The amount of sweat and blood that I put into making NeurIPS a conference we could attend without being sexually harassed and face rampant racism, both things I had experienced there, and I had seen a difference.

Timnit Gebru (she/her)

The amount of sweat and blood that I put into making NeurIPS a conference we could attend without being sexually harassed and face rampant racism, both things I had experienced there, and I had seen a difference. It was so much better thanks to all of our work. I’m not there this year but the number of things I’m seeing being discussed and some of the stuff I’ve heard from friends who attended makes me feel like it’s back to same old.

Irene Zhang

@timnitGebru @sharon is actually working with a psychologist that studies conference harassment. We started an initiative quite a few years ago to measure harassment and discrimination at CS conferences but never managed to get much traction at ACM conferences. https://www.csclimatesurvey.org

Irene Zhang

@timnitGebru @sharon we presented our initial results from USENIX conferences and want to eventually create a CoC and reporting system to reduce these behaviors. https://github.com/iyzhang/superhero-network/blob/main/initial-results.pdf

Timnit Gebru (she/her)

@irene @sharon thank you for doing this thankless work.

Irene Zhang

@timnitGebru @sharon I eventually stopped doing it because it was so disheartening. In particular, we went to ACM with the survey and said, we have money and infrastructure and we’ll do all the work, we just want you to send this to all the SIGs. They responded: actually can you put together a completely different survey that just counts the number of minorities at ACM conferences?

Dan Ports

@irene @timnitGebru @sharon after that meeting, I looked into the ACM DEI council and its budget, and, well, you probably won't be surprised by the results.

Dan Ports (@[email protected])

I took a look at the annual reports of the ACM's Diversity and Inclusion Council going back to its founding. Let's see how much ACM, an organization with $211,000,000 in assets and $10,000,000 in annual income is spending on this: - FY24: $0 - FY23: $50,000 - FY22: $50,000 - FY21: $0 - FY20: $0 And where did those $50,000 budgets go? Marketing. To add diverse stock photos to "embed a DEI lens within current ACM communications", to "build ACM DEI Marketing Website Content Strategy" and "for targeting diverse nominations" for ACM's existing awards.

discuss.systems (discuss.systems)

Dan Ports

@irene @timnitGebru @sharon Oh, and let's not forget the part where, when we did run the survey at an ACM conference, they put together a survey of their own and told people to take it instead "because it'll take only 2 minutes and doesn't ask any uncomfortable questions"