When and how to ask people to leave your EA group

Last updated: 25th November 2025

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Sections

1. Summary

Sometimes keeping a group healthy means asking someone to step back. If a person’s behaviour makes others uncomfortable, disrupts conversations, or harms the group’s atmosphere or mission, it’s okay to act. You can start by giving feedback, setting limits, or suggesting a temporary break, but if problems continue, excluding them in a careful and sympathetic way can be the right choice. The Community Health team is here to support you if you’re facing a tricky situation with a community member.

2. Getting support

We (the CEA Community Health team) encourage you to contact us if your group is considering excluding an individual – we can share with you more written advice, and also help you think through your particular situation. You can reach us in a variety of ways listed here, or contact Catherine Low or Charlotte Darnell on the CBG slack, or Catherine, Charlotte or Julia Wise on the EA Groups slack.

3. Being inclusive to literally everyone isn't always inclusive

EA groups often aspire to be welcoming and inclusive spaces. However, there's an important paradox to understand: being inclusive to literally everyone can actually make your group less inclusive for many people.

Consider this example from this blog post “Inclusivity is a trade off”: A martial arts school had a student who kept physically hurting people. "The school wouldn't kick him out, wouldn't even really place restrictions on him…. I know at least three people for whom he was a contributing factor in leaving the school. Where was the inclusivity for us?"

You can think of excluding problematic attendees as

An instrumental good: EA groups and events primarily exist for the purpose of tackling serious problems in the world by bringing like-minded and dedicated people together to learn and collaborate. It is appropriate to exclude some people from events or groups if organizers think excluding them will increase the overall impact. At times this unfortunately means some people miss out on experiences they would personally enjoy or benefit from.
And/or a responsibility you have to your members. Many organisers feel that they have some level of responsibility for the wellbeing of their community members, at least in cases where they can reasonably reduce the risk of harm.

So it is valuable to have exclusion as an option in your toolkit for dealing with community members who cause problems.

4. You have authority to intervene

EA groups can make decisions independently of CEA and other EA groups. CEA staff are here to provide suggestions and support, but the ultimate decision is up to your group.

As an organizer, you have authority to take action if problems arise. It's common for a bystander effect to occur around problematic behavior. Many people may feel uncomfortable with what's happening, but they look to others to see how they react. When nobody takes action, others also remain silent. This is sometimes compounded by an understandable tendency to avoid difficult conversations and hope problems resolve themselves. In past situations we’ve advised on, we often think things would have gone better if organizers acted sooner.

5. Why you might want to exclude a person:

If the negative impact on members is significant

Either

lots of members having small negative experiences
a few having more significant negative experiences

These negative experiences could involve

Poor behaviour:

Insulting people
Displaying anger inappropriately
Sexual or romantic attention towards people who have indicated that they’re not interested
Harassment of any kind

Actions that reduces the group's ability to engage constructively on EA topics by:

Persistently dominating conversations or derailing discussions
Repeatedly engaging in bad-faith arguments
Repeatedly advocating for agendas that don’t follow EA values, such as promoting specific political groups, interventions, or viewpoints that are unrelated to or conflict with the group's EA-focused mission.

It is particularly important to consider the impact on members if

Organizers don't feel confident they can adequately protect members from bad experiences if the person is present.
The person has a disproportionate impact on particularly valuable or underrepresented groups, such as:

People from underrepresented groups in EA (e.g., women being put off by unwanted sexual attention from men, or people of colour being made uncomfortable by racist comments)
People who work in policy or other sensitive areas, and could find it professionally damaging to be associated with people who act poorly

You think it is unlikely their behaviour will improve with more feedback and advice

E.g.

Attempts to change the behavior with feedback and advice have failed
The person doesn't acknowledge the harm after having it explained to them
The behavior has been persistent over a long period

6. Why you might not want to exclude a person:

Factors that might favour continuing to include that person:

When you’re uncertain about how problematic their behaviour is

This might be more likely to be the case if you hear about the behaviour second hand and

if you don’t know details or context
if only one person reports the behaviour
if you don’t know and trust the person reporting (e.g. if they’re anonymous or you haven’t met them)

It is common for there to be situations where two people are in conflict and both could complain about the other if they wanted to. Think about whether you could be in such a situation, and if so, try not to be biased toward the first (or only) person who reports to you.

The positive benefits to the group outweigh the negatives (e.g., the person has an abrasive style but brings a lot of knowledge about useful topics)
The negative impact on that person would be high, e.g., if this group is an important part of their life or would significantly affect their ability to have a positive impact. This shouldn’t prevent you from excluding them, but it would suggest trying more alternative options first.
There is a fear that the person may cause problems for group members if asked not to return, for example by reacting negatively towards the people that complained. For this reason we think you should get permission from people who raised concerns before acting based on that person’s complaint. A concern like this should lead you to be more careful about how you exclude them, and in some situations it might mean that you don’t exclude them, or don’t exclude them as soon as you might otherwise do.

Excluding people from your group frequently and without sufficient care can also negatively impact the community:

People may overly worry that they or their friends are at risk of removal.
People may feel less likely to give critical feedback or share their unpopular decisions.
EA or your group could get a reputation (deserved or not) of being too elitist, or of excluding people for reasons unrelated to EA goals such as demographics, preferred cause areas, or being critical of people in leadership positions.

7. Steps to consider before excluding

You might be able to manage or change the behaviour through:

Facilitation techniques during group discussions to redirect or manage behavior in the moment. Some tips can be found here and here.

Private communication with the person to explain how their actions impact others and ask them to change their behavior. For example, one city had an attendee who tended to interrupt conversations and start completely different topics. An organizer messaged him outlining what they’d observed and asking him to try more listening and less topic-insertion.

Consider partial solutions

Run some events for selected audiences. Many groups run some invite-only events (usually for people with some particular backgrounds or significant past engagement in EA), as well as some publicly advertised events that are welcoming to newcomers. Running some events with a curated attendee list can let you better focus an event on its purpose (see notes from The Art of Gathering, which some organisers have found useful), and it will also make it easier for you to exclude people who might make the event worse for attendees. However, if you want to exclude a person from all events, or from the events that are good for newcomers to EA, it’s probably just better to be upfront with the person.
Ask the person to attend only some types of events. Organisers could set limits on what types of events the person can attend. E.g. large talks might be okay, but smaller socials might not be.
Temporary exclusion. Ask someone to step away for a defined period (e.g., 6 months). This can help you notice how things feel without them, gives that person some time to reflect on whether they want to continue to be a part of the group, and gives them a strong signal that their behaviour isn’t welcome.

Check your responsibilities to members

One source of confusion is if organizers aren’t clear about whether the group is fundamentally a public space that anyone can join, or a private space where organizers can set more limits. Laws about this are typically aimed at preventing discrimination against groups of people, rather than excluding specific individuals for past specific behaviour.

There may be more requirements for openness for some groups:

If your group is a registered university group. In some universities, registered clubs must be open to all students to join as a general member, but

Some events can be restricted
Universities allow clubs to remove a member if their behaviour is harmful, disruptive, or violates the student code of conduct
Look up the regulations for your university’s clubs, and ask the staff in charge of clubs if you’re unsure.

If your group is a charity or NGO, and your country’s law indicates that your group must be open to the community.

But even public services can typically exclude specific people for bad behaviour, just as a restaurant typically serves anyone but can exclude specific people for disruptive behaviour.

Most EA events are essentially private events, where organizers can use their judgment about who to include. Many countries define events as private if there’s an application process. In particular, anyone hosting an event in their home should not feel obliged to include someone they’re not comfortable having in their home.

Even if an event is arguably public (e.g. a meetup advertised publicly and held in a public cafe), we think it’s still reasonable to have a conversation with someone who’s caused problems explaining why you’re asking them not to attend.

8. Making the decision

Discuss the decision with some co-organisers.

Consider if there are actions other than exclusion that could be tried first.
Consider the positive and negative impacts of the person's attendance on the group’s ability to have positive impact, including:

The person in question
Other event attendees
The community's ability to attract new members

Consider side effects if you do exclude them, including

How people in your group are likely to react to the decision
If the person is likely to retaliate against organizers or others (such as people who spoke up about problems)

9. If you choose to exclude someone

Have the conversation about exclusion privately, rather than in front of community members - it doesn’t help to embarrass someone. This could be by email or a scheduled call. This might be an upsetting conversation for that person, so keep that in mind, and approach this conversation sympathetically if possible.

If a bad situation is unfolding at an event, interrupt the situation, then take the person aside to speak with them as privately as possible to ask them to leave that event. If you have their contact details we recommend waiting until another day to ask them not to return to the group.

Keep your fellow co-organizers up to date. If there are people who’ve been particularly affected by the person, it may be helpful to tell them that you asked the person to leave and for how long. That way they might feel more comfortable coming to future events.

If you are worried about negative side effects of the exclusion (e.g. the excluded person retaliating in some way, or other community members being unhappy with the decision), consider if there are mitigations or preparations you could take.

10. Final advice

It can feel cold to think about the costs and benefits of someone’s participation, particularly when the group feels like a social community. But being inclusive to literally everyone isn't always inclusive. We’re keen to provide support should you find yourself wondering how to handle a situation. Contact us (CEA’s community health team) for more written resources, and to get advice that’s more tailored to your situation.