Last week, I received an invitation from Alex Hershaft to participate in a virtual Animal Rights National Conference being organized by FARM. I have turned down the invitation via a letter to FARM’s Board of Directors. I encourage anyone who receives an invitation to do likewise.
My own concern about the safety of the FARM conference goes back many years. When Alex informed me that my name on the list of speakers helped to attract attendees, I stopped going. Due to multiple credible reports of sexual harassment at the FARM office and at the conference itself, I did not feel it was a safe place.
Things appeared to improve in recent years. Thanks to #MeToo, Alex was replaced as conference chair in 2018. In 2019, FARM took the additional step of creating a Program Advisory Committee of activists, to ensure that the event would be both safer and more representative of the diversity of the movement. For the 2020 conference, an Equity Advisory Committee was added. (Please see Timeline below for more details.)
However, Alex continued to create problems. At the 2018 conference, an attendee reported that he groped her buttocks. However, the Board refused to prevent him from attending the 2019 conference. During the run up to what would have been the 2020 conference, Alex made pejorative remarks about social justice movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter on social media. A long-standing FARM employee filed a formal complaint of sexual harassment to the Board of Directors.
In response to the failure of the FARM board to respond appropriately to that complaint, the Equity Advisory Committee for the 2020 conference resigned en masse. The FARM staff members responsible for organizing the conference also resigned. The conference was, rightly, cancelled.
Thus my surprise at receiving an invitation from Alex on behalf of FARM to speak at a conference they are portraying as the national conference for the whole movement. As a result of his own behavior, Alex cannot credibly serve as the chair of such a conference. As a natural consequence of its own failure to hold Alex accountable for his behavior, FARM no longer has the standing to organize a conference on behalf of the vegan and animal advocacy movement.
If you have been invited to speak, I urge you to:
1. Say no to speaking at or sponsoring this year’s conference
2. Reach out to anyone who you think might have been invited to speak and encourage them to also say no
3. Hold the Board of Directors accountable for failing to respond in the face of evidence of Alex’s role in creating a hostile environment. The emails for the Board members are:
Seth Tibbott seth [at]tofurky.com
Saurabh Dalal, dalal_s [at] yahoo.com
Michael Klaper mail [at] doctorklaper.com
Alex Hershaft alex [at] farmusa.org
TIMELINE
2018
Alex posts a sympathetic Facebook comment to Wayne Pacelle, himself accused of serial sexual exploitation during his time as head of HSUS. This leads to the publication of an expose concerning Alex’s own pattern of problematic behavior (see here).
FARM delegates conference organizing to Dawn Moncrief and Jen Riley for that year. Alex is not a speaker but is allowed to attend. A conference attendee alleges that Alex groped her buttocks while taking a photo together. This was the second known instance of Alex being accused of sexual harassment at the site of the conference, the previous being an attendee who reported being forcibly kissed by him some years before.
2019
Jen Riley continues as Conference Chair, joined by Ethan Eldreth and a new Program Advisory Committee drawn from across the movement.
In light of the alleged instance of groping at the 2018 conference, the Program Advisory Committee asks the Board of Directors of FARM to prevent Alex from attending the 2019 conference to ensure the safety of the attendees. The Board refuses.
In light of that refusal, two members of the Board are asked to ensure that a Board member accompany Alex throughout the conference, in order to guard against misconduct. Again the request is refused.
On site at the conference, advocates meet with those two Board members to tell them directly and specifically of the years-long pattern of workplace harassment at FARM perpetrated by Alex. The Board members are given details of this pattern and told which employees and former employees could attest to it. They are also advised that, as Board members, they have an affirmative obligation to investigate past misconduct and protect current employees.
2020
In response to suggestions made by attendees at the 2019 conference, planning for the 2020 conference includes an Equity Advisory Committee chaired by one of the members of the previous year’s Program Advisory Committee.
Almost immediately, the new committee is tasked with helping the conference leadership team respond to problems created by social media posts made by Alex, who is no longer conference chair but still represents FARM. (See here.)
Members of that committee provided this description of what happened next:
When, in 2020, the Animal Rights National Conference’s Equity Advisory Committee became aware of the ongoing pattern of workplace sexual harassment at FARM, the Equity Advisory Committee supported the conference organizing staff in asking FARM's Board of Directors to respond appropriately to an employee’s documented complaint of sexual harassment and other workplace misbehavior by Alex Hershaft. The Equity Committee was also aware of two reported acts of sexual harassment of conference attendees on site at previous conferences. In light of the Board of Directors’ decision to neither protect the complaining employee nor remove Alex from conference decision-making, the 2020 ARNC Equity Advisory Committee collectively resigned.
That collective resignation was followed by the resignations of the FARM staffers responsible for conference planning: Jen Riley (Conference Chair), Ethan Eldreth (Director of Registration & Program Management), and Vicki Beechler (Operations Director).
Jen Riley posts her reasons for resigning here.
Ethan Eldreth posts their reasons for resigning, which include details of sexual harassment and other forms of workplace misconduct, here.
2021
As if none of this has happened, FARM begins planning a 2021 conference chaired by Alex, claiming that this event will be the national conference for the entire vegan and animal rights movement. There appears to be no person or committee other than Alex Hershaft himself deciding who should be invited to speak, what topics will be covered, or how the conference will provide for the safety and well-being of participants.
Here’s how I hope this timeline ends:
Invited speakers and sponsors refuse to participate, leading to the cancelation of the event and opening a path for a true national conference to be organized by a committee or coalition that holds itself accountable to the movement and responsible for the well-being of activists.