On January 17th, 2017, Barbara Marx Hubbard sent out this beautiful email to the list of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution. In it, she takes a powerful stand, not only for Dr. Marc Gafni but also for truth, justice, and the Evolution of Public Culture.

Dearly Beloved Evolutionary friends, colleagues, co-creators,

I am sending you this very important letter concerning public culture and how we respond to attack on the Internet that has has been directed against a pioneering evolutionary teacher and writer, Marc Gafni.

As a community of leaders I would like to see us take a strong stand on behalf of due process, dialogue, fact checking, compassionate listening and the effort to heal.

The letter is long. It has been prepared by dedicated colleages. Marc has remained silent for many years, focusing on his positive teaching and writing. Now Marc, and the Center for Integral Wisdom, of which I am the Co-Board Chair are responding in depth. Any new false attacks against Marc will from this time forward be responded to directly as they come in.

Thank you, in advance for your willingness to take the time to read through this email and to investigate any or all of the links which provide detailed facts, research and information about Marc Gafni, his attackers and the anatomy of a smear campaign.

This email is about justice, love and human dignity — all values that are not only needed, but required as we move into unprecedented times and an uncertain future.

I (Barbara) have written a post and made a video about these issues which I’m asking you to read and listen to. (Click on the video below to watch now.)

What would you do, Friend, if you were accused of doing something you didn’t do?

What if, almost overnight, those accusations popped up as articles and blog posts online?

And what if you were to find yourself in a ‘trial by internet’, where facts were tossed out the window and the false accusations started to take hold as ‘true’…. simply because when your name was entered into Google search, that’s what people would see on the first page?

Imagine the pain, the outrage, the hurt you would feel.

What if people from different parts of your life, gathered together through the Internet, collapsed timelines, distorted facts, and tried to hijack the narrative of your life?

All of the sudden you life was no longer about love or service.

You are depicted on the Internet in terms which are fundamentally false and a violation of your true character.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both experienced this form of internet abuse. This has been the methodology of what’s recently termed the Alt-Right. It has also been the methodology of what we would like to term the Alt-Left.

The truth is, this type of injustice happens all the time.

But until it happens to you, personally, it’s easy to dismiss it as something that ‘is unfortunate, but unlikely to happen to me’. However, that would be a critical thinking error. It could happen to me, it could happen to you, it could happen to your brother, your mother, your sister, your lover.

We humbly ask you to read the following letter, coming a full year after a virulently orchestrated online smear campaign was unleashed against Marc Gafni.

We realize that this letter is long, but we felt we owed it to you, Friend, and to tens of thousands of people who have remained committed and involved despite the hostile wave of Internet attacks.

We owe you a response, we owe public culture a response and we owe the attackers a response. To not respond would be out of integrity as an organization that stands for truth, justice, human dignity and the evolution of love in public culture.

We understand that your time is valuable so if you are limited on time, we would ask you to watch this incredibly vulnerable and courageous unscripted video that Marc recorded just a few days ago: An Invitation To Dialogue and Transformation. This invitation to dialogue sets the tone and is the context everything else in this email. It is the most important part of this email.

Watch it now by clicking the video below:

The Anatomy of a Smear: The Internet Trial of Marc Gafni

An extended essay by Dr. Clint Fuhs

Next, we would ask you to read Dr. Clint Fuhs essay. Dr. Clint Fuhs, a leading Integral thinker and scholar has been carefully tracking Marc’s work and biography in the larger cultural context for over fifteen years. He has reviewed thousands of pages of first person documentation from Marcs accusers and is deeply familiar with all of the figures involved in the attacks. Fuhs addresses not merely the Marc Gafni story but the larger cultural and spiritual implications of the story for what we refer to at the Center as the “evolution of public culture”.

We offer you this essay in it’s full, unabridged version which you can download here:

>> An extended essay by Dr. Clint Fuhs <<

Third, we are delighted to share with you two groundbreaking new websites. Both sites address the Evolution of Love in Public Culture.

WhoIsMarcGafni.com Website

The first is WhoIsMarcGafni.com. This site focuses on five key categories. You can see an overview of the videos on this here:

> Click here to view the index <<

Below are the five sections of this website site:

1. An Invitation To Dialogue

We consider this the most important part of the site. Click here to view the invitation to dialogue.

2. Articles By Leading Thinkers

This section hosts articles written by leading thinkers and cultural observers, and highly conscious men and women. These articles correct false ‘facts’ and distortions that have been disseminated through the internet and other media outlets in regard to Marc Gafni. The purpose of this section is to set the record straight as a core obligation of justice, love and human dignity for every sacred society. Click here to view the series of articles.

Here is a list of some of the original and curated articles on the site:

3. An Extensive Library Of Video Responses

Marc created a series of video responses that address both the hidden dynamics and underlying memes that underlie this particular smear campaign and smear campaigns in general. This is a first take, which is part of a larger work in progress that is nearing completion is in these very weeks. Click here to view the videos responses. The larger work will also take into account the responses to this website that appear in public culture.

4. A Series Of Unpublished Articles

This section has a series of unpublished articles by Marc that set the record straight in direct response to some of the key distortions that have been put in the public space. Click here to view Marc’s articles

5. 55+ Voices

Nearly 60 colleagues that Marc has worked with for years, share their experience of working and being in relationship with him. Click here to read and listen.
Our intent is never to attack or make wrong. Every word on this website has been carefully reviewed by legal counsel. Our intent and purpose is to set the record straight with facts and to reveal our understanding of the hidden dynamics lying behind the facts.

EvolvingPublicCulture.com Website

Evolving Public Culture: How Weaponizing sex, ‘Scandal’ and Digital Abuse Are Used In the Undermining of Leaders in politics, religion and culture

The second website, Evolving Public Culture, is a core project of the Center for Integral Wisdom and the Foundation for Conscious Evolution where Dr. Gafni serves as the Evolutionary Scholar in Residence.

We stand at a moment in time when the weaponizing of sex and manufacturing of scandals is used to undermine leaders and manipulate politics, religion and culture via digital communications at a faster rate than any other time in history. The recent emergents of a post-truth society and fake news now generate more engagement than truth on social media and are having an enormous impact on the shaping people’s viewpoints and beliefs.

Instead of being a tool that we use to connect and communicate ideas that serve to unite and awaken human, social and planetary potential, the internet is being used to deceive and divide peoples and nations.

This site is dedicated to restoring the fundamental principles of human dignity, fair process and integrity in the digital age. Through thoughtful curation of key articles, posts and papers as well as our own original content we highlight the very tactics used to “pull the wool over our eyes” so that we can reclaim our right to know the truth and make informed decisions based on fact, not lies.

MarcGafni.com Website

Besides these two important websites, there is an older source of information on Marc Gafni’s personal website, MarcGafni.com. The Marc Gafni Facts section of the site has been posted in the public space for many years. It contains some very important information which is not either of the two new sites including a biographical article titled Who is Marc Gafni.

You can also find some of Marc Gafni writings on privacy vs. secrecy, amorous relationships between teachers and students and his insistence that even when one is greatly wronged (as the articles show that Marc was through the false complaints in Israel in 2006), he or she must always take personal responsibility and apologize for whatever their part is in the contribution system. This expresses itself in a public apology that Marc posted in 2008. This Facts section also includes the summation of the Integral Institute report by Dr. Clint Fuhs from 2008 with an important addendum which covers further unfolding all the way through 2014.

Our New Response Policy: A Note from the Foundation For Conscious Evolution and the Center for Integral Wisdom

The Foundation and Center have adopted a NEW POLICY OF RESPONDING within 24 hours to any further claims or attacks that contain false information, distortion or omitted information which creates false impressions in the public space.

We will respond with full information, documentation, and transparency. We will offerer a first response within twenty four hours through the public channels we have set up and then respond appropriately to the fullest extent of the law.

Marc has been largely silent for ten years. He is breaking the silence in a major way for the first time with the publication of these websites. He has responded directly only to those people who have directly attacked with false, distorted or incomplete information which effectively deceived the public.

From the perspective of the Foundation and the Center, the smear campaign has spoken in almost fifty blog posts and several articles. We have responded with the necessary missing information and distinctions to set the record straight.

The intelligent and loving public that is willing to read beyond confirmation bias, with an unguarded heart, now has enough material to make their own evaluation. That was our goal.

The Foundation for Consious Evolution and the Center For Integral Wisdom feel that because we have been attacked and have suffered because of the attack, that dealing with this issue around Marc as a model for restoring integrity to the way we do conflict, is our ethical obligation. As the expression goes, “We are prepared to go to the mat on this one”.

At the same, now that we have offered our response into public culture we are always prepared to walk away. We will not initiate new rounds of this drama but we will respond decisively.

From A Personal Response To A Meta Response

The recent attacks against Marc were based on recycled accusations that were falsified and distorted to a significant degree. The facts, historical issues, hidden motivations and dynamics of what set the campaign into motion were intentionally obscured. The pain and direct damage Marc and the Center experienced from the campaign was significant.

At the same time the Foundation and the Center’s staff, scholars, board and community has paradoxically deepened and thrived during this time.

We thrived not because we circled the wagons and ignored the attack. We thrived in the conversation, open inquiry and fierce dedication to love, truth and transformation that permeated the entire center. Barbara and Marc set the tone for all of us through a refusal to close their hearts, or to become reactive or vindictive.

The only immediate public reaction of the Center was dignified and measured. One public statement was released. That statement, which you can read here, has at the bottom of it, some sixty blog posts which give you a sense of Marc’s working relationship with his colleagues.

At the same time, we understood that while the attacks against Marc were personal, Evolution Itself required us to respond not only at a personal level, but at a meta level and to participate more fully in the evolution of public culture.

In some of our more intimate team meetings in 2016, Marc would tell us that the only way to make any sense of the outrageous pain caused by the attacks is that Reality required it so that we could show up and and respond in a way that would evolve public culture.

So, that has been our commitment… to engage the larger issues with all of the fierce commitment, grace and love that we could muster.

Over the past year, a core team of 9 people have individually dedicated hundreds, and in some cases thousands of hours to researching, writing and creating online media documents that address these cultural issues through the lens of Marc’s story.

It was that commitment that birthed an essay, two new websites, and a series of articles which we have shared with you in this letter.

We do not view this work as in any way separate from our core work at the Foundation for Conscious Evolution or the Center for Integral Wisdom. Indeed understanding how to evolve love in the way we fight, how negative memes are spread in culture, how to transform our we space, how to establish truth, integrity and kindness in the public arena, how to spot malice and demonization, how to take appropriate responsibility and apologize….

These are the vital themes and memes necessary for the emergence of a new vision of meaning and spirit.

After sharing this material we are prepared to walk away from this.

However we have important information which suggests that the smear campaign organizers are so obsessed with their take down campaign, that we should expect the manufacture of “new victim voices” as the response to these posts. That is terribly sad and we hope and pray that this is not the case. But if that is the case, we are fully prepared to respond with fierce grace and truth.

We are also delighted to share that we have found a great law firm that will be representing us if that is necessary. The President of the firm has spent six months reviewing information and understands the lack of legal integrity in so much of what has happened. He and his firm have signed up, as part of their commitment to restore integrity in public culture, to work with us for as long and as much as necessary, to achieve a just outcome in this situation.

With Love,
Barbara Marx Hubbard, President FCE & Co-Board Chair CIW
Lisa Engles, Director of Communication, FCE & Co-Executive Director, CIW