Boston PR Crisis For Anti-Defamation League Illustrates How The Strict Enforcement Of A Policy Can Affect An Organization’s Mission
August 18, 2007
The big news here in Boston just west of the city was the vote by the Watertown city council to stop supporting the Anti-Defamation League's No Place for Hate® Program* because of the ADL's refusal to acknowledge the genocide of Armenians during the First World War, though the ADL does acknowledge many Armenians died during World War I.
Watertown has a large Armenian-American population. Next the New England regional committee of the ADL came out against the ADL's national position and the National organization fired Andrew Tarsy, the New England regional director, after he said the ADL should acknowledge the Armenian Genocide in 1915. My own town, Arlington, is also considering leaving the Anti-Defamation League's No Place for Hate® program.
I found this quote from a Boston Globe article particularly interesting in light of letting employee's speak their mind about what their organization's positions on issues:
"The national ADL leaders also said employees who do not agree with the ADL's position should not differ pubicly, but should resign. ‘No organization can or should tolerate such an act of open defiance,’ the letter said.”
This is a tough one, several companies have policies restricting the topics their employees can discuss using company equipment and platforms such as blogs. IBM for instance has communications guidelines that IBM employees should not write about issues related to religion or politics. See the IBM a case study in the article “Best Practices for Developing and Implementing Corporate Blogging Policies: Lessons Learned from Conference Calls Unlimited, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), IBM, Intuit and Novell”, in the Journal of New Communications Research, Spring/Summer 2007, Volume II, Issue I.
Andrew Tarsy was in a position of leadership in the New England ADL where he had to defend the ADL's position yet he did not agree with their stance. He represented the ADL at public meetings and presented the national ADL’s policy publicly, but in private had a different opinion, if his real opinion were known while he represented the ADL, Andrew Tarsy would have lost credibility. Rather than continue to disagree with the National ADL in private he came out publicly, and in response ADL fired him.
It's clear that Andrew Tarsy's position was untenable given the communication policies of the National ADL, and he should have resigned as he disagreed with the ADL's stance. However, by terminating Tarsy the national ADL has lost community support. The Boston Globe interviewed Newton businessman Steve Grossman, a former ADL regional board member, who said:
"My reaction is that this was a vindictive, intolerant, and destructive act, ironically by an organization and leader whose mission -- fundamental mission -- is to promote tolerance,” and "I predict that Foxman's actions will precipitate wholesale resignations from the regional board, a meaningful reduction in ADL's regional fund-raising, and will further exacerbate the ADL's relationship with the non-Jewish community coming out of this crisis around the Armenian genocide."
The firing of Tarsy by the ADL has already generated some bad press in the Boston area, and several Boston area towns are considering not supporting the program according to the Boston Globe. In light of the ADL's national policies, I can understand the ADL's decision, but I was thinking that a suspension of Andrew Tarsy, or perhaps an agreement that a national ADL spokesperson would represent the ADL locally would have been a better course of action. Sometimes organizational guidelines can be enforced in different ways other than termination. IBM has had a few bloggers write about religious issues, even though that is against the communication policies of the company, in response one of the company's social media experts approached the IBMer's in question and explained what the blogger had written was against company policy. The blogger's reaction was either to apologize or remove the articles that went against the policy. IBM’s approach appeared to work well. We don't know all of the internal discussions in the case of the Andrew Tarsy’s termination, but it does seem that more discussion would have been a better course of action in light of the bad publicity for the ADL in the New England area.
The corporate blogger who is most famous for daring to disagree with his employer is Robert Scoble, he regularly disagreed with his company Microsoft, and Microsoft did not fire him. Robert Scoble wrote on his own personal blog. However there was one instance where he disagreed with Microsoft, when he discovered that MSN was giving information about a Chinese citizen who used MSN’s services to the Chinese Government who was critical of the Chinese Government. Scoble however changed his mind about the incidence after talking internally with fellow Microsoft employees.
It appears there will be consequences for the national and local ADL in light of the Tarsy termination. The episode should give everyone pause for thought when enforcing an organizational communications policy. On the one hand enforcing the policy was within the national ADL’s policies; on the other the termination may affect the ability of the ADL to achieve its long-term mission in the New England area.
* ‘The No Place for Hate® Program empowers communities to respect diversity and prevent and respond to hate crimes in their towns. To date, more than 50 Massachusetts cities and towns have been officially certified 'No Place for Hate®'.’
Update: Local bloggers discuss the ADL's decision to fire Tarsy.
8/20/07 More local fallout from the firing of the Andrew Tarsy, the former regional director of the Anti Defamation league, two of the board members resigned from the board. While many prominent local people were quoted in the Boston Globe as not supporting the national ADL's firing of Andrew Tarsy and its stance on the Armenian Genocide.