I also asked (bothered) him because my suspition-meter got to a 100 when I saw we were getting into Online Etymology territory in the discussion.

Also sore topic since we spent a fair amount discussing this pre-Cretaceous angiosperms issue at our journal club last Friday.

We haven't moved on 😅

★"The trip actually took place in South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where collecting fossils on reservation land without explicit tribal permission is considered looting."

★"“We took my kids fossil hunting in Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. That was the extent of anything that I had to do with Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane,” he said."

★"One of those plane rides, [RFK Jr] told NewsNation at the time, took place “in 1993, when I went down to visit my mother in Palm Beach” in Florida. The other, he said, took place two years later."

How quickly many colleagues are ready to accept this dumb excuse and move on is not just disappointing; it is disheartening.

We have nothing to do with each other.

Wikipedia, which in the teens became the 5th most visited website, had this as the second sentence on JE's page: "He served 13 months in jail of an 18-month sentence as a convicted sex offender in the state of Florida for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution"

web.archive.org/web/20111124...

I know I made it not my business but this is so disrespectful then... What is the point of having committees then?

(11) Maybe it is time for SVP and its Annual Meeting to go the way of the creatures we study: Extinct. You either adapt or die and right now @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social is not changing for the better. [End]

(10) I would also encourage friends and followers to consider their own ethics: Does being a member of @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social align with *your* values? Do you condone this spineless protection? Sometimes the rot may be too great and it is time to cut the tree down and start over...

(6) I'll take it a step further: @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social is demonstrating they will not protect their most-vulnerable members. For this reason, I will actively discourage students from joining SVP. And I really don't see a way back myself unless there is a massive house-cleaning...

(5) And the responses from various higher-ranking members of @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social have been at best wishy-washy or silent on it. Others have been full-throated support. This alone further justifies my resignation: SVP *refuses* to hold folks accountable for their actions...

Also, from the wikipedia: Due process of law is application by the state of all legal rules and principles pertaining to a case so all legal rights that are owed to a person are respected.

SVP is not a state, it is a society with a duty of care to members. No reason for "due process" in the email.

"and in doing so, we are asking ourselves the unbearable task of becoming a space that tolerates them."

"I agree that we are doing too much listening, but we have not acted on it. Furthermore, there are voices in the SVP membership that endorse or support, even if partially, the actions of the Republican regime against science and our communities,"

3) SVP seems more concerned with monetary issues than for the well-being of its most vulnerable members, and 4) that established researchers in SVP are not being proactive to the concerns raised by early career researchers."

"Some of the criticisms that I have received that have led me to make this decision are: 1) SVP is not engaging with the potential dangers of holding an international conference in the US, 2) SVP is not engaging with the difficulty that poses for residents of the US to travel abroad,

Another personal reason: someone pretended to be from DHS and threatened people with deportation at SVP Minneapolis - and many others publicly. We don't know what happened afterwards.

And when I raised concerns about future ICE raids, they were heard, but not acted on.

From my resignation letter:

My patience ran out because I told SVP that unless another member that had threatened my career was banned, I would have to sit the Annual Meeting out. And so, that I did: I missed the last SVP I was able to attend.