Did you know that all ACM-sponsored conferences have an anti-harassment policy? I didn’t, until I chaired the Haskell Symposium last year. The concise policy says, among other things, that people shouldn’t use my family constitution to interfere with my professional participation. And the policy has teeth. That’s great.

My not knowing the policy and not seeing it publicized didn’t make me go out of my way to harass anyone. But it did make me less sure and less comfortable that I belonged at ICFP. Briefly, it’s because I didn’t know if it would be common ground at the conference that my actual self was fully human. That’s not something I can take for granted in general society. Also, it’s because I didn’t know whether my fellow conference attendees were aware of the policy. We could all use a reminder, and a public signal that we mean it.

For these reasons, I’m very happy that ICFP will start to publicize ACM’s existing anti-harassment policy and make sure everyone registered knows it. All ACM conferences should do it. That’s why Tim Chevalier, Clement Delafargue, Adam Foltzer, Eric Merritt, and I are doing two things. We ask you to join us:

1. Donate to the Ada Initiative. Our goal is for the functional programming community to raise $8192 by the end of Friday (Sept 19) UTC. To count toward this goal, please use this link: http://supportada.org/?campaign=lambda
2. Call on the ACM and tell your friends. For example, I tweeted this:
   I donate to @AdaInitiative because I want @TheOfficialACM events to announce their anti-harassment policy http://supportada.org/?campaign=lambda #lambda4ada

Thanks for improving our professional homes!

(UPDATE: Wow! We reached our initial goal $4096 in just 5 hours! We increased the goal to $8192, thanks to your generosity. And if we raise $16,384, we will sing ”There’s no type class like Show type class” and put a recording on the Internet.)