Maya Forstater Tribunal March 2022- Thread 4

[Whatamesssss]

Thread one, here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4498167-Maya-Forstater-hearing-starts-Monday

Thread two, here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4505825-Maya-Forstater-Tribunal-March-2022-Thread-2?pg=1

Thread three, here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4507443-Maya-Forstater-Tribunal-March-2022-Thread-3

Abbreviations:
BC = Ben Cooper QC, counsel for
MF = Maya Forstater - Claimant
AP = Anya Palmer, assisting BC
OD = Olivia Dobbie, counsel for the respondents
EJ = Employment judge, leading the panel
Panel = any one of the 3 members

CGDE (CGD Europe) – Respondent 1

CGD = Centre for Global Development – Respondent 2

LE = Luke Easley, Vice president for HR and operations at CGD, first witness for CGD
AG = Amanda Glassman, Chief Operating Officer, Senior Fellow and Board Secretary of CGD and a Trustee of CGD(Europe), second witness for CGD
MP = Mark Plant, Chief Operating Officer of CGD Europe, third witness for CGD
MA = Masood Ahmed, President of CGD and Chair of the Board of CGDE – Respondent 3, fourth witness for CGD

EM = Ellen MacKenzie, an off-stage character at CGD, involved in much that went on.

Maya's website has lots of relevant information and is collating the live tweets.
www.hiyamaya.net

twitter.com/tribunaltweets is the account to look at for the live tweets. Plus some live posting and discussion on these threads.

It is all online. If you want to watch you need to email the tribunal for a log in to [email protected]

They will send you pin number and a link to log in to the tribunal.

@tabbycatstripy

'Is there a "gotcha" he can do in his summing up which he wouldn't first put to MA in cross-examination?'

I don't think so. I think he did well in showing MA's lack of personal familiarity with the arguments in the leaflet.

Just a guess, but I think he may suggest/has evidence that MA did not see the leaflet before he made the decision and wrote to Maya. MA may have been told about it by EM or MP but didn’t actually see it until later.

Sorry, trying to catch up, LMRUITW can someone explain please?

@TofuDelights

Sorry, trying to catch up, LMRUITW can someone explain please?

It was an astute observation from @EmbarrassingHadrosaurus:

It will be odd if beliefs are WORIADS in social, civic and political life but effectively NWORIADS in the workplace or Legal But Must Remain Unarticulated In The Workplace LMRUITW?

'Just a guess, but I think he may suggest/has evidence that MA did not see the leaflet before he made the decision and wrote to Maya. MA may have been told about it by EM or MP but didn’t actually see it until later.'

He'll probably imply it. I'm not sure there's enough there to say he was flat-out lying (although he might well have been).

Ah, got it, thanks very much Spinning!

International Development Think Tanks are supposed to push and test boundaries and ideas, not simply bow down to partisan potential funders.

See for example this article, to which CGD contributed:

odi.org/en/insights/whats-the-point-of-international-development-think-tanks/

Extract:

As Justin Sandefur from CGD puts it, a think tank researcher is “someone who knows what they’re talking about, and is well versed in the literature, and whose credentials are beyond dispute, who can come in and provide expert advice.”

Extract:

In [think tanks] our work we strive to foresee and anticipate emerging development priorities and challenges. We scan the policy horizon: What’s new? What’s unresolved? What needs attention? Unlike much traditional academic research, this requires taking some risks and challenging existing paradigms. It can involve searching for counterintuitive ideas and, at times, controversial proposals.

Compare that to the dissembling of the CGD witnesses at Maya's tribunal, right up to the top.

Very interesting wording by CGD there, Spinning!

Both the fact that they look for people who are 'well-versed' and the second extract...

@Teachersaurus

On OD's point that gender-dysphoria isn't an illness and so can't be cured... A few Jan 22 news articles (in The Times -amongst others) suggest that prison has cured it for some transwomen.

It seems that they left after serving sentence in women's prisons and were cured enough to de-transition.

Colour me absolutely shocked, where is my fainting couch?

This has been where Ben Cooper has been - successfully, I believe - leading CGD for days: to admit that they seek out controversial views and push boundaries in all areas but will not tolerate discussion of the mainstream view that sex exists and that it matters, including and possibly particularly in global development.

In [think tanks] our work we strive to foresee and anticipate emerging development priorities and challenges. We scan the policy horizon: What’s new? What’s unresolved? What needs attention? Unlike much traditional academic research, this requires taking some risks and challenging existing paradigms. It can involve searching for counterintuitive ideas and, at times, controversial proposals.

This is the paradox of workplaces and employers. Both recognise and espouse the need the need for these but rarely want to engage such people because most people management systems are not set up to support that level of diversity. Isn't that, to some extent, what the Heterodox Academy is about? Didn't CDG acknowledge that they took Maya on because of her assertive tweeting and blogging style and that they could use that energy and horizon scanning?

Indeed. Large companies and think tanks often benefit from diversity of thought as much as any other kind of diversity so people challenge each other. Eg UK child labour standards if imposed abroad can mean whole families die as the children cannot work - you need to consider all the pros and cons of every issue in these think tanks and surely who is a woman and do certain trans protections damage women ought to be capable of discussion rather than - this person is not with the program, is not prepared to call green red so we will ban them.

I haven't really followed this case much but in practice I tell people to say as little as possible on some issues. Had they not mentioned the reasons not to offer another contract at all and just said said no and no mention of trans issues in any way that might have gone better for them. Every day people do not renew contracts with people and have no legal obligation to give any reasons at all.

Right, but immediate termination without saying anything would require a level of sensitivity and control they probably weren't really committed to, what with them thinking of themselves as liberal and open-minded people.

Sure, if MA was committed to his role as David Warner here, he could have instantly zapped Maya, but he doesn't see himself as "Evil Genius", and his subordinates weren't disciplined enough to take it straight to him without comment.

I think there is just a single login - am I right? And that we could share it here? I don't see any reason in principle why not.

If anyone is up for giving it a go, let me know! I've emailed for a log-in but I've maybe left it too late.

All the emails etc meant that they couldn't avoid being cross-examined about the contact/no contract or Maya's beliefs though.

I'm sure that they would have liked very much to have had the opportunity to say very little!

@Twitterwhooooo

All the emails etc meant that they couldn't avoid being cross-examined about the contact/no contract or Maya's beliefs though.

I'm sure that they would have liked very much to have had the opportunity to say very little!

If they had just made an executive decision not to pursue the funding, and not put anything else in writing, there would be nothing to go through in court.

First rule of business is never put anything in writing that you wouldn't want brought up in a court of law, surely?

Quite. I was replying to Xenia's post.

@Xenia

I haven't really followed this case much but in practice I tell people to say as little as possible on some issues. Had they not mentioned the reasons not to offer another contract at all and just said said no and no mention of trans issues in any way that might have gone better for them. Every day people do not renew contracts with people and have no legal obligation to give any reasons at all.

That would only be possible if there was nothing to discuss internally about letting MF go. Clearly there was a lot to discuss - which says something in itself.

First rule of business is never put anything in writing that you wouldn't want brought up in a court of law, surely?

The second rule is never state the first rule in emails as a clear warning that you send to people.

CGD broke both the first rule and the second rule.

@beastlyslumber

I think there is just a single login - am I right? And that we could share it here? I don't see any reason in principle why not.

If anyone is up for giving it a go, let me know! I've emailed for a log-in but I've maybe left it too late.

We all have our own PIN # as well (reusable across the sessions).

beastlyslumber I only asked for a login on Sunday and got it at about 9.40am on Monday. It worked for yesterday and today (and I hope tomorrow!).

@nauticant

First rule of business is never put anything in writing that you wouldn't want brought up in a court of law, surely?

The second rule is never state the first rule in emails as a clear warning that you send to people.

CGD broke both the first rule and the second rule.

The other truism is that if you're a global business (or at least stretched over a couple of time zones), it's hard not to put ANYTHING in writing if you're working on something big that requires a lot of people chipping in. Which means that this was not exactly a "Ho hum, let's just not renew this particular contractor, nothing to see here" situation.

Indeed, @RayonSunrise - this seems to have been a big deal to CGD. This was a furore around much more than a jobbing contractor.

CGD's retrospective reasoning is very transparent and does not paint them in a good light. Did no-one think of the 'reputational risk' of behaving like this in the UK? Win or lose this first tier hearing, Maya has exposed the stained underbelly of the think tank corporate underbelly to be riddled with an ideology that has no place in the developing world.

I've got a medical thing to go to now but I hope to back home by around 11am to catch up.

Sadly I have a dental appointment this morning. I’ll be sprinting back afterwards!