All of laurapomarius's Comments + Replies
I agree with this - it is also why I disagree-voted, and no, I don't have notifications set up for Geoffrey (as mentioned in another comment by them).
The comment felt to me like it was undermining a lot of the recent criticism regarding people in powerful positions, AT THE VERY LEAST, showing very bad judgement. The comment makes me very sad and angry.
Yeah, I agree with that, and I'm really glad how much Owen expresses he's keen to work on himself.
I'm not sure my anger is appropriate here, but I've been in similar situations as this woman. If one of these people asked me for a conversation about their behaviour, I imagine being impressed/glad by them wanting to change but also feeling a bit like, 'You already made me feel shitty, and now it's my job to make sure you don't do this again?'.
I think this is especially because the quoted sentence does not acknowledge the person much - even an add...
If there’s anyone else whom I’ve ever made feel uncomfortable or pressured, I’d love to hear about it — I think I might benefit most from a conversation, but I’d also welcome anonymous feedback."
Sorry if this is uncharitable, but this sentence rubs me the wrong way. It reads to me like "hey people who I might have harassed, it would be good for me if you talked to me".
I think the priority here should not be what YOU benefit from.
Thanks Laura, I agree. It feels that whenever these incidents are brought to light, women must still take on a large part of the work in educating men on why/how their behaviour was bad. It is exhausting.
You may be right, but FWIW, I read that sentence as, "I think I might understand a lot more and be able to update my behaviour in a more appropriate way if we have the benefit of the back-and-forth of a conversation, but of course I'm also open to anonymous feedback if that's what you prefer." (Versus him coming from a place of something like, "I'd personally feel most comfortable with a conversation.")
On the feeling good about yourself: One way that helped me is to separate the donation money out while saving up for my runway - so I 'donated' 10% to a budget in my personal finance spreadsheet, whilst saving about the same percentage in my savings budget - basically committing the money to donations whilst keeping it as a backup for rainy days on my bank account. Once both budgets add up to a 6 month runway (or however long someone thinks they need), you can start donating from the donation budget (+the extra 10% each month). Personally this he...
We’ve set up the Parfit and Atkinson Scholarship programmes for graduate students in economics and philosophy to come to Oxford and work on global priorities research topics through the DPhil programme. We’re also offering prizes for students already studying a DPhil at Oxford (in either economics or philosophy) to do the same.
For those PhD students who might not be eligible for the scholarships/prizes because they are not at Oxford University, note that the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research has just opened applications for the Global P...
As an extra data point - I had a couple of extremely uncomfortable conversations with someone at an EAG a few years back and didn’t report it, because I tend to think it’s my fault/ I might be misinterpreting things/ I don’t want to escalate things. I was relieved to later find out the person had been banned from EAG for making various women feel uncomfortable. I wished I had erred on the side of reporting (maybe with no steps taken if it was just my report), and was very glad CH exists!
Would it be helpful for CH to publicize a policy that explicitly commits to honoring the affected person's wishes as to the limits of any investigation and response, at least for less serious reports?
For instance, a reporter could limit their report to background use only, to help CH identify a trend if there is a future report involving the same person. Or could limit the action to, as @Tiresias said, having someone say "hey, you may not realize, but you're making people uncomfortable."