Formation of the ACL Ethics Committee

An ACL Ethics Committee will be formed, to provide a continuous and consistent platform for dealing with potential ethical concerns raised within ACL events and the ACL community. The focus of this committee will be to provide guidance and address considerations of what constitutes ethical research (as opposed to e.g., making value judgments).

The role of this committee will be to:

• Define a set of guidelines and processes for dealing with ethical concerns within the ACL
• Coordinate with the Ethics (Co)Chairs at ACL, NAACL, EACL, AACL, EMNLP conferences to ensure consistency of process and guidelines across different events
• Provide clear guidelines to the ACL membership on how to report ethical concerns, as well as any possible implications of such reporting
• Coordinate the compilation and publication of resources to educate the broad community about the limitations and societal implications of the technologies we develop

The committee will consist of three co-chairs serving a five-year team, and six members at large serving a three-year term, ensuring uniform coverage of the three geographic regions represented by AACL, EACL, and NAACL.

Membership

Initial appointed committee (October 2021), ordered by surname:

• Luciana Benotti, committee member (Americas) [she/her] 2021–2024
• Mark Drezde, committee member (Americas) [he/him] 2021–2024
• Karën Fort, co-chair (Europe/Africa) [she/her] 2021–2026
• Pascale Fung, committee member (Asia/Oceania) [she/her] 2021–2024
• Dirk Hovy, committee member (Europe/Africa) [he/him] 2021–2024
• Min-Yen Kan, co-chair (Asia/Oceania) [he/him] 2021–2026
• Jin-Dong Kim, committee member (Asia/Oceania) [he/him] 2021–2024
• Malvina Nissim, committee member (Europe/Africa) [she/her] 2021–2024
• Yulia Tsvetkov, co-chair (Americas) [she/her] 2021–2026