Richard Cohen, president of the SPLC since 2003, cited “recent events” in an email to staff members Friday, writing that he had asked the center’s board to open a search for an interim president “in order to give the organization the best chance to heal.”
“Whatever problems exist at the SPLC happened on my watch, so I take responsibility for them,” Cohen wrote.
Cohen’s leadership of the center, one of the nation’s wealthiest and best-known nonprofit groups, has been under siege in recent weeks.
On March 14, a group of employees wrote to the center’s leaders and warned that “allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity along with it.”
After the center announced that it had fired Morris Dees, its charismatic co-founder, for misconduct, another group of employees sent a separate letter accusing the center’s leadership of being “complicit in decades of racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and sexual harassment and/or assault.”
Dees, 82, has denied any wrongdoing.
The change in leadership at the SPLC, which is widely known for its analyses of extremism and hate groups, is unfolding at a precarious moment for the nonprofit.
After the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the organization’s ranks swelled, and its endowment surged. Ten days before his dismissal was announced, Dees told board members that the center had attracted more than 200 new employees.
But under Cohen, the SPLC was also accused of overreaching in its efforts to stamp out hate. Last year, it reached a $3.375 million settlement for wrongly including a British activist and his organization in a guide to “anti-Muslim extremists.”
There were also internal troubles at the SPLC, with dissent and concerns about its treatment of people of color. In one of the letters written by staff members, workers noted the small number of black people in leadership ranks and that many employees had observed that people of color had been “pushed out, fired, removed from positions of leadership” or had to leave “due to discrimination and a lack of opportunities.”
After Dees’ firing, the center announced that it would review its workplace culture, as well as its policies and practices. Some employees still demanded “real leadership change.”
Cohen is one of several senior SPLC leaders to depart, or make plans to do so, this month. In addition to Dees and Cohen, Rhonda Brownstein, the center’s legal director, submitted her resignation this week. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Meredith Horton, the deputy legal director and among the highest-ranking black women in the center’s history, said this month that she, too, would leave.
In a resignation announcement, Horton, who has not responded to interview requests, wrote that there was “more work to do” to guarantee that the SPLC was “a place where everyone is heard and respected and where the values we are committed to pursuing externally are also being practiced internally.”
Cohen forwarded Horton’s resignation email to the entire staff. He wrote that executives intended to “ensure that our workplace reflects our values.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.