I mean no offense or moral criticism of the organizers. However, there were problems with the decision process that should be illuminated for future conferences that might find themselves in this tough spot.
Uncompensated Emotional Labor
Others have written about this, but it’s worth repeating. As conference organizers, I’m sure the De Goes family and the other staff are familiar with under-valued emotional labor. If they weren’t before, they certainly are now. As De Goes explained in his letter detailing the decision, they spent many hours contemplating the problem, researching Yarvin, and compiling the speakers’ responses. For some speakers, unpacking those opinions was difficult, draining work, as Amar Shah eloquently wrote about (Amar has since decided to withdraw completely from LambdaConf). Finally, those opinions were not applied at an individual level, but as a majority. The organizers made it explicit in their letter that such would be the case, but it still feels strange to me.
The Silenced Majority
Only minority speakers were asked to perform the extra task of submitting their opinions. The list of speakers for LambdaConf is still not released, but I assume that it is not more than 50% non-men and people of color. If not, then more than half of speakers did not have the chance to give an opinion to LambdaConf before the decision was made. LambdaConf has said that few speakers have dropped out, which implies to me that most of these excluded speakers agree with the decision, so this is not a huge problem. I still feel that their input should have been requested. The idea that Yarvin’s inclusion might have been argued against by only minorities is problematic.
Leading Questions
By only asking about the Code of Conduct and whether it was a sufficient measure for safety — and not specifically about the exclusion of Yarvin, or about the creation of a welcoming space — LambdaConf both predicted the response of the speakers who withdrew and pre-supposed that their response was not a rational one.
Code of Conduct
In addition to the letter asking for input, the organizers sent another letter to speakers after responses were received. In this letter, they say that “more than 50%” of respondents think the Code of Conduct should only apply at the conference. Considering that it’s a binary question, “> 50%” seems like a pretty slim margin, and strongly implies a significant percentage of the speakers polled think that a Code of Conduct should apply outside of the conference as well.
If Yarvin had said these things at the conference, a single person speaking up should have gotten him some form of censure, according to the terms of the Code of Conduct. If he had said it in a venue outside the conference’s purview but in a tangentially related setting, a significant portion of the speakers polled would, it seems, think that the same rules should apply. He is re-iterating the same beliefs that people object to currently, in real time, in response to the controversy. Should that trigger the Code of Conduct? I imagine most people would say “no”, but it seems like a question worth asking.
Possible Alternatives
If LambdaConf carefully considered and rejected a compromise, it is not documented in any of their public letters on the issue so far. Here are 3 simplistic ones I thought up in about 10 seconds. I’m sure there are others.
- Have Yarvin record a talk. Air that, but do not allow him to attend.
- Allow Yarvin to attend but not to present a talk.
- Ask one of the other contributors to urbit or nock present the talk (urbit is Yarvin’s baby, but there are a couple other significant contributors).
I’m not saying LambdaConf didn’t think of these, that any of these is a good option, better than a clear yes/no, or that a single person on either side would have responded differently. But they’re all acknowledging the gray area that LambdaConf’s own letter to the speakers seems pretty clear on.
