Civis Analytics is a US data science software and consultancy company founded by Dan Wagner in 2013, with backing by Eric Schmidt.[1] Wagner had served as the Chief Analytics Officer for Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign.[2]
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Civis Analytics helps businesses "understand their data, use that data to make predictions, and get recommendations on what steps to take next".[1] Civis works with Fortune 500 companies and the country's largest organizations, including Verizon, Airbnb, Discovery, FEMA, Boeing and the American Red Cross.[3]
In 2020, the company faced controversy for firing employee David Shor after he tweeted a short summary of an academic paper by Omar Wasow,[4] a black political scientist at Princeton University. Wasow's study contended that nonviolent protests had historically been more effective at driving political change than violent protests, which led some critics to argue that Shor's tweet could be interpreted as criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement.[5][6][7] After the firing, Civis Analytics initially released a statement claiming that had not fired any employees for tweeting academic papers, but later retracted that statement and replaced it with a new statement that omitted that claim.[8] In 2021, Wasow was quoted as having concluded from his conversations with Civis Analytics and Shor that "at the heart of it was how [Shor] was treated on Twitter by people who essentially shot the messenger"; Wasow dismissed accusations of racism or otherwise acting improperly as "baseless".[9]
Eleven employees were laid off on October 30, 2020.[10] In December, seven of them filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB for wrongful termination.[11][10] In July 2021, the NLRB dismissed the claim.[12]
See also
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edit- ^ a b Ha, Anthony (November 30, 2016). "Eric Schmidt-backed data science startup Civis Analytics raises $22M". techcrunch.com. Retrieved February 28, 2017.
- ^ "How Obama's Team Used Big Data to Rally Voters". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ Elahi, Amani (July 16, 2015). "Civis Analytics takes Obama data lessons to next level". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 28, 2017.
- ^ Wasow, Omar (August 2020). "Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting". American Political Science Review. 114 (3): 638–659. doi:10.1017/S000305542000009X. ISSN 0003-0554.
- ^ Yglesias, Matthew (July 29, 2020). "The real stakes in the David Shor saga". Vox. Retrieved November 8, 2021.
- ^ Chait, Jonathan (June 23, 2020). "An Elite Progressive LISTSERV Melts Down Over a Bogus Racism Charge". Intelligencer. Retrieved November 8, 2021.
- ^ Chait, Jonathan (2020-06-11). "The Still-Vital Case for Liberalism in a Radical Age". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
- ^ Mounk, Yascha. Stop Firing the Innocent. The Atlantic, June 27, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-innocent/613615/
- ^ Brennan, Trip (2021-01-14). "Omar Wasow's Years-Long Research Met a Once-in-a-Generation Movement". Blue Tent. Retrieved 2021-06-04.
- ^ a b Jones, Sarah (2021-04-01). "Democratic Firm Is Accused of Firing Workers for Speaking Up". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ "Civis Analytics, Inc. | National Labor Relations Board". www.nlrb.gov. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ "Civis Analytics, Inc. | National Labor Relations Board". www.nlrb.gov. Retrieved 2021-06-03.