Funding Of partial Legal Fees in memory of Jon

Earlier, you kindly fulfilled our appeal to you for funds to repatriate our family member and friend, Dr. Jon Tennant (https://www.gofundme.com/f/repatriation-burial-costs-fund-for-jon-tennant). Your generosity has enabled us to start this painful but vital process. At present (01.6.20) Jon is still in Bali as the current pandemic is slowing down usual processes. 

The present call for funds aims at covering partially the legal fees associated with bringing clarity to the accusations Jon faced over the last months of his life.

To recap, Jon was a tireless and selfless advocate for open science. However, late in his productive life, he experienced a significant amount of cyber-mobbing on Twitter, in large part due to the procedural opacity of a supposedly caring and protective organization (more info following this link : https://jontennant.substack.com/p/the-opencon-saga-5-month-update). 

Over the last months, Jon Tennant also spoke of the effects of bullying, mobbing and cancel culture from the human side, as he experienced it in its most strong effects : https://jontennant.substack.com/p/cancel-culture-makes-everything-look-worse-than-it-is ; https://jontennant.substack.com/p/what-academic-mobbing-feels-like).

Because information has not been shared with us we have not been allowed to follow the usual administrative steps to achieve truth and justice. We hope still to be able to do this. 

We believe that Jon's memory deserves clarification on the accusations targeting him. Clarity in such matters is essential to close up speculations and allow his family and the broader scientific community to set a final learning point behind this case. We hence consider a series of legal steps to attain that goal. Our lawyers estimated the costs of the foreseen steps at £24 000. Your donations will only be used for costs associated information gathering and possibly tweet removal. None of the money you donate will be used to sue people or organizations. Your kind support in this endeavor is greatly appreciated.  We have set the fundraiser at £10,000 due to left over funds from the previous fundraiser and other donations that have already been put aside.

We hope our effort, with your generosity, can make the open science communities further reflect on practices and involvement in cases of bullying and harassment. We hope to honour Jon's memory by making steps towards justice in this regard!  If this fundraiser doesn't meet the required amount, we will cancel it and all donations will be returned to you. 

If you would like to read more in what happened, from Jon himself, please explore the links below


1. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/re-opencon-code-of-conduct-committee-statement

2. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/re-opencon-code-of-conduct-committee-statement-update-2

3. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/re-opencon-statement-update-2

4. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/re-opencon-statement-update-4

5. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/the-opencon-saga-5-month-update

6. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/opencon-saga-update-gdpr-response


and a further 11 heart-to-heart articles related to this:


1. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/cancel-culture-makes-everything-look-worse-than-it-is

2. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/a-new-tattoo-a-new-chapter-in-life

3. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/fire-in-the-soul-and-lessons-in-adversity

4. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/what-academic-mobbing-feels-like

5. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/what-can-men-do-to-help-make-conferences-healthier-spaces

6. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/two-stories-of-sexual-assault

7. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/what-actually-happened-around-opencon-in-2016

8. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/lessons-learned-from-the-opencon-saga-part-1-most-likely

9. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/my-personal-code-of-conduct

10 https://jontennant.substack.com/p/end-academic-bullying-culture

11. https://jontennant.substack.com/p/converting-adversity-into-productivity


Further details could be read in these two articles written by Jon’s sister and a friend shortly after his passing.


1. https://rebeccatennant10.wordpress.com/2020/05/01/what-really-happened-jon-tennant/

2. https://medium.com/@vdeherde/accusations-against-jon-tennant-surrounding-open-cons-ban-78d9589c05eb