EV UK board statement on Owen's resignation

I hope I would have eventually recognized there was more to do here, including telling the board, but it’s possible I wouldn’t have recognized this.

The fact this is true, despite issues being reported to the community health team, is a serious indictment.

This seems right to me.

Julia, I really appreciate you explaining your role here. I feel uneasy about the framing of what I've read. It sounds like the narrative is "Owen messed up, Julia knew, and Julia messed up by not saying more". But I feel strongly that we shouldn't have one individual as a point of failure on issues this important, especially not as recently as 2021. I think the narrative should be something closer to "Owen messed up, and CEA didn't (and still doesn't) have the right systems in place to respond to these kinds of concerns"

I appreciate you sharing this additional info and reflections, Julia. 

I notice you mention being friends with Owen, but, as far as I can tell, the post, your comment, and other comments don't highlight that Owen was on the board of (what's now called) EV UK when you learned about this incident and tried to figure out how to deal with it, and EV UK was the umbrella organization hosting the org (CEA) that was employing you (including specifically for this work).^[1] This seems to me like a key potential conflict of interest, and like it may have warranted someone outside CEA being looped in to decide what to do about this incident. At first glance, I feel confused about this not having been mentioned in these comments. I'd be curious to hear whether you explicitly thought about that when you were thinking about this incident in 2021?

That is, if I understand correctly, in some sense Owen had a key position of authority in an organization that in turn technically had authority over the organization you worked at. That said, my rough impression from the outside is that, prior to November 2022, the umbrella organization in practice exerted little influence over what the organizations it hosted did. So this conflict of interest was probably in practice weaker than it would've looked on paper. But still it seems noteworthy.

More generally, this makes me realise that it seems like it would be valuable for the community health team to:

• have a standard protocol for dealing with reports/incidents related to leadership or board members at CEA itself, EV UK, and EV US
  • And perhaps also to other staff at those orgs, and senior staff at any funder providing these orgs with (say) >10% of their funding (which I'd guess might just be Open Phil?)
• have that protocol try to reduce reliance on the community health team's own judgment/actions in those cases
  • Probably meaning finding someone similarly suited to this kind of work but who sits outside of those lines of authority, who can deal with the small minority of cases that this protocol applies to. Or perhaps multiple people, each handling a different subset of cases.

(I'm not saying this should extend to the other orgs EV UK / EV US host, e.g. GWWC or 80k, just CEA and the umbrella orgs themselves.)

I'd be curious to hear whether such a thing is already in place, and if so what it looks like.

Caveats in a footnote. ^[2]

(I wrote this just in a personal capacity. I didn't run this by anyone.)

1. ^{^}

   I'n not sure if this terminology is exactly right. I'm drawing on the post CEA Disambiguation. 

2. ^{^}

   : 

   • I'm certainly not an expert on how these sorts of things should be handled.
   • I think your team has a tricky job that has to involve many tradeoffs.
   • I think it's probably disproportionately common for the times when your actions were followed by bad outcomes (even if that wasn't caused by your action, or was you making a good bet but getting unlucky) to become visible and salient.
   • I think there are likely many considerations I'm missing.
   • I didn't saliently notice worries or ideas about how should the community health team should handle various conflicts of interest prior to November 2022, and didn't saliently notice the question of what to do about incidents relating to senior staff at CEA / EV UK / EV US until this morning, and of course things tend to be easier to spot in hindsight. (OTOH I just hadn't spent much time thinking about the community health team at all, since it wasn't very relevant to my job.)

I should add something that I forgot to include.

I’ve talked about February 3rd as the date I told the boards of EV US and EV UK, because that’s when I told everyone who’s on the current boards.

As I said, I had previously discussed some but not all of the situation with Nicole Ross, who was my manager and who is on the EV US board. And one of the staff at FHI I informed in 2021 about the situation described in TIME was Toby Ord, who at that time was on the EV UK (then called CEA UK) board. He was no longer on the board by the time I informed both boards about the full situation earlier this month. Our conversation focused on how he could reduce risk at FHI of further problems, and I don’t remember to what extent (if at all) we talked about the board. (I’m avoiding talking with him to see if he remembers more in order not to compromise the investigation.)

So thanks for the comment. And please let me maybe list some of my concerns here. I was going to contact Community Health Team directly, but then I thought that maybe I should write my opinion as a comment here as it may be a generally useful. It is a purely emotional reaction but like, I don't feel fine with what's going on. And because of that, this is also a burner account. For the record, I’m a woman.

TLTR:  I feel that the reaction to the Times and Vox articles within the community starts to be abusive and highly problematic in itself. I feel unsafe and I may resign from being a part of the EA. 

Let me check if I understand Owen’s situation correctly – he acted in an inappropriate way multiple times. If he was told that his behavior is not ok, he always would say sorry and stop interacting in an inappropriate way with this particular person. 

In one of the situations, a woman (let’s call her X) got hurt. X contacted Community Health Team. They reacted, in a way that X appreciated. She thanked. Owen apologized. Later on, X believed  that the problem of sexual harassment within the community didn’t disappear, so messaged the TIMES to do something about it. She has, however, contacted Owen and i.e. helped him write his statement. He is sorry, and is going to work on himself to address the problem.

Am I right?

If no, please correct me. 

If yes: Owen is sorry, got his consequences (life-breaking consequences), he is going to change. We know his side of the story, and if he is not lying, he seems to me as a creepy guy who really fucked up, but not uprooted rapist. And I’m saying – yes, let’s make sure he and similar people are not a danger to anyone. But I have a feeling that the community takes revenge on him for all the tension the recent events left. This is cruel. I’m honestly worried if the guy is ok. Hope he is. 

And this is just one thing which shocks me. There are other attempts to suggest rigid rules for the whole community (i.e. suggesting not to “sleep around” in general), many comments are polyphobic, people make multiple ableist statements (“if you are socially awkward – don’t have sex”, “being tolerant to weirdness is a problem”). This post is a great example, among others: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aGkLx2hfr9s3mSdng/consider-not-sleeping-around-within-the-community-1 
At this point I don’t feel safe in the community and sexual harassment is not my main issue. Which in the perspective of recent event is an absurd. In general I’m shocked by the situation.

So please help. I have a couple of concerns. 

1.  I feel the community is on its best way to decide that sex is bad if it’s not in closed monogamous relationships. I don’t want to function in such community. I’m polyamorous, I definitely tend to sleep around and I feel liberated by that, as I’m from a religious, conservative culture.  I feel that people want to impose rigid rules not where they are needed and prevent harm, but also where they stop freedom of others - my freedom - just to feel safe. I think it won't work, but it will cause harm. Also, as a poly person, I feel quite bullied and shamed. Could you please help address the issue here? At least polyphobia please.
2. Should I treat EA community as my workplace and not have sex with people who are just my friends? If no, what about men who are (in some, not direct ways – i.e. longer tenure in the EA) “above me” in the EA power structure, who get my enthusiastic consent? Like, would it be not appropriate to ask them out? 
3. I’m not from American culture. Cultural norms in my country are quite different - also those regarding sexual behavior, and multiple -isms. I am afraid of making some mistake which hurts someone – but I always believed in this community people would communicate clearly, tell me what happened so I could apologize and address my behavior. Now, I'm afraid of being told that “everything is fine” and getting burned to the ground later on. It may be stupid, but what do I even do about that? I would be scared to talk to some people now. And usually I pride myself to be very outspoken. 
4. I know it's irrational, but currently I would be scared to report sexual misconduct to people I don't know well, or even to share my experiences with people who are not really close to me, as they may react very strongly (or may feel obliged to act very strongly) without any consideration to other's side basic well-being. I would never want to destroy person's life, I just want to be safe. Health Team's reactions were what I would like to see if I ever was a victim of some misconduct(I know you think you could do more) - and yet, you got a backlash for it. People may be afraid of such backlash and may try to react very strongly each time to avoid it. What do I do? 

Thanks for the apology Julia.

I'm mindful that there's an external investigation that is ongoing at present, but I had a few questions that I think would be useful transparency for the EA community, even if it may be detrimental to the CEA / the community health team. I'm sorry if this comes across as piling on in what I'm sure is a very stressful time for you and the team, and I want to emphasise and echo Kirsten's comment above about this ultimately being a "lack of adequate systems" issue, and not a responsibility that should be fully borne by you as an individual.

Shortly after the article came out, Julia Wise (CEA’s community liaison) informed the EV UK board that this concerned behaviour of Owen Cotton-Barratt; the incident occurred more than 5 years ago and was reported to her in 2021. (Owen became a board member in 2020.)

1. From the EV UK board's statement, it sounds like the board did not know about this until Feb this year. Can you clarify the extent to which not informing the EV UK board was a result of the victim explicitly requesting something along these lines, and if so, whether you spoke to the victim before informing the EV UK board when the article came out?
2. What actions did you take to reduce the risks associated with these events (whether to individual / potential victims in the EA community, to CEA, or the EA movement more broadly)? It sounds like the actions consisted of the following, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything important:^[1]
   1. Conversations with Owen Cotton-Barratt (OCB) and his colleagues
      1. Some clarity here would be useful also - what's the role of OCB's colleagues here? Were they complicit, or was this for harm-mitigating reasons?
   2. A written post about power dynamics
   3. An update to Nicole when she became your manager in 2021
      1. Are you also happy to comment on whether your CoI with OCB was disclosed with Nicole when you informed her of this situation, or with anyone else in the CH team at any stage? What details did you share with Nicole in 2021, when she became your manager?
      2. Given OCB's status and position in the community, the seemingly direct access to potential victims via mentoring / "picking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobs" / his role as Director for FHI's Research Scholars Programme, and your COIs with him (both from a friendship and EV / CEA organisational perspective), this seems to clearly tick many important boxes of where I'd expect to err on the side of full disclosure. Were there extenuating circumstances at the time that meant you didn't feel comfortable sharing more than you did?
3. Did the complaints from the woman in the Time article come before or after other feedback you heard about OCB? The timeline sounds something like:
   1. TIME magazine case, reported to you in 2021
   2. Learnt about other situations (in the cases not from OCB, were these as a result of your investigation, or spontaneous reports by other community members?)
   3. OCB raised concerns to you that he had made another woman uncomfortable - reported a few months ago.
4. Accordingly, I also just want to flag this set of questions as important, and has been raised in the past as a potential cause for insufficient action. When the TIME article came out, you clarified that one cause for confusion was that this consideration didn't apply to sexual assault but to things like "someone has made some inappropriate comments and gotten feedback about it". To what extent do you think these considerations played a role in the decisions you made around managing risk?
5. You mentioned that you had been "taking a renewed look at possible steps to take here". When did this start? I'm mainly interested in clarifying whether this was something ongoing, (e.g., prompted by finding out about other situations or hearing from OCB himself about making another woman uncomfortable a few months ago), or was this prompted by knowledge of the existence (or possible existence) of the TIME article.

(commenting in personal capacity etc)

1. ^{^}

   For example:

   -notifying the EV board
   -a discussion with other CH colleagues around reducing his exposure to possible victims or level of risk, given his role as Director for FHI's Research Scholars Programme, such as considering a temporary ban to EAGs (also seems like shared responsibility around the decision made would be appropriate, and not a burden that should fall solely on your shoulders)

 I also didn’t seek adequate backup given that I was friends with Owen. (Owen and I live in different countries and were not close friends, but we and our families have spent social time together.) When the woman in the TIME piece told me that her concern was about Owen, I flagged to her that I was friends with him. She and I decided to proceed anyway because we couldn’t think of a better option, although she felt it was unhealthy for EA that people who had power were entwined in these ways. 

This seems to be a recurring issue in a lot of the recent controversies, that decisions are made by a relatively small and close knit group of people. Is there any work going on on ways to reduce this problem in the future?

Can you comment on the scope of the external investigation EV UK commissioned being limited to the specific incident with OCB instead of a wider domain of e.g. how CH/CEA generally handles sexual misconduct and COIs or CH/CEA's processes in general? 

Hi Chana,

Thanks for this - I imagine this has been a difficult few months for you as the interim head of the community health team.

I just wanted to bring Q4 from this comment to your attention, (specifically, lilly's set of questions here) as you seem better placed to answer about the general case (as opposed to the specifics around OCB, which might be better suited for Julia)

Separately, I'm wondering what from the investigation if any, would you be happy to pre-commit to sharing publicly? I'd also love to get a sense of how you and the team hope to ensure the CH team has processes and systems in place to manage these kinds of cases going forward, and what you'd be happy to pre-commit to sharing  in terms of internal investigations and reflections. Non-exhaustive categories of information I would be interested in would be:

1. Methodology for investigations
   1. Conflicts of Interests identified
2. Problems identified
3. Changes considered / explored
4. Changes made + reasoning

 My sense is that rebuilding trust in the CH team will be important going forward, and such a precommitment combined with transparent and appropriately timely follow-up may be useful here.

(commenting in personal capacity etc)

Could you clarify whether the Charity commission investigation has any bearing on Owen’s resignation?

Supporting someone/people who are at least at arms length from EVF seems like it would be good asap. Relying on volunteers and good will to essentially cover for (at least perceived) mistakes seems bad.

Here’s my current understanding (certainty has been more difficult to achieve than I’d like, in part because the time period of Owen’s involvement traverses a number of changes to the structure of CEA and related organisations, possible there remain errors here but have tried to be clear about my level of certainty):

• Looks like in 2014 (or possibly 2013), he joined some part of the CEA legal entity, eventually working at the Global Priorities Project (which was legally part of the CEA umbrella organisation) as Director of Research. He believes he was part-time, I couldn’t confirm.
  • The Global Priorities Project was split between FHI and CEA, but he was on the CEA side.
• He reports he started working primarily at FHI in 2015, but may have continued to have a part-time advisory role at CEA the umbrella organisation (I couldn’t confirm).
• He started working with the main part of CEA (CEA-the-project) in summer 2017, part-time (16 hours a week). His part-time contract starting then describes him as “advisor to the CEO” and reporting to the CEO
  • He is described by a CEA employee there at the time as being trusted to give input on many CEA teams. This involved things like participating in staff discussions on Slack and at some meetings, and giving more input on specific projects.
  • At least one of the incidents that led to the woman reporting to Julia (as described in Time) happened after he started working for CEA-the-project.
  • The advisor position is described by a few people who have a general but not super precise sense of how things were at the time as probably signifying that he was independent from the rest of CEA, given space to think about high level things, but not likely meant to imply peers with the CEO (I hope it’s clear from my hedging words that there’s uncertainty here).
• Between 2017 and 2019, he was at a number of CEA team retreats and involved in conversations about CEA leadership.
• In 2018 he was setting up the Research Scholars Program at FHI.
• His last contract with CEA the project is March 2019, reporting directly to the board, still described as an advisor, with even more limited time (8 hours a week)
• He was, as you point out, one of the people on the hiring committee for CEA’s executive director in 2019. 
• He stopped working at CEA-the-project July 2019, and was appointed a trustee  (of EV, then called CEA) March 2020. 
• From descriptions by others at CEA, from 2020-2023, both in the role of trustee and more generally in the community he had big input on strategic questions and was a trusted senior advisor type; I don’t know how much weight goes on the CEA aspect versus the more general aspect.

My own interpretation is that it seems like there were two parallel tracks:

1. Owen was doing work for Global Priorities Project, then moving to FHI, then setting up the Research Scholars Program, and ongoingly doing his own work / research
2. People running or high up in CEA trusted Owen quite a bit on strategic questions, and he was given roles that let him give thoughts and strategic input on CEA activity. Starting at least in 2017, he was involved in or spearheaded at least some CEA projects and was involved in important conversations about leadership at CEA. I don’t know how much advising he did beyond that, could have been a lot or a little, but was in a position where his views were given a good amount of weight.

In terms of evaluation, as you mention in your original comment, I do think things in this category will be inputs to both our internal Community Health review and the external investigation occurring.

[Sorry for delay, there were a number of retreats / conferences recently]. Looking into this atm, hoping to know better what the timeline is going to be on getting this info (some people who know more than me have some out of office time) by the end of this week, will update then on timeline for getting a comment written, feel free to ping me if I haven't.

Edit March 10: Still waiting to get records and info back. Will come back to this in a week if I haven't updated by then.

Relevant comment now here.

This doesn't really respond to the thrust of what you're saying here,  but just responding to:

there are no clear guidelines regarding appropriate and inappropriate behavior at different types of EA events 

I wanted to check that you're aware that at least EA Global and EAGx events require all attendees to agree to our code of conduct. To save readers a click,  it is currently:

___

At EA Global and social events associated with EA Global, you agree to:

• Respect the boundaries of other participants.
• Look out for one another and try to help if you can.
• Adhere to national and local health and safety regulations, as well as any additional policies we institute for EA Global.

This is a professional learning and networking event. These behaviors don't belong at EA Global or related events:

• Unwanted sexual attention, or sexual harassment of any kind.
• Using the event app to request meetings for romantic or sexual reasons.
• Offensive, disruptive, or discriminatory actions or communication.

We understand that human interaction is complex. If you feel able, please give each other the benefit of explaining behavior you find unwelcome or offensive.

If you’re asked to stop a behavior that’s causing a problem for someone, we expect you to stop immediately.

By submitting this form, you confirm that you will adhere to this Code of Conduct, which applies at the conference and all related social events.

You can contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions.

All our conferences have at least one community contact person, whose role is to be available for personal or interpersonal problems that come up. Feedback can also be left anonymously on the event survey, or on the community health team’s anonymous contact form.

___

It seems plausible to me that this isn't sufficient, and we're open to input on how these could be improved.

I'm curious why some people disagree-voted on this comment.

This seems good, both as reparation and as a reward for speaking up.

On Feb 3 I heard from Owen, I discussed the situation with Nicole, I informed Owen I'd be telling the boards, and I told the boards. I told Chana the following morning.

I’d like to chime in here. I can see how you might think that there’s a coverup or the like, but the Online team (primarily Ben Clifford and I, with significant amounts of input from JP and others on the team) made the decision to run this test based on feedback we’d been hearing for a long time from a variety of people, and discussions we’d had internally (also for a long time). And I didn’t know about Owen’s actions or resignation until today. (Edited to add: no one on the Online team knew about this when we were deciding to go forward with the test.)

We do think it’s important for people in EA to hear this news, and we’re talking about how we might make sure that happens. I know I plan on sharing one or both of these posts in the upcoming Digest, and we expect one or both of the posts to stay at the top of the Community page for at least a few days. If the posts drift down, we’ll probably pin one somehow. We’re considering moving them out of the section, but we’re conflicted; we do endorse the separation of Community and other content, and keeping the test going, and moving them out would violate this. We’ll keep talking about it, but I figured I would let you know what our thoughts are at the moment. 

Thanks for this note! I currently don’t think it will fall off in a few days, but we are considering pinning the post(s) (at the top of the Community section of the Frontpage or on the overall top of the Frontpage) if they do. 

I believe there is an independent external review of EVF over the FTX affair, on top of a statutory inquiry from the UK Charity Commission on that and other issues (which is a big deal). The University of Oxford -- Bostrom's employer -- is investigating him last I checked. Im not sure a separate EA investigation would add anything to that.

Today's news is related to the Time article, as Owen was one of the people whose inappropriate conduct was mentioned. (I do hope the external investigation promised today looks at Community Health's handling of sexual harassment and assault more broadly).