Accountability always starts at the top

By Jon Hyman on January 19, 2022

How do you respond to an employee who states that the Covid-19 vaccine is a plot by “the Jews” to exterminate people? Does your answer change if the employee in question is the company’s founder?

The correct answers: You fire him, and no, it doesn’t matter who he is.

The scenario recently played out at Entrata, a Utah technology company. David Bateman, Entrata’s founder, sent an email to multiple parties, including various Utah tech leaders. Bateman’s email started with the subject line, “Genocide.” It went downhill from there.

“I believe the pandemic and systematic extermination of billions of people will lead to an effort to consolidate all the countries in the world under a single flag with totalitarian rule,” he wrote. He then added, “I believe the Jews are behind this. For 300 years the Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church and place a Jew covertly at the top. … I know, it sounds bonkers.”

Bonkers isn’t the word I’d use. Thankfully, Entrata’s board of directors was swift to act once the email came to its attention. It demanded Bateman’s immediate resignation, which he provided without a fight. Still, in an email to KSL TV, Bateman professed “nothing but love for the Jewish people.” His conspiracy-laden anti-semitic email says otherwise.

Here’s my question: is this the first knowledge this company has of Bateman’s anti-Semitism, or did it only act because it became public?

Accountability must start at the top. If an organization wants to eliminate discrimination, harassment, and other related issues, it cannot permit this type of misconduct to go unchecked and unpunished. Someone with these views has no business in your workplace, let alone on the board of directors. Good for Entrata for taking a stand against anti-Semitism and eliminating Bateman from its organization. I really want to know, however, why it waited so long to do so.

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