. I recognize that problems happen in every community, but that doesn’t make it ok. That’s why we’ve been working for years to prevent and address community problems.
This isn’t a problem that one team or organization can address alone. We regularly talk with group organizers and organization staff who want to build a healthy and supportive culture. I’ve seen many people in the community stand up for people who experienced harm, and work toward the kind of healthy community they feel so strongly about. That strengthens the determination I feel to keep working on this.
If you’ve experienced a problem, we want to help. You can always contact us to discuss a problem.
There's a lot of discussion here about why things don't get reported to the community health team, and what they're responsible for, so I wanted to add my own bit of anecdata.
I'm a woman who has been closely involved with a particularly gender-imbalanced portion of EA for 7 years, who has personally experienced and secondhand heard about many issues around gender dynamics, and who has never reported anything to the community health team (despite several suggestions from friends to). Now I'm considering why.
Upon reflection, here are a few reasons:
Early on, some of it was naiveté. I experienced occasional inappropriate comments or situations from senior male researchers when I was a teenager, but assumed that they could never be interested in me because of the age and experience gap. At the time I thought that I must be misinterpreting the situation, and only see it the way I do now with the benefit of experience and hindsight. (I never felt unsafe, and if I had, would have reported it or left.)
Often, the behavior felt plausibly deniable. "Is this person asking me to meet at a coffeeshop to discuss research or to hit on me? How about meeting at a bar? Going for a walk on the beach?" I was unsure what crossed into inappropriate territory, and whether it was I who was problematically sexualizing everything. Most of this is only obvious in hindsight, and because I have enough experience to notice patterns in behavior across individuals. Moreover, most of these interactions were respectful, and grew to be a problem only because they happened so systematically -- for a while, it felt like every senior researcher I tried to get project mentorship from tried to date me instead, then avoided me after I turned them down, which has had serious career consequences. I didn't report this because it was unclear what to report -- no particular individual was clearly acting inappropriately, and (at least the first few times) I doubted myself.
I moved to the bay a few years ago for a PhD, and access to collaborative workspace, networking events, and supplemental funding (very necessary for me, with health problems on an academic stipend) are all gated by a couple of people here. They are all men (as far as I know), one or more them have asked me out or shown romantic interest (respectfully), and there are few enough women in my field here that I didn't feel I had any hope of remaining anonymous. I thought making a big fuss about these things would tank my career, or at least lose me the trust I need to access these spaces and resources, and I wasn't willing to do that. I moved here and made a bunch of personal sacrifices to work on incredibly important problems, after all.
Over the past 7 years, my motivation has developed from mostly-1 to mostly-2 to mostly-3. Regardless, I honestly don't know of anything that the community health team could do to help with any of this. There were no extreme situations that warranted a specific individual being banned. The problematic dynamics were subtle, and I didn't see how any broad communication could help with them. I didn't want the team to take any action that might de-anonymize me, for career reasons. I don't see anything to blame the community health team for here.
In my personal experience a good deal of sexual assault/harassment etc. goes unreported (especially at universities) because especially if you personally know the perpetrator as a friend or romantic partner you often have pretty complicated feelings about escalating things.
I think making clear the default outcome of reporting is "you have a conversation with someone a good deal more experience than you about what steps tend to be taken in these cases and if they've heard anything else and you get agency around the result" rather than "you set in motion a process against this person you have a very hazy understanding of" helps a lot. (the health team's policy around confidentiality seems good for this reason).
Thank you for sharing your experience here. I’m really sorry to hear about these gender dynamics and how it’s affected you personally, your motivation and your career.
Do you have any suggested actions you’d like to see to help prevent this being repeated?
(I imagine organisations having policies about appropriate professional conduct and actively working on DEI would help to some extent with these issues. But I’m not sure what specifically, how much it’d help, and if there’s other things that you implied that I missed.)
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Also, on a separate note, my understanding is that the community health team would like to hear about general experiences like this (even if you don’t want to “report” anything/anyone specifically and want any action taken) as they often provide advice to organisations/groups/community spaces/write forum posts about ways of improving the health of the community more generally and hearing things like this would help to put good policies in place and spread ideas around appropriate conduct etc.
To give a little more detail about what I think gave wrong impressions -
Last year as part of a longer piece about how the community health team approaches problems, I wrote a list of factors that need to be balanced against each other. One that’s caused confusion is “Give people a second or third chance; adjust when people have changed and improved.” I meant situations like “someone has made some inappropriate comments and gotten feedback about it,” not something like assault. I’m adding a note to the original piece clarifying.
What proportion of the incidents described was the team unaware of?
I think this question is very important. There must be a reason why people are not reporting bad behaviour to the health team. Either they don't know what the team does, or they know what it's meant to do, but don't trust it. Either case points to room for improvement, either in the team or in the wider EA community.
As an example: None of the newcomer resources seem to mention the community health team at all. It seems possible that a significant proportion of people that are new or more casually involved are unaware of it's existence. Given that predatory behaviour is often focused on newcomers and inexperienced members, this seems like a clear oversight.
I think this is a good point (that lots of people especially newcomers might not be aware of the community health team's role when they might need it). I've been engaging with EA a lot online since maybe 2015, and in person since 2018, and I was aware of the community health team for a while but I wasn't aware that it played this particular role of investigating claims and taking action e.g. banning people, until I think last year.
Thanks Julia. While I do not want to imply the problem is solved, I think our community is a lot better due to your team's work, and I deeply appreciate that. Having a thoughtful and proactive team working on this seems very helpful for keeping our movement healthy.
I do think, insofar as is possible, some more transparency and specifics (especially on this one) could be very reassuring to myself and the community.
I'm worried and skeptical about negative views toward the community health team and Julia Wise.
My view is informed by the absence of clear objective mistakes described by anyone. It also seems very easy and rewarding to criticize them[1].
I'm increasingly concerned about the dynamic over the last few months where CEA and the Community Health team constantly acts as a lightning rod for problems they have little control over. This dynamic has always existed, but it has become more severe post-SBF.
This seems dysfunctional and costly to good talent at CEA. It is an even deeper issue because these seem to be one of the few people trying to take ownership and help EA publicly right now.
I'm not sure what happens if Julia Wise and co. stop.
The Guzey incident is one example where a detractor seems excessive toward Wise. I share Will Bradshaw's view that this is both minor and harmless, although I respect and would be interested in Nuno's dissenting view.
(Alexey Guzey wrote a book chapter, that he would be releasing publicly, that was critical of MacAskill's content in DGB, to Julia Wise. Wise sent the chapter to MacAskill, which Guzey asked her not to do. It's unclear to me why this chapter was sensitive, what Wise was supposed to do with the chapter. I read the chapter, and think there is a large supply of content on the internet and social media similar in quality. I can see how Wise just forwarded it absent-mindedly).
I think this might be partly due to the complex structure (and subsequent re-structure) of CEA. 'CEA' used to be a dual name for both a legal entity and the community building organisation.
I think this led me in the past to having a vague idea of what 'CEA' was, and thinking that the public-facing Community Health Team was representing all of it and responsible for more than they were.
This is kind of a separate issue though, here I'd just like to say I'm grateful for the work the Community Health Team does, and don't want to distract from the discussion of the accusations made here.
I believe the TIME article has been updated since its original publication to reflect your response. If you have the chance, would you be able to comment on the updated version?
Excerpt taken as of 18:30 PST 3 Feb 2023:
"In an email following the publication of this article, Wise elaborated. “We’re horrified by the allegations made in this article. A core part of our work is addressing harmful behavior, because we think it’s essential that this community has a good culture where people can do their best work without harassment or other mistreatment,” Wise wrote to TIME. “The incidents described in this article include cases where we already took action, like banning the accused from our spaces. For cases we were not aware of, we will investigate and take appropriate action to address the problem.”"
I suspect a very relevant factor influencing whether people are willing to come forward and talk to the team is "how alienated/ accepted do they feel by EA culture in general", given that you come across as very much of that culture; for me this is something that helps a lot compared to say your average HR dept?
How can situations with false accusations be caught and handled, together with real sexual misconduct?