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‘PROGRESSIVE EXCEPT FOR PALESTINE’: HOW A TECH CHARITY IMPLODED
OVER A STATEMENT ON GAZA  
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Timothy Pratt
December 3, 2024
The Guardian
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_ The board of the non-profit Code for Science & Society blocked a
statement against genocide. The fallout tore the high-profile
organization apart. The events at CS&S are an example, of the label
“progressive except for Palestine”. _

Nearly all of Code for Science & Society’s core staff resigned and
two were fired amid the uproar over a planned statement.,
Illustration: Matt Chase/The Guardian

 

Miliaku Nwabueze, a senior program manager at Code for Science &
Society, had been concerned for some time about the role of technology
in state violence. Then, on 7 October of last year, Hamas entered
Israel, killing and kidnapping about 1,400 people. Less than a week
later, as Israel ordered 1.1 million Palestinians out of
northern Gaza [[link removed]] in the onset
of its deadly retaliation, Nwabueze decided to write a message to her
colleagues on the US-based non-profit organization’s Slack channel.

“Hey y’all … I have been watching multiple genocides around the
world,” she began, naming Palestine as well as Sudan, the Congo
and Artsakh [[link removed]]. “All
of these have heavy linkages to the tech industry.” The 30-year-old
went on to assert that CS&S – whose stated mission is to “advance
the power of data to improve the social and economic lives of all
people” – should say, at the minimum, “we support demands for a
ceasefire” in Gaza.

“Can this be a topic of discussion at our next All-Hands meeting?”
she asked.

Six members of the organization’s core staff of 12 agreed, using the
“100 [percent]” emoji.

Nwabueze did not anticipate that her one-paragraph Slack message would
set in motion a series of escalating events that would tear the
organization apart, with nearly all core staff members resigning and
two being fired – including, in September of this year, Nwabueze
herself.

The central issue: the organization’s board and executive director
opposed a statement that staff wrote about Israel’s continuing
assault on Gaza and tech’s role there and elsewhere, citing concerns
such as “fiduciary responsibility”. The events propelled by the
statement mirror others happening across US society since October of
last year, in areas such as academia
[[link removed]], media
[[link removed]] and big
tech
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where criticism of Israel from the rank-and-file comes under fire from
leadership.

What happened at CS&S is important, several observers told the
Guardian, because of the organization’s high profile within the area
of public interest tech, a small, relatively new field with nominally
progressive aims. CS&S provides what’s known as “comprehensive
fiscal sponsorship” for about 15 tech projects, who in turn get
their funding from heavy hitters such as the Ford and MacArthur
foundations and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. As a
comprehensive fiscal sponsor, CS&S uses its non-profit status to
manage the projects’ grants and donations, as well as providing
services such as human resources and strategic advising, so the
projects can focus on their missions. In exchange, the projects pay
15% of their funds to CS&S, which operates with its own $20m budget.
 
Timnit Gebru was on CS&S’s board before resigning.  (Photograph:
Winni Wintermeyer/The Guardian)
While the staff of the fiscally sponsored projects are on CS&S’s
payroll, they are not CS&S core staff and don’t participate in the
organization’s day-to-day operations or help shape its future –
only core staff helps create the organization’s strategic plan, for
example. One core staffer described the role she and her colleagues
played as being the “voice” of the organization.

Until the fallout from the statement, the most high-profile name under
CS&S’s fiscal sponsorship umbrella was Timnit Gebru. A pioneer in
researching ethics in AI, Gebru raised the organization’s profile
when she came under its sponsorship in 2021. Google had fired her
[[link removed]] in
2020 after she raised issues of discrimination in the workplace.
She brought nearly $4m
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grant funding to the organization, for a project she started called
the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (Dair).
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Gebru served on the organization’s board as well – until she
resigned in protest over its handling of the statement.

The events at CS&S are an example, according to Paul Biggar, of the
label “progressive except for Palestine”. Biggar was dismissed
from the board of CircleCI, a company he founded, after writing a
blogpost in December about Israel’s bombardment of Gaza titled “I
can’t sleep” [[link removed]]. He went
on to found Tech for Palestine [[link removed]],
a coalition of tech professionals volunteering to help projects “in
support of a free Palestine”.

The Guardian has learned of the events detailed in this story through
interviews with six former staffers and one former board member at the
organization, and has obtained dozens of Slack and email messages
between staff, the executive director and senior director of
operations, and board members. Most of the former employees requested
anonymity in sharing details of these events.

Last fall, hours after colleagues expressed emoji approval of
Nwabueze’s request to bring the subject of genocide and tech to an
all-hands meeting, CS&S’s executive director, Danielle Robinson,
posted a reply. She addressed Nwabueze’s idea of the organization
issuing a statement.

“I am […] very cynical […] about the power and utility of
organizational statements,” Robinson wrote. “My position is that
our organization should not put out statements on specific wars and
geopolitical conflicts,” she continued.

Nwabueze drily replied: “I was referencing genocides, not war or
conflict.”

Things went downhill from there. Robinson said Nwabueze’s reply was
“loaded with assumptions about what I believe”. Nwabueze asked:
“What is it exactly that you are assuming that I’m assuming?”

Across the board, you’re seeing people raise the issue of Palestine
… and organizations falling apart, relationships ending  --  Paul
Biggar

Despite this wobbly beginning, the core staff began working on a
process for creating and voting on a statement, followed by
collaboratively writing the statement itself over the course of
several weeks. Robinson communicated online that she was “not going
to try to slow or otherwise interrupt this work”.

The four-page, 1,291-word statement
[[link removed]] began
like this: “The workers of Code for Science & Society invite our
partners, present, past, and future, to imagine coalition towards a
world without genocide.” It continued: “We are joining those
demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, an end to the Zionist Occupation.”

The document cataloged the rise in recent years of “militarized
technology” used for state repression, including Israel’s use of
AI
[[link removed]] in
facial recognition technology in Gaza, China’s use of similar tech
[[link removed]] against
Uyghurs, and “‘smart’ weapons” used in Sudan. It addressed the
US state of Georgia’s attempts to limit open source technology used
by the movement against “Cop City”
[[link removed]],
a controversial police training center in Atlanta. “The roots of
modern fascism sit in the oppressive systems of colonialism, marked by
the atrocities of racism and white supremacy,” wrote the staffers.

The statement also acknowledged pushback that could result from
publicly addressing these issues head on: “In our offices, labs, and
workplaces, we note the renewed de-platforming of people and
institutions who stand with Palestine.”

It concluded: “As workers at a 501(c)(3) organization that claims to
build a ‘better’, ‘freer’, ‘equitable’, ‘just’, or
‘liberated’ world, we believe we have a duty to speak out against
the genocides happening globally, and the repression happening
stateside in Atlanta.”

By 28 November, core staff had voted on the document, with 10 in
favor, one opposing and one abstaining. Two days later, on 30
November, they sent an email to the organization’s board of
directors and the 15 or so projects that the organization fiscally
sponsors, informing them of plans to release the statement the
following day – on CS&S’s X and LinkedIn accounts, and its blog.

At some point that afternoon, Robinson called several senior staffers
to tell them the board was “freaking out” and had “read her the
Riot Act”, according to people with knowledge of the call. “The
board is concerned about their fiduciary responsibility,” Robinson
told them. She wanted to make sure the statement could be stopped from
automatically posting the following day. “If we stop it now, it’s
never gonna go out,” a staffer on the call said.

 
Palestinians try to extinguish a fire in a store after Israeli attack
on Omar Al Mukhtar market in Gaza City on Monday.  (Photograph:
Anadolu  //  The Guardian)
“It was a messy situation,” one person with knowledge of the call
told the Guardian.

In a response to questions from the Guardian, Robinson said via email
that any statement would have repercussions for the projects that CS&S
sponsored. “CS&S can’t speak on behalf of all of the fiscally
sponsored projects, and it would be inappropriate for us to set that
precedent. [The statement] also made programmatic commitments that we
were not in the position to make and did not align with our core
purpose of supporting fiscally sponsored projects,” she said.

Shortly before 11pm on 30 November, the then senior director of
operations, Joe Hand, and two other senior staffers, all of whom had
worked on the statement, sent an email to the rest of the core staff
explaining that the board had expressed “significant concerns with
their ability to uphold their fiduciary and governance
responsibilities without sufficient time to assess the statement’s
impact”.

“Their request,” Hand wrote, “is to pause the release of a
public statement until we’re able to meet. […] We’re sharing
this update with you with extreme disappointment, and want to remain
optimistic that there is a path forward that strengthens our
relationship with the board while also releasing the statement we
co-authored.”

On 4 December, staff and board members met on Zoom. Rayya El Zein,
director of partnerships at the organization, was one of 16 who
attended. “As [the] only Arab, Muslim Palestinian on the team – an
attempt to block the statement will be silencing solidarity with
perspectives that are not typically heard in this space,” she
asserted, according to minutes from the meeting. “Silencing concerns
of women of color – this is a real risk for CS&S,” she added. Born
in the US, El Zein is of Palestinian and Lebanese heritage.

Most of the meeting consisted of board members, including Gebru,
asking staffers to explain the process they used for writing and
voting on the statement, and how they saw the statement aligning with
CS&S’s mission. “From a board perspective, we are also disgusted
by what’s happening,” said one board member, referring to Israel
and Gaza. “We are also looking at CS&S and its responsibility as a
fiscal sponsor,” she added.

This was a form of “gaslighting”, El Zein told the Guardian.
“The board said, ‘It’s not about Palestine; we’re concerned
about our fiduciary responsibility,’” she said. “It’s like a
playbook,” she added.

A staffer explained to the board that the document was meant to be
“[l]ess of a statement and more of an invitation for discussion”
– the hope was to create opportunities for organizing with others in
public interest tech against the use of tech for state violence.
Nwabueze echoed this point, noting that the “idea was that this is
not just internal to CS&S, but [to] folks from our sector”.

Still, the “path forward” Hand hoped for in his email never
emerged. Less than two weeks later, on 10 December, the board
communicated its decision: staff was free to “release the statement
on a third-party channel” – meaning, on their own social media or
other online accounts, but not on behalf of the organization. This was
unacceptable to everyone who had participated in the effort, said
Nwabueze: “The point was to have the weight of the organization
behind the statement.” Another staffer said the decision “defeated
the whole purpose of the effort”.

The board’s response was “disappointing” to Elliot Colbert, then
senior operations manager. “Simply put, there was a dissonance –
we are an organization that works toward a social mission; then
we’re put in a position where we’re not able to make a statement
to that effect,” she said. Colbert left CS&S on 3 July.

Nwabueze called the board’s decision “an emotional response to not
wanting to call this” – meaning Israel’s assault on Gaza –
“a genocide”.
 

The dispute over the statement wasn’t the first sign of tension in
the organization.

Before 7 October, CS&S was already months into conflict over what
staffers of color felt was racist leadership. Several staffers told
the Guardian that the organization hired Black employees but didn’t
give them agency to make important decisions.

The organization’s board led an investigation into the racism claims
earlier this year. It reached its conclusion in March: Robinson was
largely cleared but might have acted contrary to CS&S’s
“values”, according to an email to core staff from the board
chair, Kari L Jordan. (Jordan declined to comment.)

 
Police officers in riot gear confront demonstrators protesting at the
construction site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, known
as Cop City, in the South River Forest area near Atlanta, Georgia,
last year.  (Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA  //  The Guardian)
“When allegations of racism came up, the board took this very
seriously. They immediately retained an independent, outside law firm
to conduct an investigation. The investigation concluded in early 2024
and found no evidence of racism or behavior that violated
anti-discrimination law or organizational policy,” said Robinson.

In April of this year, the board hired a consultant to perform an
“organizational assessment” and help mediate the conflict over the
racism allegations. Several staffers told the Guardian they had asked
to participate in selecting the consultant and were assured they would
get a chance to do so. Instead, on 15 April, the board surprised staff
with an announcement that it had chosen a firm called TH Easter. Staff
refused to schedule one-on-one interviews with the consultant.

Robinson said the board solicited and evaluated suggestions for
consultants from the core staff before deciding to hire TH Easter.

While the allegations of racism had caused internal tension for
months, ultimately what happened at CS&S after 7 October owed to
fallout over the statement, staffers told the Guardian. It was
“clearly the catalyst for the [organization’s] unraveling”, said
Colbert.

On 13 May, Gebru resigned from the board over the statement being
squashed. “I didn’t agree with the course of action the board was
taking,” she told the Guardian. “I couldn’t change it; the only
thing I could do was make sure my name was not attached to it.”

The week of 3 June, TH Easter, the consultant, sent emails to core
staff with an ultimatum: “commit to working towards an improved
organization” and participate in the organizational assessment, or
take a severance offer, according to a timeline of events one staffer
shared with the Guardian.

What’s the point of trying to create something different, if your
existence is predicated on being silent about genocide and apartheid?

Timnit Gebru

On 8 June, Robinson fired Hand, the senior director of operations who
had supported staff in their effort to release the statement. “I was
fired because I didn’t agree with the executive director regarding
the statement, or with her ability to lead the organization in general
– which was present before and after the statement,” Hand told the
Guardian. He shared part of the dismissal letter, which said that it
was “clear from your communications and actions that your
relationship with the Executive Director is irreparable”.

Several staffers said Hand’s dismissal was the last straw, a sign
that things were likely to get worse. Most took the severance.
Nwabueze stayed on for several months, in part to try to negotiate a
better severance package. On 10 September, Robinson sent Nwabueze an
email informing her she was fired. The executive director attributed
the decision to Nwabueze receiving a full-time fellowship that would
not allow her to also fulfill her full-time duties at CS&S. Nwabueze
told the Guardian that her fellowship did not prohibit her from
working full-time at CS&S.

The pushback from the board, the resignations, the firing and months
of chaos at CS&S did not go unnoticed elsewhere. “With Code for
Science & Society, we all expected better,” said Esra’a Al Shafei.
“They’re supposed to be about social justice.”

Al Shafei is the founder of Majal [[link removed]], a project
that describes itself as “working towards social justice in
Southwest Asia and North Africa by developing safe and accessible
digital spaces”. She also recently launched Surveillance Watch
[[link removed]], an interactive map and database
showing the connections between surveillance companies and their
financial backers.

The digital activist said that events at CS&S were “not just
impacting themselves, but the entire ecosystem of tech and social
justice organizations”. Al Shafei spoke to the Guardian in late
August, shortly after the announcement of Surveillance Watch. If
things had been different, she said, she would have partnered with
Gebru, whom she knows, and raised funds to continue developing the
project under the fiscal sponsorship of CS&S.

The non-profit “supported good organizations that do really good
things – that’s what’s so shocking”, she said.

Al Shafei, who is from Bahrain and never shows her face online to
protect her own security, said “there is credible evidence that this
is the most tech-advanced genocide in history”, speaking of
Israel’s use of drones, surveillance and AI in Gaza. “For [CS&S]
to turn their backs on this because it makes them feel uncomfortable
should be completely unacceptable.”

The organization’s former human resources director agreed. “Public
interest technology has a direct social responsibility to say
something about this genocide,” said Dorothy Dubrule, who also left
CS&S in July.

Earlier this year, a series of similar events unfolded at the
Integrity Institute, a non-profit organization founded by former
Facebook data scientists. The organization also faced the twin issues
of staff complaining about toxic leadership and censorship of opinions
about Israel post-7 October, Wired
[[link removed]] reported.
Fallout included the organization’s co-founder Sahar Massachi
resigning from his position as executive director in May.

“Across the board, you’re seeing people raise the issue of
Palestine … [and] organizations falling apart, relationships
ending,” said Paul Biggar. “It’s going to be a fairly big
fracture.”

For Robinson, the takeaway from the experience seemed to be that CS&S
– which positions itself as working toward a world where technology
is used for good – should no longer take “political” stands.

She said CS&S was in a better position today than a year ago.

“I can understand that people did not feel sufficiently recognized
or heard in their political activism and this situation brought it to
a head,” she said. “Ultimately, the experience has clarified
CS&S’s position as a fiscal sponsor committed to providing the
enabling infrastructure for organizations working on tech and the
public interest and not an activist organization.”

She continued: “We […] now have a staff and staffing structure,
including several new leaders, who are executing on this every day.”

As for Gebru, she recently told the Guardian that the IRS had granted
Dair its own 501(c)(3), or non-profit status, so she no longer has to
depend on CS&S for fiscal sponsorship. As of late November, she was
working out the transfer of funds and intellectual property from CS&S
to Dair. She said several other projects told her they were also
planning to leave the organization’s fiscal sponsorship. After most
of the original core staff left or were fired, CS&S hired
replacements; it now has eight core staffers, two of whom are listed
as “interim” on its website
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“Here’s the thing – I got fired from Google. I thought, ‘I’m
not going to fight other organizations; I’m going to start my
own,’” Gebru told the Guardian, explaining her thinking when she
started Dair. “But what’s the point of trying to create something
different, if your existence is predicated on being silent about
genocide and apartheid?”

_[TIMOTHY PRATT is an Atlanta, Georgia-based writer covering subjects
ranging from soccer to immigration to GMOs. His work has appeared in
The New York Times, The Economist, the Associated Press and Reuters.]_

* public interest tech
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* Israel
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* Gaza
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* Palestine
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Genocide
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* Ceasefire
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* Non-Profits
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* state violence
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* Code for Science & Society
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* progressive except for Palestine
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* Timnit Gebru
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