You can find an overview of EA NYC’s Community Health activities in this February 2023 write-up.

On a case-by-case basis, the EA NYC team has made the decision to temporarily suspend or permanently ban certain individuals from EA NYC online and in-person spaces. Sample reasons we have made this decision historically include, but are not limited to, accusations of harassment, sexual harassment, nonconsensual contact, and significant and disruptive conduct eliciting complaints from other community members.

EA NYC is not a court of law. We provide resources, programming, and support to a large and diverse community of people looking to do good better. As such, our standards for suspending or banning members are not based on a “guilty until proven innocent” metric and instead based on an internal team calculus of the risk an individual may pose to the community, including who may feel unwelcome or unsafe in EA NYC spaces as a result of their presence. We resonate with the thinking described in this post and believe inclusivity is, inherently, a trade-off. We recognize these decisions are often unavoidably subjective, that sometimes there are no “right answers,” and that our team may make mistakes. As such, we have untaken a continuous process of reexamining and refining our processes to ensure the best possible outcomes for the community.

Conversations with Megan Nelson, EA NYC’s Community Health Coordinator, are optionally fully confidential unless there is a threat of harm to oneself or others.

If you have a concern about the EA NYC community and want to talk about it, we want to hear from you.

Sample reasons for reaching out include, but are not limited to:

• Code of Conduct violations
• Negative interactions with other community members (whether or not they occurred at an official EA NYC event)
• Feeling unwelcome at an EA NYC event
• Broader concerns about the direction of the EA movement
• Questions about making decisions that might impact community health
• Ideas for improving community health

We know that discussing these issues can be difficult or uncomfortable, and we encourage you to reach out in the way that feels most comfortable to you. We want you to have a low bar for letting us know about your concerns.

Given EA NYC’s focus on community health, one may wonder whether EA NYC is fraught with community health problems. The short answer is that while, to our knowledge, the NYC EA community at large has experienced few serious incidents, and fewer still in EA NYC official programming, we believe proactive cultivation of community health is necessary for ensuring problems don’t arise as our community grows.

We also believe community health matters at a day-to-day level, outside of distinct moments something that has gone wrong. This means we are cognizant of smaller incidents, like an upsetting exchange with another community member, and larger underlying dynamics, such as how the historical demographics of the global EA community might make people of other backgrounds feel less welcome.

The EA NYC community is comprised of over a thousand members—many of whom, given the nature of NYC, are not full-time or permanent residents. We love this! It helps make our community dynamic and provides constant opportunities to meet new people and hear new ideas. This also means diverse perspectives and diverse ways of engaging are frequently intermixing. We hope through our prioritization of community health, we are creating a place for productive and kind discourse, with strong norms and strong safeguards.