Pending
Peter Aldhous at BuzzFeed, one of the three names on the Lawrence Krauss article, reports on one slice of the reaction:
The nexus of the US skeptic community, the Center for Inquiry, today suspended its ties with physicist Lawrence Krauss. The decision came 11 days after BuzzFeed News revealed a series of allegations of sexual harassment against him.
In a tweet, the organization said, “Serious allegations have been raised regarding Lawrence Krauss, and we suspend our association with him pending further information.”
Official Statement: The Center for Inquiry is committed to a policy (https://t.co/cvF2JVkZCD) of zero-tolerance for sexual harassment. Serious allegations have been raised regarding Lawrence Krauss, and we suspend our association with him pending further information.
— Center for Inquiry (@center4inquiry) March 5, 2018
Krauss was made an honorary member of CFI’s board of directors in December 2011. He has now been removed from the list of honorary board members on the organization’s website.
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science retweeted the CFI statement, and also shared it on Facebook. The comments on the Facebook post are almost all from men, and loathsome. Yay atheist “community.”
Jason MacDonald The court of public opinion passes down another judgment before any due process is utilized, and the Richard Dawkins Page shows its spinelessness by disassociating from an unconvicted person based solely on unproven accusations based in rumor, hearsay, and for the fear of being associated. Pathetic.
Alex Homero Oh no another recognizable evil man tried to get laid by making advances toward a woman. That’s harrassing and assault in feminist liberal lalaland! Burn him at the stake!
🙄
Nicholas Weppner in the age of Tinder causing steep increase in siphilis cases, and 50 shades of grey being the best selling book this is pretty rediculous, guys super famous in his circle and not a geriatric. Feminists love taking scalps and no one seems to want to stand up to them.
Laurance Emory I’m sticking with him until presented with hard real harassment evidence. Unfortunately some current accusations are like a fatwah from Ayotollah: no impartial jury to consider, no one can rescind or appeal once it is out.
Danni Feveile Börm Great. Another conviction without a trial. I dunno what it is about yet, but what happened to innocent until proven guilty? I expect better from a foundation with reason in its name.
David Tanti Richard Dawkins went full stupid on this one.
If Krauss is alleged to have committed a crime, he should be reported to the authorities and investigated.
He is innocent until proven guilty.
Does Dawkins not remember the Salem Witch Trials?
And on and on and on.
Back to the Aldhous piece.
Krauss told BuzzFeed News that the story presented “false and misleading defamatory allegations.” He did not respond to a request for comment, made through his lawyer, about CFI’s decision to suspend him.
…
CFI declined to elaborate on what information caused it to suspend its relationship with Krauss, or what “further information” it is seeking.
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In 2016, CFI merged with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, which also tweeted the statement about Krauss.
Well, it tweeted the CFI statement, as coming from CFI. It didn’t tweet it as coming from the RDFRS, or as a joint statement. It’s not clear to what extent the RDFRS is endorsing or sharing in the statement. On the other hand the commenters on the Facebook post are taking it as an endorsement by the RDFRS and by Dawkins himself, so maybe my questions are otiose.
Dawkins has not yet commented publicly on the allegations against Krauss. However, three days after the BuzzFeed News story was published, he posted a tweet stating that he was looking forward to a 10-year anniversary event for the Origins Project at Arizona State University, which Krauss heads:
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/967677932247371776
Quite so, and it seemed very pointed (though also passive-aggressive), so maybe my questions are not otiose.
Dawkins did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In May, he and Krauss are scheduled to go on a speaking tour in Australia and New Zealand called “Science in the Soul.” The tour is billed as featuring observations on “the current state of anti-scientific affairs” by speakers revered for “their unapologetic takedowns of religion.”
Shortly before CFI’s announcement, Think Inc., the Australian promoter of the tour, told BuzzFeed News that it was still considering whether it should go ahead. “We will make a decision in the coming days,” Desh Amila of Think Inc. said.
Whichever way they decide, I hope they can avoid the “bitchez r lyin” routine.
What did I say? Video of him using force leading to a conviction, at a minimum.
That Nicholas Weppner comment is one hell of a non sequitur. “People are having consensual sex, and women are reading erotica that I disapprove of, therefore sexual harassment is fine.” I mean, it’s difficult to parse anything resembling a logical argument out of that other than “women are all dirty sluts and Krauss should be allowed to do whatever he likes to them.” Bravo, skeptic community. You’ve really educated your followers in the ways of logical reasoning, to say nothing of equality and morality.
Just out of curiosity, anyone know what “due process” Rebecca Watson got before she was blacklisted from speaking at any event Dawkins attended?
Oh, right, it was “Dawkins said so.” He didn’t want to appear on the same stage with her, and that was that, he didn’t need to justify his reasons to anyone else. He gets to decide where he appears, and organizations could choose him or her. C’est la vie.
But when an organization decides “we don’t want Krauss on our stage (at least not until the heat dies down!)” that’s a violation of Krauss’s Umpteenth Amendment right to speaking gigs, which cannot be taken away without a trial presided over by one of the surviving Four Horsemen before a jury of lecherous professors.
Neither CFI nor Dawkins’ posse are courts of law, as far as I know. Accordingly, there is no reason they have to act as if anyone is “innocent until proven guilty.” If they don’t want to be friends any more, then they can just stay so. The. End.
And I don’t think Krauss has been indicted or has to respond to legal complaints (yet). So it matters not that he may be innocent until proved guilty. He’s not on trial (yet). Screeching “but but but innocent until proved guilty” is the stupidest and most irrelevant comment in all of this garbage. Those commenters may think that it’s a good response but it’s stupid.
This is what movement skepticism has become. A club for dimbulbs who are incapable of basic inductive reasoning but imagine themselves intellectual heavyweights.
I have a hard time describing myself to others as either an atheist or a skeptic these days, because ‘atheist’ seems to imply ‘reactionary shitbag’ and ‘skeptic’ seems to imply ‘dimwitted motivated reasoning.’ Great job, movement atheists/skeptics; you’ve tarnished both of those things for a generation.
I must say as far as loathsome internet comments go, those are pretty mild. Don’t get me wrong, they’re stupid (it’s very unlikely there’d be this many accusers making up stories), but I thought it was going to be like the Rebecca Watson pile-on with all sorts of horrible threats. Instead it seems to mostly be people in denial.
I think the response has been ridiculously slow but is going in the right direction at least. The Australian tour will get cancelled next I bet.
CFI the ‘nexus of the US skeptic community?’ I’m surprised that these mooks have even heard of Krauss. What kind of ‘community’ can you have who’s membership is overloaded with anti-social angerboiz?
Skeletor – Sorry to disappoint you, but on the other hand it didn’t make a lot of sense for you to think “it was going to be like the Rebecca Watson pile-on” when these were comments on a post by the RDFRS as opposed to one by Rebecca. The angry bros don’t talk to Richard or his foundation the way they talk to Rebecca.
Granted, “loathsome” may look like overkill, but then again if you’re familiar with the context it may not. The context is YEARS of a small number of men getting away with doing this because they are Famous and thus Sell Tickets, and then when they finally are outed, being protected by an army of angry bros claiming it’s all lies.
As I am sure you would like to be fair enough to post the Krauss response to the Buzzfeed allegations:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IgAGpkAa2vwSMOtFD4iAfwfryTNJbJ_5/view
Nah, you can have credit for that all to yourself.
I read Krauss’s response piece. It is… not impressive.
First, some overall comments. It’s amusing to see the rhetorical devices Krauss employs in attempting to defend himself as a pillar of a “skeptic” community. There is a lot of emotional language here, about how angry Krauss is, about how the reporters supposedly made his assistant cry by asking her about allegations. There’s an attempt to wrap himself in the flag of skepticism — implying that the Buzzfeed reporters are out to smear the entire skeptical movement (because they asked him questions about female representation, harassment, Islamophobia, etc.) — and an entire section of his argument devoted to why this article is so bad for not just him, but the community. Attempts to poison the well by accusing the reporters of having an agenda, when the credibility of the reporters isn’t really at issue, because the reporters are not the accusers here.
Second, Krauss claims that his lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to Buzzfeed before the article was published. This is significant for a couple of reasons. One, it means that the Buzzfeed article almost certainly received careful review and vetting by Buzzfeed’s attorneys before it was approved before publication. (That probably would have happened anyway, but certainly when the subject is already threatening legal action, the legal department is going to be heavily involved.) Now it’s possible that Buzzfeed’s lawyers are just plain wrong, or editorial disregarded their advice, or the reporters flat-out lied to the lawyers about their sourcing, but let’s just say those don’t strike me as smart bets. Two, it means that Krauss had legal advice before he wrote this response. Presumably he was told that, as a public figure, he cannot prove defamation without showing that Buzzfeed knew that the allegations were false and reported them anyway. In other words, it is not defamatory even if each and every one of the accusations in the article is false, unless Buzzfeed knew or should have known that they were false. And yet, Krauss repeatedly tosses around terms like “defamatory,” even though he never comes close to backing up such a claim. Remember — Krauss can defend his reputation without accusing Buzzfeed of defamation. He just has to show that Buzzfeed was fed a pack a lies by all those accusers.
He falls short of doing either. Most of his defenses are merely repeating things that Buzzfeed already reported in its article — that Krauss believes he is still welcome at Perimeter, that he claims that his universities found the Melbourne breast-groping incident to be false, etc. But he doesn’t provide the evidence. Why not attach copies of the findings that supposedly exonerated him? He quotes from a single email from an organizer at Perimeter inviting him to come back next year, but there’s no context provided, and it’s certainly not inconsistent with someone else from that institute declaring him unwelcome at some later point in time. Remember, in the original article, Buzzfeed stated that its reporters contacted those institutions and got a different story than what Krauss is saying. In claiming defamation, Krauss is saying not just that the accusers are lying bitches, but that Buzzfeed lied about what the schools said to its reporters and doesn’t have emails or reporter’s notes and records of calls to show otherwise.
This is already getting way too long, so let me just say that there’s more of the same. His actual defenses to the specific allegations are virtually all things that Buzzfeed reported in the story. He complains that Buzzfeed didn’t quote extensively enough from his pal Dr. Cornwell, that it isn’t enough to say that she backed Krauss’s account of one incident. Or that certain complaints from students were “resolved” (which doesn’t mean they didn’t happen). That is mere editorial criticism. And then there’s the usual defenses that are offered in these situations: (paraphrasing) oh yeah? Well, Melody Hensley was polite to me after this alleged incident, therefore it couldn’t possibly have been assault, because never in history has a victim been confused or pressured by her employer into being nice to someone who assaulted her, nope, that’s inconceivable!
And there’s the obligatory vague non-apology for making people “uncomfortable” on unspecified occasions.
Not impressed.
I started reading Krauss’s rebuttal and then skimmed. Too much blather and as SM says, rhetorical device deployment, too few facts. Even in the bit I skimmed nothing leapt out at me as a solid rebuttal of the story. I also object to his sheltering behind others who consider themselves to be atheist or skeptic. Krauss has never figured in my consciousness as being a leader, inspiration or example. Indeed, I was an atheist and a skeptic before I was aware that there were others like me. I’ll apply a ballance of probabilities test on th claims and counter-claims based on my own life experience I think and sit him beside Shermer. Krauss can decide if that’s a good thing or not.