racism in NeurIPS2024

1.

The speaker is Rosalind Pickard, from MIT Media Lab.

2.

The NeurIPS Conference made an announcement about the issue on X. Here is the full announcement;

NeurIPS acknowledges that the cultural generalization made by the keynote speaker today reinforces implicit biases by making generalisations about Chinese scholars. This is not what NeurIPS stands for. NeurIPS is dedicated to being a safe space for all of us. We want to address the comment made during the invited talk this afternoon, as it is something that NeurIPS does not condone and it doesn't align with our code of conduct. We are addressing this issue with the speaker directly.
NeurIPS is dedicated to being a diverse and inclusive place where everyone is treated equally.

Source: https://x.com/NeurIPSConf/status/1867759121023336464

3.

In NeurIPS, one of the keynote conference speakers at the conference made a racist remark on Chinese students. She quoted an imaginary Chinese student as “Nobody at my school told us morals and values.” as an “excuse given by a Chinese student, who is now expelled from a top university.” She repeated the slide in her talk, mentioning “Most Chinese who I know are honest morally upright.”

Upon a question from the audience and call for a correction, the speaker stood by the comments, refused offers for retraction of the unnecessary mention of the nationality. However, she has accepted the “advice to remove it” in the future.

Chinese people who are offended have spoken out in social media, and reported before the conference secretariat. More to that, many people have stated that they will file a complaint right before the MIT, as the speaker is an MIT staff.