TLDR 46: Episode 45 Redux
[Haggerty] Two weeks ago on February 6 TLDR posted episode 45 titled "Quiet Wadha." It was a conversation about a man named Vivek Wadhwa but we didn't ask him for commment. That was wrong. The episode was later removed. Let's start from the beginning. At the end of last month, Newsweek ran a cover story titled "What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women." It had a sort of controversial cover: a stylized drawing of a woman in a red dress, with a cursor lifting up the hem of her skirt. Vivek Wadhwa was among the people quoted in the article. He's known for speaking out on gender diversity. He's written for places like The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Tech Crunch, and the Washington Post. In an article where Cate Huston of the Daily Beast declared 2014 the year of the male ally, Wadha was highlighted as a progressive figure, albeit one who was "still early in his journey to becoming a real ally." A few days after the Newsweek article came out, Amelia Greenhall, the executive director of Double Union, a center for women in tech, wrote a blogpost called "Quiet Ladies, @wadhwa Is Speaking." In it Greenhall suggested starting the hashtag #StopWadha2015. It took off, igniting a discussion around Wadha's role in the conversation about women in tech. TLDR episode 45 was my interview with Greenhall about her post. Over the next week many people weighed in both to condemn and support the podcast. On February 7, Mr. Wadhwa tweeted that it was "libelous, slanderous and filled with lies." Later he tweeted that he couldn't believe an NPR station "committed libel and knowingly published lies without verification." At this point WNYC stepped in. Our VP of News, Jim Schachter, corresponded with Wadhwa and then decided to take the podcast down. New text was posted on the show page saying that the episode has been removed and will be replaced with a future story in which Vivek Wadhwa will be given an opportunity to comment. Meanwhile, other outlets reported on the situation. Gizmodo ran a story called "Why did WNYC delete its podcast on the male 'expert' on women in tech?" And Gawker posted a piece called "Here's the segment WNYC pulled for being 'unfair' to Vivek Wadhwa." Both expert and unfair were in quotes. On Friday February 13 WNYC posted an addendum to the text on the page for episode 45 explaining that the piece had been removed because it "failed a basic test of fairness" by not inviting Wadhwa to comment. We are planning a followup that will address both the original issue and the ensuing conversation around the removal of the episode.  We are keenly aware of the discussion out there and will release the new piece as soon as it is ready. Here is that follow up. To kick it off I asked OTM cohost and editor Brooke Gladstone to interview me about my part in the controversy. Brooke is editing this episode, which is very unusual for TLDR.
[Gladstone] In fact, it's unprecedented.
[Haggerty] [laughter]
[Gladstone] But I'm here and so I need to begin with the obvious question: What the heck happened Meredith?
[Haggerty] I know. I know.
[Gladstone] Why didn't you call the guy?
[Haggerty] I guess at the time we just thought that this was an issue about women being drowned out, speakingin tech. To have the man who was theoretically drowning them out speak about it seemed counterproductive.
[Gladstone] So if you had it to do all over again how would you have handled it?
[Haggerty] I would have asked him for comment from the very beginning. There were questions that I wish I could have asked Vivek Wadhwa under different circumstances.
[Gladstone] And what about fact checking?
[Haggerty] Yeah, that would be part of it. We just didn't do a thorough job on this.
[Gladstone] Where was your editor in this?
[Haggerty] My editor was ...
[Gladstone] Wait, there she is. I see her through the glass. Come on in Katya, OTM Exective Producer and Editor of TLDR. So where were you?
[Katya Rogers] Right next to Meredith. About a foot away from her. Same kind of thinking that Meredith just described. Amelia Greenhall's post was speaking for a community. You know we walked into the middle of a conversation. There's rancor and sort of a vigorous debate going on about where men stand in this debate. It's a horrible scenario out there in Silicon Valley. Women are treated horribly. This group of women Amelia represents feel very strongly about it. He's a public figure.
[Gladstone] Who speaks in favor of gender equality in tech, right?.
[Rogers] Yeah, and you know what. This is the problem. This is my problem as the editor. We should have contextualized it. It was just too un-nuanced. And we should have called him. I saw a tweet in the middle of the week that said "What happened to these people? Were they producing in a bubble?" and I think the answer when I read that made me realize yeah, producing in a bubble.
[Gladstone] Okay.
[Rogers] I'm going to leave.
[Haggerty] Bye Kat.
[Gladstone] Bye Kat. Thank you.
[Haggerty] Thank you.
[Gladstone] So feeling the controversy, the show was taken down. Were you in on that decision?
[Haggerty] No. That decision was made higher up. It's not the kind of thing that I would have wanted to happen. I don't think that you can remove something from the internet. But that was the decision that was made.
[Gladstone] Okay. Meredith, thank you.
[Haggerty] Thank you. I'll take it from here. Now Amelia Greenhall, my original interviewee, didn't want to talk anymore about the situation. But to make sense of having Wadhwa on we need to rebroadcast some of her main points, starting with her characterization of Vivek Wadhwa.
[Greenhall] So Vivek Wadhwa is the guy who gets paid to talk about women in tech.
[Haggerty] Greenhall and I discussed his speaking engagements and articles for outlets like the Wall Street Journal as well as the book about women in tech that he compiled called "Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology"
[Greenhall] The Innovating Women book is another reason why he gets all these interviews to speak for women in tech. He puts his face on all these posters so it says like "Vivek Wadwha - Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology" and it's like it's his face speaking for women.
[Haggerty] I asked Greenhall about a twitter confrontation that Wadwha had had with a software engineer named Kelly Eliss. Ms Ellis had tweeted questions and complaints about "Innovating Women" and then found herself receiving direct messages, or "DMs", from Mr. Wadhwa. To those of you who don't use twitter DMs are strictly one-to-one.
[Greenhall] It's really creepy when a man you don't know goes into your DMs. It's really kind of this non-consensual like let's go over here where people can't see you criticizing me and then maybe I can talk to you there. Wadhwa has done this to several women.
[Haggerty] It really feels like the twitter DM can be like the hand on the knee of like social communication.
[Greenhall] Yeah it's like I don't follow that many men because like I'll see them through twitter lists or other things, but if you are following, mutual following then that like opens up that DM channel and then you just get a lot of like unwanted private messages.
[Haggerty] Since Greenhall bowed out of this follow up piece we asked one of the women mentioned in her blogpost, Mary Trigiani, the founder of business consulting firm Spada Inc to restate the case for those who find Wadhwa's role in the discussion of women in tech and his approach to it problematic.
[Trigiani] What I have seen him do, in marketing and corporate world what we call framing, is he reframes the question as a personal attack toward him and uses words like stalking and harassing. He co-opts trigger language to intimidate a woman to quiet down. And this is a personal observation. He did that with me the other day. He's done it with several others. He diverts. He calls you someone who is questioning his integrity, someone who is victimizing him. That's his method of shut down.  And there are two problems with that. It's public and it's a way to make a woman feel bad in a very traditional way. That's why there are people calling him "Dadhwa."
[Haggerty] Finally, here's my interview with Vivek Wadhwa.
Ah, Mr. Wadhwa. Hello.
[Wadhwa] Good morning.
[Haggerty] Welcome to TLDR and I wanted to start by apologizing for not having you comment sooner.
[Wadhwa] Is that the only apology I'm getting Meredith or do you also feel remorseful about the false allegations you made and how you disparaged me and how you laughed at me?
[Haggerty] I'd love to answer your question about the false allegations. Would you like to be more specific?
[Wadhwa] Meredith I wrote a very detailed piece for Venture Beat and for Huffington Post which explained point by point why virtually everything that you said and that the other person said was inaccurate. You made suggestions there that led people to believe I was involved with some financial improprieties, that I was a stalker, I was a harasser. And In fact Gawker wrote an article basically suggesting that there may have been issues with sexual harassment when the podcast was taken down.
[Haggerty] Did Gawker say that there were allegations of sexual harassment?
[Wadhwa] Can you please read that to me? Can you read that to the listeners?
[Haggerty] I'll pull it right up. [typing sounds] They said you didn't specify any facts we'd gotten wrong and then they say this discussion could be read as accusing you of sexual harassment but no one is making that accusation. That's what they said. I'd love to speak to you about my comment that a twitter DM could be perceived as the hand on the knee of social media communication. Do you want to walk about that?
[Wadhwa] Yes, Meredith before that DM there were close to 20 tweets exchanged back and forth in which Kelly Ellis asked all sorts of questions. I responded to them and it was getting more and more aggressive so
[Haggerty] and who is Kelly Ellis?
[Wadhwa] I don't know. In fact this is the problem that social media that you don't know who the people are that you see. And you also don't know if they're an alias or if they're a real human being.
[Haggerty] Well I believe she is a software developer, Mr. Wadhwa. It says so on her twitter bio.
[Wadhwa] Meredith, I did not know that because on twitter you don't know who you're talking to and all I knew was that I was being asked all sorts of allegations about impropriety where the money would be going and I responded to them one after the other very politely and then I didn't want to clog up my twitter stream with a nonstop debate with someone who was so angry so I said look I apologize I'd love to discuss this more with you.
[Haggerty] Mr., Mr. Wadhwa, you understand that Kelly Ellis
[Wadhwa] Meredith why you, Meredith, why are you cutting me off?
[Haggerty] Please go ahead
[Wadhwa] I know you
[Haggerty] Please go ahead
[Wadhwa] I know you have a bias over here
[Haggerty] No please go ahead
[Wadhwa] Let me speak. I mean you've already done this to me. Meredith, you have no idea how much damage you have done to my reputation over here and now you're trying to cut me off and not even let me respond to
[Haggerty] I'm just trying to
[Wadhwa] all these allegations which have which have hurt me which have damaged my reputation. You know Meredith it takes years, it takes decades to build up reputation. I have been so squeaky clean. I have never done anything wrong in my life. I've never ever been accused by a women of harassing her or of sexually - thanks to you now people are are attacking me nonstop on twitter. They are sending me all kinds of horrible emails and messages. This is horrifying.
[Haggerty] Mr. Wadhwa I was really excited to talk to you today and have an actual discussion with you about your position as an ally for women.
[Wadhwa] Again, you are doing it again.
[Haggerty] Go ahead.
[Wadhwa] I have never represented that I am an ally. I am a researcher, I'm a professor. I have interviewed you know and surveyed more than 1,000 women and I have been talking about my research. I have been talking about my book "Innovating Women" which was crowd created with the help of literally 500 women. This is their voice. These are women who are not on social media. These are women who are not like the ones that you are interviewing. These are women all over the world who have done amazing things. I gave them a platform for them to express their opinion and for them to be inspired by others and for them to learn from others. And I have had literally hundreds of women thanking me over the last few months for doing it saying it's life changing for them because now they have role models. They have other women who are like them. See they don't relate to the women that are on social media. These activist, feminists. They don't relate to them. They're more humble. They're just in different parts of the world doing their own thing.
[Haggerty] Mr. Wadhwa so that our listeners will understand what you are talking about we just need to put it in some kind of context.
[Wadhwa] Please do. please put it in context. That's correct.
[Haggerty] Kelly Ellis is the woman who we're talking about. She tweeted at you. She's a software engineer according to her twitter bio.
[Wadhwa] Neither you nor I have spoken to her or know who she is.
[Haggerty] I mean I have spoken to her.
[Wadhwa] But have you verified, have you verified that she is a software engineer?
[Haggerty] Let me back up. What did she say to you?
[Wadhwa] She asked a series of questions about where the funds from "Innovating Women" were going and I responded to her very politely. She asked why my name was on the cover of the book. I basically responded that this is a decision that the publishers make. Then she asked a series of other questions and then she followed me on twitter. Now when she followed me I said okay I might as well take this conversation offline and not clog up the twittersphere because it doesn't look good when you have you know dozens of bad messages back and forth with one person. I asked her, encouraged her to come and visit me at Stanford Law School where I hold regular office hours for students. I encouraged her to call me so we could discuss this because I wanted to have a civil respectful conversation.
[Haggerty] Okay and she said that that made her uncomfortable.
[Wadhwa] What she started doing was that in the middle of the conversation on privately first everything was okay and then she started posting tweets you know publicly where she cut and pasted parts of my conversation and then she put other stuff then I said Kelly I'm really disappointed with you. Why are you now taking things out of context and posting them that's when I encouraged her to post the entire conversation so everyone can form their own judgement of her because she was not acting in good faith. I've been criticized for not listening to women and here I am trying to listen to a critic and say please explain to me what I am doing wrong. All I've tried to do you know for the last few years is to to help the cause of women. I don't need this money frankly. I'm not poor. Okay. I've done very well in life. I had a heart attack when I was 45 years of age and I realized that you know making money wasn't what life was all about. That it was time for me to start giving back to the world. If you read any of my work, any of my writing, do any research on me you will find that all I've been doing is helping other people, giving back to the world, trying to fight for causes which I believe are important as is this issue about diversity in Silicon Valley. I'm trying to help women over here. This is horrifying that you would that you would crucify me like this for just giving back to women. I don't need the money. The allegations that I've benefited from this I've said this a hundred times that if you went to indiegogo and did basic you know fact checking you would find that it stated clearly that the money will be deposited into a fund to educate women and I'm being attacked for this. How does this make sense?
[Haggerty] Kelly Ellis said that your interaction with her on twitter made her uncomfortable and you are saying that you don't find her assessment of that situation to be something that we should talk about?
[Wadhwa] Meredith you are twisting me words.
[Haggerty] No I'm...I'm
[Wadhwa] Listen, listen to what I just said. I'm sorry. I encourage your bosses to listen to what I just said and listen to how you twisted my words. This is on the record okay.
[Haggerty] Mr. Wadhwa
[Wadhwa] You twisted, you twisted my words. You maligned my words here. Even before the podcast is aired. Can we please get an adult to look at this?
[Haggerty] Mr. Wadhwa I'm not sure how I'm twisting your words.
[Wadhwa] Let's have, let's have your producers analyze what I said and what you said and see what was true and false.
[Haggerty] I think we should move on to the next point of discussion.
[Wadhwa] Yes, but keep my words in context and don't try to twist them and malign them as you just did.
[Haggerty] Mr. Wadhwa I would love to run this entire interview the entire way that it's gone so far. Is there something else specific that you want to talk about?
[Wadhwa] Meredith, that you broadcast a series of lies. I hate to use that word. Look other people can take my Venture Beat or Huffington Post article and they can compare it to what was broadcast on your radio station and form their own judgement. I don't need to defend myself. The facts speak for themselves.
[Haggerty] Okay, Mr. Wadhwa, will you allow a back and forth on this. I haven't really said much in response yet to you and I'm hoping that we could have an actual back and forth.
[Wadhwa] Absolutely.
[Haggerty] The sexual predator allegations. I would love to explain my position which is that the metaphor, the hand on the knee, was pretty specifically calibrated in terms of being something that is creepy and unwelcome that is in not actually sexual harassment. There needs to be a way from women to talk about behavior that makes them uncomfortable that's metaphoric in this new landscape of things like twitter that doesn't necessarily immediately assume that the person is a ... to conflate hand on the knee with sexual predator or sexual abuse I feel like that is a really big jump and Gawker made that clear as well.
[Wadhwa] Yes, you're right that we need to be able to discuss these issues, but look at what happened here. Because of your words on twitter I have had hundreds of people attack me for being a sexual predato,r for harassing women. It's like ew so creepy he invites women to his office, he uses social media for this.
[Haggerty] I'm not sure how I can be held responsible for comments on twitter anymore than you can be held responsible for comments on the other side. I did choose my words very carefully.
[Wadhwa] You stand by your words? I'm hearing, is that what I'm hearing?
[Haggerty] I stand by
[Wadhwa] That you stand behind
[Haggerty] the sentence twitter DMs can be the hand on the knee of social media
[Wadhwa] Oh my god. So, so, so you stand by what was discussed on that podcast?
[Haggerty] I
[Wadhwa] Wow. That blows my mind. I'm sorry.
[Haggerty] No, please. Have your mind blown. You were saying earlier, you said a lot about all the work that you've done for women and for other people. I want to know how you consider that different from being an ally.
[Wadhwa] Ally is a word that you are using on social media. It's a slang word. My slang is not good. You had also thrashed me for not understanding what the word floozie meant. I'm sorry, I'm a foreigner. Meredith, I was born abroad. When people are born abroad they don't learn slang in their youth over here they don't understand these things. It's the same thing with ally. I'm not anyone's ally. I don't speak for groups. I'm an objective researcher so don't please try to throw more slang at me and confuse me even further because I will make errors again.
[Haggerty] Would you like to talk more about the allegations of financial improprieties that you said that we lobbed at you?
[Wadhwa] Yes, please, because the whole allegation was that I am making money on talking about diversity. I have said repeatedly that I do not make money on it. You know "Innovating Women," Kaufman Foundation had given me a small grant which wasn't sufficient for this, so I invested about forty thousand dollars of my own savings into this research. All of the funds from this every single penny that we raise will go to educating women on advancing technologies. I've been as clear about that as could be that I am not making a cent from this. When I give talks about diversity I do not collect any speaking fees. Yes, I make a lot of money when I talk about advancing technologies and I'm in high demand when it comes to talking about industry's disruption and I can make a lot of money on that but I have been forsaking opportunities to make money just so that I can be helpful on the issue of diversity. I have invested my own time, money, my own credibility, my own resources. You know I'm a heart patient. The reason why I became an academic was that I had a massive heart attack at the age of 45. I'm 57 now and basically taking all of this abuse on social media has been causing me even more stress and has been hurting my health for a cause I sincerely, deeply believe in.
[Haggerty] Mr. Wadhwa I am genuinely sorry that your health is not doing well.
[Wadhwa] And frankly you have made it worse, because of the stress it caused. Never before in my life have I been called a sexual harasser, a sexual predator. Never before has anyone ever lobbed such an allegation at me as is being lobbed because of your podcast.
[Haggerty] Mr. Wadhwa, women deal with all sorts of threats, sexual harassment threats, rape threats constantly. I didn't accuse you of being a sexual harasser.
[Wadhwa] Meredith, I know that women undergo a lot. I know that they suffer abuse. But people who heard your podcast started attacking me and accusing me of sexual harassment, of being creepy, and being disgusting. This is what happened after your podcast was aired. That's how people heard your words.
[Haggerty] Would you like to make any kind of comment to the women who feel that you are too present in the situation and that you're crowding out other voices?
[Wadhwa] Meredith, You know I do interviews with journalists about 4 or 5 times a week. I appear in articles about once every two weeks on the subject. The reason is because I tell journalists that I don't want to be quoted that I would be glad to help them with the story, I would be glad to talk on background and I don't need to be in it. Sometimes the journalists come back to me saying, Vivek we need a male voice that you are a credible authority on this because you are a professor, you're a researcher. We need to have a male voice in our story as well as all the female voices we have. My guess is that I've only appeared in about ten to twenty percent of the interviews that I've done because I have asked the journalists not to include me, to instead include women.
[Haggerty] Do you have anything to say to the women who feel that you have crowded them out?
[Wadhwa] All I can say is that they don't understand how journalism works. That I have given women a platform. I have not crowded them out. You know something that you are listening to one set of women, I have had ten times as many more people thanking me, congratulating me, encouraging me to keep doing what I am doing for women and not to be listening to the voices of the people who you are amplifying. I have had so much support from all over the world for the work I am doing. So yes I understand that some women are angry at me and that they do their bit but they are misinformed. They don't really understand how journalism works.
[Haggerty] Okay Mr. Wadhwa I'd like to circle back to one thing. You said that we lobbed a suggestion of financial impropriety at you. Would you say it's financial impropriety that we accused you of or just that you had been paid.
[Wadhwa] You accused me of profiting from this. When I had made it clear over and over and over again that I am not profiting that I have invested significant amount of my personal savings in my diversity research. In fact to the contrary I have advised the CEOs of several billion dollar companies on diversity. In every case I have said I want you to contribute to Women 2.0, National Center for Women in Information Technology, Anita Borg Institute or Black Girls That Code. Those are my four favorite women's groups. In every case I have asked them to make donations to those groups instead of my taking a cent from them. I have not taken a penny from any company for advising them on diversity.
[Haggerty] It's actually costing money you to speak about women.
[Wadhwa] Meredith, I have invested my own money. I've invested my own time. I've invested my own reputation. I've invested my self in this cause that I deeply care about.
[Haggerty] I'm sorry for getting that wrong. Thank you Mr. Wadhwa.
[Wadhwa] Thank you Meredith.
[Haggerty] I jumped into this fray without considering every aspect. Thinking that we could do a simple story on an incredibly emotional and complicated topic. And I did it without the distance or the nuance that I want to characterize TLDR. I wish that I had asked Vivek Wadhwa for comment, not because I think  his voice needs to be added to every conversation about women in tech but because I wish this piece had been unassailable. I wish I could have asked him if he truly thought there was no merit to the complaints of his detractors before I became one of them.