SPLC Fires Founder Morris Dees
Posted on | March 14, 2019 | Comments Off on SPLC Fires Founder Morris Dees
Excuse me for not blogging this happy news sooner, but I’ve been too busy dancing as deliriously as troops in Times Square on V-J Day:
“Effective yesterday, Morris Dees’ employment at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was terminated,” SPLC President Richard Cohen told The Montgomery Advertiser in a statement on Thursday. “As a civil rights organization, the SPLC is committed to ensuring that the conduct of our staff reflects the mission of the organization and the values we hope to instill in the world. When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.”
Dees, 82, co-founded the SPLC in 1971. The organization gained a reputation for taking the Ku Klux Klan to court and then it started labeling and tracking “hate groups.” In recent decades, it started listing conservative and Christian organizations along with the KKK, and last year it settled a defamation lawsuit for $3.375 million.
Dees’s departure is not the only big news Cohen broke on Thursday, however.
“Today we announced a number of immediate, concrete next steps we’re taking, including bringing in an outside organization to conduct a comprehensive assessment of our internal climate and workplace practices, to ensure that our talented staff is working in the environment that they deserve — one in which all voices are heard and all staff members are respected,” Cohen said in the statement.
“The SPLC is deeply committed to having a workplace that reflects the values it espouses — truth, justice, equity and inclusion, and we believe the steps we have taken today reaffirm that commitment,” he concluded.
In 1994, the Montgomery Advertiser took a deep dive into the organization’s activities, uncovering some evidence of discrimination against black employees.
Last December, a Baltimore lawyer filed a lawsuit taking aim at the SPLC’s tax-exempt status. His suit is moving toward the discovery period, and SPLC’s decision to clean house may have resulted from this litigation, first reported by PJ Media.
(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)
The announcement was deliberately vague as to what Dees did to prompt his dismissal from an organization he built into a $500 million smear machine, but it must have been very bad, indeed. My hunch is that serious criminal charges will soon be announced against Dees. Either that, or somebody in the media got hold of documented evidence of egregious sexual harassment by Dees — text messages, emails, something. No way the SPLC would have dumped Dees over a trivial “he said, she said” type of thing, and I’m almost certain it must be something serious enough that the FBI is involved. If we were to learn that Dees has been keeping a harem of teenage Thai sex slaves on the SPLC payroll, I would not be surprised. Dees is the lowest form of human life on the planet, and I’m prepared to believe the worst about him.
UPDATE: Professor William Jacobson notices that an Alabama-based reporter, Josh Moon, has been sharing what he’s got:
The SPLC fired Morris Dees yesterday and announced it today. Multiple sources have told me that the allegations of inappropriate conduct involve sexual harassment incidents. Multiple incidents that have come to light after an initial recent allegation.
— Josh Moon (@Josh_Moon) March 14, 2019
I have been sent a number of internal SPLC emails that address the ongoing situation and specifically discuss Dees. Looks like a combination of complaints regarding sexual harassment and racial biases in promotion and hierarchy led to this.
— Josh Moon (@Josh_Moon) March 14, 2019
In other SPLC emails, it is clear that Dees is being accused by female employees of some level of mistreatment. The allegations aren't specific and speak more of a history of mistreatment.
— Josh Moon (@Josh_Moon) March 14, 2019
The recent resignation of a black female attorney, Meredith Horton, seems to have been the “last straw” in terms of the SPLC’s issues with women and minority employees. Which is just so deliciously ironic, isn’t it? Here you have Dees & Co. smearing honest people as perpetrators of “hate,” and yet SPLC employees like Horton and others say they were mistreated by this liberal organization.
Still, I’m sure there must be underage Thai hookers involved.