Thread by @emilymbender

On professional societies not giving academic awards to harassers, "problematic faves", or bigots, a thread: /1

Context: I was a grad student at Stanford (in linguistics) in the 1990s, but I was clueless about Ullman. I think I knew of his textbook, but didn't know whether he was still faculty, let alone where. /2

I hadn't heard about his racist web page until this week. /3

But here in 2021, I've learned about his views, his publicization of them, and their impact, from the brave writing of scholars like @niloufar_s and @_alialkhatib /4

I don't feel like the ACM is my scholarly organization (I only joined this year, for the first time for FAccT), but I have a few things to say about academic awards. /5

First, it's clear that when a society like the ACM gives a big award to someone who has done harm, that again harms the victims of the awardee. /6

When the original harm impacted a lot of people, so does the new harm of giving the award. /7

Therefore, scholarly societies awarding honors have a responsibility to their membership to do their due diligence before selecting awardees. /8

Second, to the idea that the awards are only about "advancements to the field" and thus personal opinions/actions aren't relevant, I say: /9

Someone who has systematically made the field hostile to a whole group of people has thereby harmed the advancement of the field. Those actions are extremely relevant. /10

Third, it's worth grounding any discussion in what the purpose of the award is. /11

To serve as a carrot to inspire academics to work hard? Awards given regularly to harassers, racists and assholes aren't going to inspire hard work by community builders. /12

To serve as a way to lift up the achievements (and thus voices) of scholars within a field to those outside it? Yet another reason to think carefully about who the field wants to represent it. /13

I'm not currently involved in any award selection committees, etc, but I hope those who are (including future me) take some lessons from this: /14

1. Before even creating a short list, examine both the purpose & likely additional impacts of the award, with a view towards valuing inclusivity in the academic community. /15

2. The process for considering candidate awardees should include a due diligence phase that answers the question: has this person engaged in activities which pushed others (esp. whole groups of people) out of the field? /16

3. Keep in mind no one "has to" get any award. "Dr. XYZ is renowned for their work on (whatevs) but did far too much damage to the field to get the big award" is a perfectly sensible narrative. /17

4. As a corollary, if the culture of the field was just awful for a whole generation, and no awards are given to the 'leading lights' of that group, that's fine too! /18

5. Nobody's perfect: The ask isn't to find awardees who have never made a mistake, nor ever angered anyone that they have power over. Better not best. /19

6. Nobody's perfect II: This also isn't about creating and implementing a perfect process, just one good enough to e.g. not give the Turing Award to someone who for decades maintained a webpage explicitly denigrating Iranians and Indigenous people. /fin