Before you take my DataCamp course please consider this info
Today, I am finally getting around to writing this very sad blog post: Before you take my DataCamp course please consider the following information about the sexual harassment scandal surrounding DataCamp!
UPDATE from April 26th: Yesterday, DataCamp’s CEO Jonathan Cornelissen issued an apology statement and the DataCamp Board of Directors wrote an update about the situation and next steps (albeit somewhat vague) they are planning to take in order to address the situation.
As many of my fellow instructors and community members have already written excellent articles about what happened, I am providing a collection of tweets and links below for you to judge the situation for yourself. All I have to add is that while I have no personal knowledge of ALL the details surrounding the incident, there are many prominent members of the community who have - and since I highly value their opinion and trust their judgement, I am supporting what has been said!
It’s making me very sad that my course, which I have put a lot of hard work into and which I was very proud of, and by association my name are now linked to this unfortunate situation. That’s why I have not been addressing any feedback messages on my course any more and will not do so for the foreseeable future. At the end of this post, I have collected some efforts to find alternatives for DataCamp courses. The contents of my own course will probably be converted to a series of blog posts.
What happened
In essence, after a broader group of instructors, including myself, were made aware of an incident of sexual harassment at DataCamp (which was followed by a lengthy struggle to get them to properly handle and own up to what happened), DataCamp made a “public” announcement:
After many months of collective negotiating by the instructor community to demand more transparency & accountability, they still did nothing. Their public announcement is a response to a letter we sent to @DataCamp one day prior, signed by over 100 DataCamp instructors. https://t.co/9su0XCwuxV
— Erin LeDell (@ledell) April 5, 2019
DataCamp quietly published a “community” post today, in which they admit an executive sexually assaulted (“uninvited physical contact”) an employee. https://t.co/RHbqx7AsXZ #Python #rstats #datascience #MeToo
— just moomin 🏳️ 🌈🏴 (@no_reply) April 4, 2019
The link to this community post can be found here, but…
If you think @DataCamp deserves credit for a public post that they did not discipline an executive for sexual misconduct, consider that they put this code in the HTML, so no search engines would index it. I don't see it anywhere else on their blog. #rstats #python #datasci #metoo pic.twitter.com/xbQoSaQl5J
— Noam Ross (@noamross) April 12, 2019
And if that wasn’t enough:
@datacamp @cornelissenjo
— Dhavide Aruliah (@dhavidearuliah) April 15, 2019
A note to our community on building trust:https://t.co/Rm1tPqewMS#MeTooSTEM
New @DataCamp bombshell… 💣 Former DataCamp employees @dhavidearuliah and @gvwilson expressed their concerns over DC's handling of the sexual assault incident to management. They were both fired (!!) then offered 💰 to sign NDAs to keep their mouths shut. 🤐 #DropDataCamp
— Erin LeDell (@ledell) April 15, 2019
Here are two excellent blogposts about this:
NEW POST: Writing a letter to DataCamp #MeTooSTEM #MeToo #rstats #python https://t.co/GELn0WrXAF
— Julia Silge (@juliasilge) April 16, 2019
Please don't take or pay for my @DataCamp course. The company let its executive off the hook for sexual misconduct. We can't change behavior without incentives, and for companies those incentives are financial. https://t.co/UlTFXdoI6B #python #rstats #datascience #MeToo
— Noam Ross (@noamross) April 12, 2019
RStudio, R-Ladies and Women in Data Science and Machine Learning have published public statements, as well as many others:
In light of the recently disclosed incident of sexual harassment at DataCamp and their response to it, including the attempt to conceal their public acknowledgement from search engines, we want to share the steps that we have taken:
— RStudio (@rstudio) April 15, 2019
📢 We have updated our statement about @DataCamp with more context and clarifications.
— R-Ladies Global (@RLadiesGlobal) April 11, 2019
🔗 https://t.co/oVy5WU8ele#Rladies
We strongly condemn the way that @DataCamp has handled the sexual assault of an employee by an executive at DataCamp. The executive still works at the company. Many in the community have expressed their disapproval of the response by DataCamp. https://t.co/v0Tmigry4x
— Women+ in ML/DS (@wimlds) April 9, 2019
The failures of @DataCamp are unacceptable. CIDR will no longer be recommending or using DataCamp. If you're looking for replacement resources, let us know and we'll help. For more detail on the situation, read this: https://t.co/wEM3mQMdnW.
— CIDR (@StanfordCIDR) April 19, 2019
Our public statement re: @DataCamp
— satRdays (@satRdays_org) April 15, 2019
TL;DR DataCamp will not be allowed to sponsor or affiliate with satRdays eventshttps://t.co/rjuJBrcx46
Where to go from here
If you decide that you want to move away from DataCamp, here are some alternatives:
You might be looking for R learning resources, especially if you’ve dropped @DataCamp. We’d like to point you to #RYouWithMe! https://t.co/cm4MLZFOw4
— R-Ladies Sydney (@RLadiesSydney) April 18, 2019
Over the coming days, we'll be showcasing the lessons. Stay tuned!#rstats #rladies #dumpdatacamp pic.twitter.com/FvJPa2Iip5
An open invite to all #datacamp instructors (and others willing to help): If you have (or know of) open source blogs/vignettes/materials that can stand in for particular DC courses/content, please post them in this thread. I’ll aggregate and make a GitHub repo. #rstats #python
— Chris Engelhardt (@EngelhardtCR) April 12, 2019
