We’ve had a lot of amazing speakers at our conferences. 120 speakers at our 3 Psilocybin Summits, and 111 at our Integration Jam. There is some overlap, but you get the point. The overwhelming majority of them are amazing individuals. They are friends, mentors, high quality leaders in the space.
We have featured some speakers who have been revealed to have committed acts of abuse in the space, and shouldn’t be platformed.
But the content exists, it’s in the archives, and I’d like to ask your opinion about what to do with it. It’s really your content. You’re the people who support our conferences, and are watching it, and have ‘lifetime’ access to it.
My first instinct is to put a disclaimer on it, much like what Disney did with some of it’s problematic content. (Link) This adds to the level of dialogue around some of these topics, and will hopefully raise awareness around issues of abuse in the psychedelic space.
The other idea is to pull off altogether, and to consign it to the dustbin. Personally, I find this less appealing, I like to have tons of information at my disposal and reducing the amount of information in the world doesn’t seem like the best move. I want to trust each individual to be able to make their own decision, too. That said, If you, the community would prefer deletion, I’m willing to defer.
I am not an expert in these things, and I’m open to other ideas. I’ve created a poll where I’m happy to hear your thoughts.
So, if you aren’t sure, I’m talking about the content featuring Francoise Bourzat and Martin Ball. And if you don’t know what they did, here are some links. Both accounts are pretty troubling and lurid, so, please consider this a trigger warning.
Francoise has presented twice, and Martin interviewed/Moderated Tom Lane’s Presentation.
In the future, I plan to vet people better, and to be more investigative when I hear rumors. I had heard rumors about Francoise and her school, and I did ask three or four people who I thought would have knowledge of such things, but they all told me the rumors were unfounded. I figured, ok, good enough, and it wasn’t until later, after her second appearance at the summit, that it became irrefutable.
Martin I had no idea about until the video above was released.
But this is where it gets sticky, and where I owe you all an apology. It’s pretty common knowledge that right after that video was released, I invited Martin to play a set of music at the Integration Jam. It was a knee-jerk reaction to Psymposia’s style of journalism. I don’t really like how they do things, even though sometimes they are right. I invited Martin as kind of a middle finger to them. A bunch of people reached out to me and let me know that they thought it was a super bad call, and after some time I agreed with them, and he was removed from the schedule. It was really one of the worst calls I’ve made since starting Tam Integration. It was petty. It was impulsive. It hurt some people that I care about, and violated the public trust, and was not my finest moment. Not a good look, as the kids say. Probably a strongly worded letter to the editor would have been sufficient. I apologize.
So in the future, assuming that any of you would still want to come to our events after what I just shared, we’re going to vet people more carefully. We’re going to listen more carefully when people come to us out of concern and we’re definitely not going to platform people out of spite. (weird that I have to promise that, but here we are)
I’ve created a poll. All responses will be kept anonymous. Please weigh in on this important topic on our poll here: Link
