Society: Sex Harassment hits home as a TED topic

In the sexually-charged "Post-Weinstien" era, news has now surfacd that the popular TED talks is not immune.

At least five people, including a past main stage speaker, told TED officials that they were harassed or groped during the organization's flagship conference in Vancouver in April, according to interviews and email correspondence seen by The Washington Post.

The nonprofit's general counsel Nishat Ruiter said in an April email to TED's senior leadership that she, too, had been "touched inappropriately but let it go." She added she was finding it difficult to believe the issue was being "addressed by TED effectively. We are clearly not doing enough."

In a statement to The Post, TED acknowledged several incidents had occurred at the Vancouver conference and said it had taken action.

"We did hear from a small number of women attendees at TED2017 about harassment. As a result, two men were immediately disinvited and won't be returning," TED said.

TED also said: "Creating a safe and welcoming environment is critical to the success of our conferences, and we have no tolerance for harassment of any kind. As soon as we heard there were issues at our conference in 2017 we took immediate action to address the specific allegations, then worked with leading experts to upgrade our code of conduct. Today we make the code of conduct extremely clear to all TED conference attendees, and encourage our community to report violations."

In the decades since TED's original owners got the idea of turning 18-minute talks by world leaders, chief executives, academics, artists and others into a business under the slogan "ideas worth spreading," the conferences and spin-off events have become known as a meeting place for the global elite, particularly leaders in the technology industry. Anderson's private foundation acquired TED in 2001.

The gatherings are regarded as a place where the likes of former Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates, scientist Richard Dawkins, and former vice president Al Gore could be encountered in the hallways, and the organization's talks have been watched online more than 1 billion times worldwide.

Most people pay $10,000 to attend and must apply for tickets.

The Post reviewed email exchanges among senior TED officials at the time of the April conference, sparked by a complaint by a long-time attendee, who complained of sexual harassment and being offered "every drug known to man." The problem was so bad that the woman decided to pack her bags and leave, telling Anderson that it would be her last TED conference.

Anderson forwarded the complaint to his leadership team, saying "I don't want to overstate what's here (until we can find more) but I do think we'll need to think seriously about what more we can do."

Tom Rielly, the organization's director of partnerships whose satirical monologues are the traditional closing event of the conferences, wrote in response that harassment had occurred in past years.

© Oxford Union/REX/Shutterstock/AP TED owner Chris Anderson.

"I'm afraid as difficult as it is to talk about, experiences like this have been going on for years, to varying degrees," Rielly wrote. "I agree this is absolutely heartbreaking and stomach turning." He also suggested that alcohol could be fueling the misconduct.

Ruiter, the general counsel, said that she had heard of more such incidents at this year's conference.

"I heard from so many women unprompted about the type of advances that were everywhere, and that felt 'different' from years past," Ruiter wrote. "This included a TED Prize winner and two TEDsters who spoke to me about this and more than one staff member."

Ruiter then quoted complaints she had heard from other women at the conference.

"I was literally jumped on, grabbed, and held," Ruiter wrote. "Guys are taking major liberties."