Some actuaries are pretty awesome though.
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The weirdest article was one freaking out because someone signed her name with pronouns, and they said she was trying to “promote transgenderism”. Like there’s a movement to convince happy cisgendered people that they really ought to be trans or something.
But they were also clearly concerned that the CEO of the CAS is Black.
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Promote transgenderism, lol. Most trans people I know wouldn’t wish this on anyone. We are what we are, but I would never ever try to convert anyone.
Seriously?
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Yeah, they weren’t quite as explicit about that as they were with the anti-trans stuff, but it was pretty obviously there.
They are very opposed to “diversity, equity, inclusion” efforts.
When they sent a blast email about how awful it would be if we had to have that as part of our CE, I actually replied, and described a couple of sessions of DEI CE I’ve been to this year, both of which were unambiguously relevant CE. One was about the lingering effects today of redlining, and how to observe and avoid that bias in the data, and the other was about what regulators are looking for and what you need to do to pass regulatory muster. The guy I wrote to admitted that those both sounded fine, but what about BAD stuff that is just pushing an agenda? We wouldn’t want that! And he urged me to reply to the CAS’s survey.
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The redlining one sounds really interesting.
Yeah, I’d have attended that if I was allowed.is it recorded online?
It was. It was very mathy, and kind of scary. If I remember, when I’m at my work PC, I’ll see if I can find the reference.
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Not sure if this is one of the webinars that Lucy is thinking of, but The Actuary and Social Justice session from the 2020 CAS Annual Meeting is really good and is available at the bottom of this page.
https://www.casact.org/article/watch-complimentary-2020-cas-annual-meeting-session-recordings
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Wait, this person is actually employed as an actuary? Fairly certain that my company as well as many other companies would have a big problem with an actuary employed by them who was a vocal bigot like that.
He runs his own consulting firm I believe.
Is the CAS aware of his website?
Oh hell yes!
There seem to be three of them running the thing, and they have sent email to every CAS member several times, now.
But i think the other two are retired.
Perhaps a reef invasion is in order? 
Doesnt look like they allow you to post there unless you’re a member of the cas. I’m curious to read it though to see just how many cas members are bigots. Are people posting with their real names or something? How do they verify that someone is a legit cas member?
Yeah it would take strategic planning for sure.
Probably not worth the effort. Although I hope someone is keeping an eye on these fuckwits should stuff become a legit threat to someone.
To elaborate, they claim that they asked to meet with the CAS, and the CAS cancelled on them on short notice. And they mailed every member the document they wanted to discuss with the CAS along with this claim, saying, “look how horrible the CAS is.”
If their story is basically true, i suspect that the CAS initially agreed to meet with them, but someone read the document shortly before the meeting, and that’s why the CAS backed out. It was horrendous, and it was clear from reading it that nothing productive would come from a meeting.
The CAS is generally happy to meet with members. I’ve written letters to the CAS about policy, and that’s often turned into a chat with the relevant VP or something. It’s not that large an organization, and I’m sure that if i was concerned enough i could get a chat with the CEO. But not if i sent them that kind of bigoted rant.
I think that letter was the one that opened by saying the CAS should stick to its knitting and avoid politics, and then somehow turned to a discussion of US incarceration rates by race, something that was completely irrelevant to the topic. It was really bad.
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I wonder how many “members” they have on their website. Can’t be much.
It used to be publicly viewable. And anyone could comment. I suppose they were overwhelmed with negative comments and that’s why they locked it. Certainly, the one time i looked at it, there were a ton of negative comments. I think they ask you to register using the email address you use for the CAS. I felt dirty even giving them web-views. I haven’t registered.
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Given a comment in a recent email, I believe all of them have been reported multiple times to the ABCD and CAS disciplinary committee, but that process is slow.