TED, the speakers series famous for viral videos of the world’s foremost thoughts leaders is grappling with multiple allegations of sexual harassment and groping from women present at the organization’s conference in Vancouver this April, the Washington Post reported.
The Post obtained emails and interviews from the organization revealing the allegations, which are especially embarrassing as Fox News sexual harassment victim Gretchen Carlson addressed a TED event just weeks ago.
“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,” a TED spokesperson told the newspaper. “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.”
Among the accusers was TED’s general counsel, Nishat Ruiter, who in emails said she was originally inclined to let it go but doubted management assurances that it was being investigated.
This is not the first time the organization has faced misconduct allegations. TED settled a case of sexual harassment in 2014 with a former employee of its digital marketing division.
A request for comment to TED from TheWrap was not immediately returned Friday.
The troubles make TED the latest organization to be accused of sexual impropriety by senior male employees. Earlier Friday Vice Media Executive Producer Jason Mojica was suspended pending an investigation into alleged harassment at the company.