[texhax] Response to appeal of the suspension of the TUG President

[TeX Users Group]

Dear fellow TeX users,

As directors of the TeX Users Group, we are writing to you again regarding
the suspension of Kaveh Bazargan as TUG President, and in particular, the
appeal of that suspension.  This message conveys notice that the TUG Board
has unanimously voted to affirm the suspension.

The original letter to members is at
  https://tug.org/election/2015/suspension.html.
As we wrote there, it is our opinion that TUG had improperly been brought
into at least one private lawsuit by Kaveh.

It is our understanding that Kaveh, without notifying the Board, submitted
in support of a suit he filed against another TUG member, a document that
cites his election as TUG president.  This document also includes the
election statements of all other candidates for the Board, who were
unaware of this use of their information.

We felt strongly that the use of TUG in this context was improper, and
requested that Kaveh withdraw the documents from the suit.  The Board
repeated this request many times to try to convince Kaveh to complete
this task.

No action was taken to comply with our request, nor was the request even
acknowledged.  Instead, we were told by Kaveh, among other things, that
it was just a misunderstanding, and that the Board member election
statements were not relevant to the court case.  However, in our view
no effort was made to withdraw the statements, nor was a statement made
in a court filing that TUG is not, in any shape or form, involved in
the lawsuits.

Kaveh's responses, and specifically, his decision to ignore repeated
requests for information from the Board, only support the Board's
determination that, at this time, Kaveh is not acting in the best
interests of TUG, and that he is potentially using his position as TUG
President as leverage in lawsuits where TUG is not being represented and
has expressed a desire to not be involved.

We stress that the Board made repeated efforts, over the course of months,
to have Kaveh mitigate against this conflict of interest.  This included
offers to have him take a temporary leave of absence while the court
case(s) remained pending.  All efforts were rebuffed.  Accordingly, on
13 Oct 2015 the Board suspended his presidency.

On 12 Dec 2015, the Board received a Letter of Appeal from Kaveh.  In the
Board's view, it contained no new information but concluded with a direct
threat that if he were not reinstated then there would be litigation,
against the Board as a whole as well as individual directors.

The Board deliberated at length on an appropriate response.  Because of
the confrontational tone of the appeal, we have found it necessary to
take the unprecedented step of engaging legal advice.

After much deliberation, the Board voted to unanimously affirm Kaveh's
suspension.  Thus, Kaveh has not been reinstated as TUG President.

-- Barbara Beeton
   for the TUG Board