Reframing Ronin Document and changes to this G group

[Paola Di Maio]

Hello Fellow Ronin Scholars

Just to inform that the Reframing Ronin Document has disappeared from the original link!

(I presume this is part of the continued obfuscation going on) 

However I saved a copy, which is now publicly accessible to anyone wanting to make edits here

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MvMYB2ouidtGQRTc_NykFzg2UgXu4s3wbYXFxuCESeo/edit?usp=sharing

I'll continue to document the story as it evolves as facts and figures continue to emerge

(open questions marks)

I have also made changes to this G Group as it is now available as Ronin Institute General Partnership, not affiliated

with any entity but open to all discuss governance and other scholarly mattersm that anyone can join

Thank you again for contributions

Best regards

PDM

[Regina M]

Wow I can't believe that important document disappeared - well done on saving a copy, Paola. Thank you

And thanks for opening up the availability of this g-group.

Best
Regina

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[Paola Di Maio]

I took a backup some time ago, so anything written after that date would not be there

I also found that Jorrit, had put a backup copy in his  Github repo, together we other documents we collaboratively

developed  that we may have lost track of, or that may have become unavailable

However a Google Doc supports version history, while the downloads of the same opened in office or OpenOffice

may not show the version history not comments

I cloned Jorrit repo for safekeeping and will be adding documents and pointers to discussions we have had on this list, as well as to the open questions

https://github.com/RoninInstitute/records

 

It is regrettable when the document we collectively curate and own are wiped out together with the

history of what happened, including the open question marks, and a false narrative that does not correspond to fact is put on record . Which is pretty much what happened with the previous entity

Ronin Institute has been good Scholars for many  except for the wrongdoing of a handful of people who acted for personal gain at the expense of  others, so documenting the process is paramount

to understand what is taking place

As scholars, we  gather, preserve and analyse data and facts and keeping a neat trail of documentation

is essential, 

If anyone has other admissible docs to upload that may be of interest, please feel free to do so

PDM

[alain tam]

Paola,

You referenced the Reframing Ronin document, which is owned by Joritt. I asked Alex about it and he assured me that no "obfuscation" or other nefarious purpose was intended. (It seems that the permissions were inadvertently restricted.) The following link will allow you to access an archive folder with a shortcut to the Reframing Ronin document along with many other useful documents:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1izJqrCO_78p-V3BOX_TAfTy_fD2mQ00r

Cheers,

Allan

[Paola Di Maio]

Thank you Alain

You have good magic

Other permissions were revoked, to shared Google docs folders but the link you send today looks tidy, 

I was one of the managers of the youtube channel and in the last few weeks I do not see it in my console 

was that permission also revoked by accident?

*the reframing doc is particularly important, together with the meeting notes because they help to fill everyone in as to some of the decision making processes that led to incorporation 

I am pretty sure the bylaws were drafted under a CC BY license which is not revocable thanks

1. you mention incorporation of the entity in California was done pro bono, but the firm in question does not seem to offer pro bono service   https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/

Can  we get a declaration from this company , a statement of accounts from them to show that is the case, and if it is not

if someone, say, has paid for the incorporation, can that fact  also be recorded

2. Re the domain name ownership, a simple declaration from the domain owner *for transparency and keeping record of changes

3. Before you made them available in this link today, these documents had become inaccessible. However, I recovered *and cloned some files from Jorrit s Github repo purely for safekeeping.

 Made a copy of the Meeting notes with line numbers for ease of reference and added some open questions . In Line 40 there is a reference to negative members  in the Google Group who made such a remark, and who would the negative members be?  Also, on line 100 there is a reference to Michael. who is he?

Thanks for helping to clean up this act!

I already express gratitude for all the good work done by everyone, but we cannot let things slip

[alain tam]

You're welcome, Paola.

 

Regarding your two main questions, Northwest did not provide pro bono services. They're our process agent. As you might imagine, many of the actions that have been taken involving incorporation, domain names, D&O insurance, etc. required funds that were generously fronted by former Ronin scholars. As Rami's update of April 26 mentioned, ownership of the ronininstitute.org domain name was transferred from Jon to Alex. Soon, ownership will be transferred to RIIS 2.0. That we were able to obtain our original domain name was a fantastic development.

Can you proactively work together with us? We need more volunteers.

-Allan

[Paola Di Maio]

Thanks to you Alain

I appreciate your good will to make things work, and everybody's else's

In case you have not noticed, I have proactively volunteered hundreds of hours for over a year (by starting  this Group, which has served as the main communication platform for scholars on all matters up t the incorporation of the new entity afaik) and for some years before that with other tasks.

 But while many of us have volunteered, not only without compensation but also  without acknowledged, and sometimes been even been abused,  many other scholars in receipt of public funding, never contributed a single minute of volunteer time, nor a single post or minor open access contribution, nor opened up the fundied activities to compensate volunteers for their activities, and not even replied to emails, 

Something I hope will change in the future

Some concerns@

-  some issues/questions are addressed/answered but not others . something is missing from the narrative leaving gaps in the responses 

- there are things (discussions, decisions) taking place behind the scene,(you trickle bits of information, but not sure where you get this info from, who is telling what to whom.)

- the majority of scholars are at the receiving end (via this Group) of bits of information that trickle down but not involved in discussions/decisions, and some of those  making decisions are silent, sometime we dont even know who they are or what role they may be playing 

- In an earlier email you wrote the entity registrations was pro bono,

(it will cost me, my computer and the universe energy to pull up a link but you can retrieve it yourself)

 Please arrange for a folder /ledger for accounting purposes and record keeping of who is disbursing what? what money is coming in, what money is going out the new entity?

- another missing document in the folder you shared is the WG policies and procedures referenced in the bylaws

- if decisions cannot be traced *who made what decision, for example to incorporate in California, or who deleted the CCBY notice from documents, or who revoked permits/access to shared resources, then we cannot  share responsibility for these actions. it's a risk to share responsibility for spurious, arbitrary decisions made behind the scenes by people that we dont even know may exist

- At the same time, as the bylaws stand right now, this decision making process is rather bureaucratic, who can invest time to have meetings and make contributions to an organisation that does not offer compensation and undocumented, what is the incentive for becoming involved in such an entity?

- if some of these decisions taken anonymously lead to some poor economic/business outcomes  or even breach of legality *revoking a cc by license, however minor, it s a breach

https://uark.libguides.com/c.php?g=953787&p=9046255

 beginning of a slippery slope we've been down before

Btw-  for those who may want to continue to investigate why the former entity was dissolved, I note

a discrepancies between the dissolution statement (shared by Rami) dated Sept 2024

and the filing of the accounts *how the funds were disposed of in the last filing (shared by Keith)

I am not good at accounting and it would be great if someone can reconcile these two sets of figures

and if they deem fit, to submit a complaint to the competent authorities

I am sure there is a lot more to bring up, let's continue to build an Institute that works for everyone

PDM 

[Tom Lawrence]

Just want to comment on one line in this email, to ensure that credit is given appropriately. (This seems to be a common theme of these emails lately, with Paola complaining about a “only a partial list of the contributors” in a previous communication.) The email below states that “I have proactively volunteered hundreds of hours for over a year (by starting  this Group, which has served as the main communication platform for scholars on all matters up t the incorporation of the new entity afaik)”. Actually, it was one of three main communication platforms, the other two being the original Slack workspace and the Discord server set up by John LaRocco.

 

Of these three, I think the Discord server was the most heavily used considering the period as a whole, with probably hundreds if not thousands of posts by scholars relating to the problems encountered with the original institute and discussing ways forward. The server remains heavily used, although traffic on these topics has reduced significantly since the bylaws group got into full swing. The original Slack workspace was also very heavily used in the early months of last year’s crisis, but postings tailed off sooner on there than on Discord. It has now ceased to operate. (There was also a limited amount of traffic on the Slack workspace that Paola set up, but this was far less than any of the other three channels of communication, mainly because it was intended for discussions of research and similar scholarly purposes – as, indeed, dominates the posts on the Discord server.)

 

To be fair, Paola does caveat the statement about the group being used as the main communication platform with “afaik”, and she wouldn’t know about these, not having been on either platform since shortly after the crisis hit, so it’s accurate as a statement of her knowledge. But I’d hate for the vast amount of discussion on the other two main platforms to go unacknowledged.

 

Tom

 

 

Sent from Outlook for Android

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[Paola Di Maio]

Tom

thanks for the note

In fact, I did encourage the use of this G group ALSO for cross posting from the other channels

Slack had become inaccessible when this group was started, and I know a lot of discussion is going on on Discord, it could be useful to have a link to the thread o Discord when pertinent to the discussion here

*say for example an announcement is made or some knowledge is shared from the Discord platform, it could be linked to such discussion

But this group and communication are important for discussion and decision making 

I also like to be on record sometimes as saying 'i agreed with this decision'  or I disagreed with this decision

even if a decision is made that I disagree with, I like to be able to note my agreement/disagreement

*at least i can say 'I SAID SO'

say for example that someone was considering California, instead of Colorado which was the first choice from the survey

why not start a discussion about what is moviating this decision, getting some opinions and input before making the decision. And why not document who made the decision, when and who agreed/disagreed with it?

Making a decision that is not in line with the choices expressed by scholars, and then saying it is based on consensus, is false I am afraid. And a premise for an organisational culture of deceit

[Tom Lawrence]

Paola

 

Thanks for this reply. Yes, I remember you encouraging the use of this group for cross posting from the other channels. (Indeed, I see that mention of the other two platforms is still in the footer of emails sent on this group.) Unfortunately, the sheer volume of discussion on Discord would have meant that cross-posting it all, or even a representative sample, would have taken up many, many hours, and I couldn’t spare the time for that.

 

I accept that Slack had become inaccessible for you when this group was started, but actually for the vast majority of scholars, this was not the case. To my knowledge, very few found themselves unable to access the Slack workspace, and for those few that did, most of them were able to get back on to it after a fairly short period (I seem to recall Keith Tse was one such scholar). It remained in use until it was deactivated in March this year, as described in Keith’s email to this group on 11 March, copied and posted below for reference.

 

Best wishes

 

Tom

 

 

“Dear all, as you may have noticed, our Slack platform has been deactivated (almost immediately after the announcement of our new bylaws), which is very inconvenient as this used to be the hub of our Ronin community. We have been using Discord for close to a year now (almost immediately after the formal announcement of closure last April), and I rather like it, even though it is not as good as the Slack Premium subscription that we used to have (though it is significantly better than Slack basic which is really quite basic). I believe that US 501(c)3 organisations can enjoy a free subscription of Slack Premium which we may consider for RIIS 2.0. For the time being, if anyone would like to join our Discord server, please contact either me or John LaRocco for a time-sensitive invite link. There are many good discussions on Discord and we hope that as many of our members as possible can participate in them! 

 

Best, 

Keith 

--"

[Paola Di Maio]

Tom, just for the record

Regarding the old slack, I remember interacting there with people like Ponn. Sylbe de clarke

and a few other WG members whom I have never heard of since. In fact I have been wondering what happened to many of the scholars I used to interact with.

But I do not remember ever interacting on slack with many of the other folks who joined this group since

And many of the scholars I have been interacting with here including Alain, and many others (who responded to the surveys, and those who agreed to the membership fee proposed by Alaina etc) were not on slack afaik

The problem with slack was that after the announcement of closure, it was the outgoing board enabled

it erratically (it was not managed transparently nor coherently)

Afaik, slack login was tied to the domain name that was deactivated long before the bylaws were announced

and I when this list went quiet, it became clear that scholar may have migrated conversations elsewhere

(this is what I meant by obfuscation, behind the scene)

Information that is shared selectively is not consistent with the declared ethos of the Ronin Scholars

Either way, slack and discord may not work for everyone, and not everyone joined either (afaik)

 so it is important to have multiple channels for key communications

and if questions are raised on one platform, and answers come up on a different platform, they should be crossposted (not by you necessarily)

Either way, communication and information have been patchy, probably by design - enabling some members to

be better informed and participate in the discussion, but not others

PDM

[Tom Lawrence]

Pretty much agree with everything there.

 

Of course I didn’t have sole responsibility for cross-posting; my point was that the sheer volume of comment on Discord (and in addition on Slack) was a barrier, and the reasons I didn’t cross-post everything applies equally to everyone else using those channels. I think that’s why it was never done at scale. (In fact, I probably did cross-post quite a bit more than most participants in the conversations, partly because I was on all three channels, and tried to keep up to date on them.)

 

Tom

[Paola Di Maio]

Tom,Alain and everyone

I am also critical of what may be going on behind the scene, but its difficult to comment

since whatever is taking place may not be in the open/known to most scholars (that I am in touch with)

It is clear that the ethics, principles and values declared in the bylaws are null and void

There is no consensus, there is no transparency, and there is accountability!!

This is NOT a member led organisation, as far as I can tell.

I have figured out why RIIS was incorporated in California by taking a further look at the bylaws:  because 

the legislation there does not hold Councillors responsible and liable for anything -  This is clearly contradicting the principle of

accountability stated in the bylaws themselves.

 If the institute is based on the accountability principles. how come

nobody at RIIS will be responsible for anything, including for possible financial fraud or misconduct carried out as part of RIIS ordinary

activities?   This is only one of the possible conflicts/contradictions which fellows need to pay attention to

Under the current bylaws RIIS could well become a criminal organisation where nobody can be held responsible for the crimes!

and all thanks to the nice labels that make it look otherwise.

also:

In the current version of the bylaws, these reference a local context document, which is also in the shared folder

This is dated 2022 , any reference/for this document,, where does it come from. in what way was this incorporated in the bylaws? I do not remember seeing this reference in the version of the bylaws that I reviewed earlier this year

There is also a document entitled  'feedback by the attorney' in the shared drive, dated April 2025, 

who is the attorney. Who appointed him and who paid for it?  Is this the attorney appointed by Alain T  was much earlier so I am not sure it is the same attorney. Can this feedback be made available to scholars so that we can all learn what it was about?  See screenshot

😁😁

Heavens forbid all the threads are crossposted all the time - some scholars are not on slack and discord also

 because they may not have bandwidth nor interest to follow every thread, not knowing if a thread contains important

information about how things are evolving.

I am trying to focus on what I consider important points for organizational accountability purposes,

Especially when there are multiple inconsistent narratives and it is not clear who is telling what to whom

Bylaws, legal incorporation, they are just formalities, nonetheless they must be aligned

. These are dense, lengthy documents that most scholars do not read!

When slack was  discontinued, without notice,  more than once, like a hiccup, all the information and documents exchanged there suddenly were lost.  This is why communication should not rely solely on slack

Note once again, that because a limited number of scholars have been taking an active interest in taking the incorporation further

we should remain grateful for the work done by the bylaws group, nonetheless it is regrettable that 

 extremely complex and highly bureaucratic entity, which is going to be difficult to govern without legal and administrative support

for which effectively the law does not apply.

To that effect, I am shortly going to be publishing the open access version of all  the resources we have created, including a version

of the bylaws that scholars have contributed to *in addition to the input of the bylaws WG, many scholars have helped to

advance and finalise the bylaws who are not acknowledged in the document itself

These documents can be then used 

to incorporate *or not  their own legal entity as they deem appropriate.  I am also donating the domain name ronin-institute.org

to  Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship  as a broader community not tied to a specific entity, until the creases are ironed out

Have a lovely summer everyone, back to my deadlines and papers, which is the scholar work

Pdm

[Arkadiusz Jadczyk]

Paola, Thank you for this wake-up post.

Ark

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[Regina M]

Paola,

Your clear narrative, research, and all the work you've done to organize the available information  is amazing. Thank you~
Regina

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[alain tam]

Hello Paola,

I address two points you raised.

A main purpose of incorporating is to provide limited liability for stakeholders. This is also the reason we purchased D&O insurance. Would you want to volunteer as a board member if you could lose your house and car as a result of a lawsuit? I certainly wouldn't. Of course, limited liability applies to civil matters. No one is immune from criminal prosecution if crimes are committed.

You reference 'feedback by the attorney' in the shared drive, dated April 2025. You ask:

Who is the attorney? Who appointed him and who paid for it?  Is this the attorney appointed by Alain T.

The attorney who provided this feedback was not Spencer, whom the legal group retained for a fee. Rather, it is an attorney that I believe resides in California and provided some advice on the bylaws pro bono.

Cheers,

Allan

[Regina M]

Hi Allan,

   Thank you for the relevant information, I, and I'm sure others, appreciate this.

I think it would help with general transparency to all Scholars, as Paola is calling for, to provide the name of that pro-bono attorney.

Best Regina

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[Paola Di Maio]

Alain

Thanks for addressing two points,

The fact is that the bylaws were  frozen ini February, weren't they? . *see various emails

But they bylaws at incorporation date are a completely different set of bylaws, that were not seen by the scholars *afaik

and contain several additional sections *including  a reference to the context document dated 2022

*and btw a copy of the audit 2021 in the same folder would also be a nice document to see, if you manage to get hold of it

Scholars were not shown the actual bylaws used for the incorporation, afaik

The version history of the bylaws document has been disabled the making it impossible to track the changes after the February version that was shown to us was 'frozen'

Now you are trying to say that all this is happening as a mishap.

You wrote in an earlier email, that the company had been incorporated on a pro bono basis

then retracted, saying it was not so

Now you say that the attorney in California has been contracted on a pro bono basis

Can we see the engagement letter where this pro bono service is offered, together with the advice received?

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/pro-bono/introduction-to-pro-bono

Further, of course, we do not want our councillors to be personally liable , but who is then responsible

for misconduct and wrongful acts including deceit and lies to stakeholders and the public?

Here we are saying that councillors may behave unlawfully, on any count, including infringing the bylaws, transgressing its principles, deceiving members,  openly lying about everything without having to abide by law

This premise contradicts the values stated in the bylaws, which are full of contradictions, loopholes and a minefield

of caveats.

Corporate Misconduct may be criminal or civil

https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3157&context=faculty_scholarship

It seems  that 

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=law_facbookdisplay

P

[Paola Di Maio]

Alain, and everyone who may be following the evolution

 in addition to the points below, the lack of answers to the question

'why did we incorporate in California instead of Colorado' may suggest that directors

are trying to minimise responsibility to act responsibly

discharge of duty= fulfill contractual obligations

Sounds like this entity  could be easily used  as a vehicle for unscrupulous individuals for unlawful conduct

and give legal cover for abuses which characterized the previous administration

Something for members to consider and create operational safeguards against?  

More bureaucracy....

[Paola Di Maio]

and *apologies for multiple emails

I ll stop here but there could be more

Is going to be a tough call to hold anyone responsible for unlawful conduct,

despite the bylaws invoking consensus, transparency and accountability throughout

these mentions are just intended to give the appearance of the new entity being something nice

The  legal reality of this entity is that it is being set up to protect potential misconduct of its

governing body, taking also into account the complex structure and lack of visibility of the

policies and procedures embedded in its bylaws, etc etc etc

As an independent consultant and advisor

who has been volunteering for over a year to reboot Ronin Institute

(offering this advice without compensation, acknowledgement nor reward)

 i  can only encourage members and stakeholder investing  in the new entity  to  investigate and address open questions and concerns

PDM

[alain tam]

Paola,

You state:

 "You wrote in an earlier email, that the company had been incorporated on a pro bono basis then retracted, saying it was not so"

You must have misunderstood what I wrote. Can you please be specific and point out where I said that "the company had been incorporated on a pro bono basis then retracted, saying it was not so." I don't recall ever saying that.

Thanks.

-Allan

[alain tam]

Hi Regina,

I don't have the name of the pro bono attorney. It was not I who dealt with them.

-Allan

[Paola Di Maio]

Alain, I would so much rather have scholarly conversations with you and the rest of this group, instead of getting lost in very boring exchanges

Dont get me wrong, I really appreciate your efforts and everyone's efforts to move this reboot forward, so thank you

I feel the cold touch of an invisible hand somewhere that gives me the chills

Under the current incorporation Councillors do have legal obligation to discharge their duties, including their duties to members, fellows, stakeholders the state and the public and are not liable to adhere to the bylaws, as these have been ignored clearly from the onset

Do you realize, Alain, how much time are we spending on these discussions, and that if we had a log

of who took the iincoporate in Califronia decision, when , how was consensus achieved, we could be investing our energies in writing grant proposals  :-)

But things are so hazy that I suspect you yourself may not be able to see everything what is going on clearly,

Ok you ask to be specific

I attache two snippets, both from this list April 29 in the first email (snip 2) I asked you 'do you know who paid for the incorporation'

You never replied to my question on that thread -

Eventually you replied to Regina .*snip 2

Your replies says that the bylaws were written by scholars *you probably genuinely did not realise that they had been completely re-written since they had become supposeedly frozen last Feb .   2.  That the incorporation was pro bono

SNIP 2

SNIP 2

[Paola Di Maio]

Not sure if the screenshots have come through 

resending snips, and link to your response @Alain  with your replies to Regina highlighted in yellow  

https://groups.google.com/g/ronin-scholars/c/encb4XoBpuM/m/MmDmss7jDwAJ

On Tue, Jun 24, 2025 at 8:04 PM Paola Di Maio <paolad...@gmail.com> wrote:

Alain, I would so much rather have scholarly conversations with you and the rest of this group, instead of getting lost in very boring exchanges

Dont get me wrong, I really appreciate your efforts and everyone's efforts to move this reboot forward, so thank you

I feel the cold touch of an invisible hand somewhere that gives me the chills

Under the current incorporation Councillors do have legal obligation to discharge their duties, including their duties to members, fellows, stakeholders the state and the public and are not liable to adhere to the bylaws, as these have been ignored clearly from the onset

Do you realize, Alain, how much time are we spending on these discussions, and that if we had a log

of who took the iincoporate in Califronia decision, when , how was consensus achieved, we could be investing our energies in writing grant proposals  :-)

But things are so hazy that I suspect you yourself may not be able to see everything what is going on clearly,

Ok you ask to be specific

I attache two snippets, both from this list April 29 in the first email (snip 2) I asked you 'do you know who paid for the incorporation'

You never replied to my question on that thread -

Eventually you replied to Regina .*snip 2

Your replies says that the bylaws were written by scholars *you probably genuinely did not realise that they had been completely re-written since they had become supposeedly frozen last Feb .   2.  That the incorporation was pro bono

 

SNIP 1

SNIP 2

https://groups.google.com/g/ronin-scholars/c/encb4XoBpuM/m/MmDmss7jDwAJ

[Regina M]

Allan, I recall this exchange exactly as Paola recounted it. 

It is simple to just scroll up to earlier emails, I think you can see for yourself what you had stated. 

It is difficult enough to have extended strings of email messages but asking people to demonstrate things that were said days ago is even more difficult, and each person should take the responsibility to do this search or else things can simply turn into a constant series of requests to find earlier messages to support later conclusions. Eventually that becomes impossible.

Regina 

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[Regina M]

I'd like to add that, while incorporation in California does make individuals on the Board much more difficult to hold legally responsible, that doesn't mean the new Ronin institute was set up in order to commit any sort of hanky-panky.

It does, however, mean it's easier to do so as Paola states.

In light of the other difficulties of incorporating in California, including the very high state taxes with fewer exposure than other states, and lengthy state tax fillings, both of which will necessitate that the In incur the expense of an accountant, I have stated from the very beginning that California was a very poor state to choose guy incorporating. It is extremely unclear why it was chosen when much simpler states, such as South Dakota or Delaware, could have been easily chosen from the start.

Regina

[Paola Di Maio]

Would be interesting to know who decided that RIIS2 was to be incorporated in California, when the decision was made, how consensus was reached on that decision

why the bylaws finalized and frozen in Feb were changed and who paid for the attorney  etc

In the absence of  info the hypothesis of possible  puppeteering from people behind the scene may emerge, and that maybe volunteers , under informed and in good faith could become mislead 

P

[Regina M]

For clarification, I think what Paola is pointing out over and over is that the evolution from the sudden, unprofessional and suspicious closure of the original Ronin institute to where we are now  with an entirely new institute which shares the name Ronin has transpired in an very unclear way, and monthly had been put in place to prevent fraud or a similar sudden closure from happening again.

   Accountability and open meetings have not happened, instead a small team held meetings and crafted by-laws which we were made to accept and then were changed. The bylaws are confusing and vague. If we have a mission statement, I couldn't tell you what it is. The finances are unclear, the governance is unclear, and whatever benefits the new Ronin institute offers to it's scholars is unclear.

  The current self-organized board refused to simply clean up the problems with the original Ronin, which would have left the institute intact - all that was built over more than fifteen years including the website, email history, library, Scholar profiles, scholar groups, and most of all our excellent reputation - all of that was possible to have been preserved.

  Instead the new board wanted to sweep everything under the carpet and "start fresh" but with the old name of Ronin, and with even more unclear governance.

   Now we have a group but the bylaws are confusing and seemingly unfair as the were frozen but capriciously changed in ways that are either undocumented or difficult to find if documented anywhere.

   This new group has an unclear goal and seems to already have scholars who are "in" with a voice and those who who "out" with little or no voice.

  This is not the vibrant Ronin Institute I was proud to be a member of but a mushy club right now

   I think if we want to move ahead we need to think about the excellent point Paola has made, and make improvements to the structure. I further believe that the old Ronin Institute still needs an investigation of its financial documents, and the grant money and institute account of over 300k (an amount which has been verified several times) which has disappeared needs to be recovered.

IMHO

Regina

On Tue, Jul 1, 2025, 7:07 AM Tom Lawrence <t...@warpedandbroken.com> wrote:

With the phrase “the hypothesis of possible puppeteering from people behind the scene may emerge”, I think this hypothesis is being made – if not explicitly, then by insinuation. I don’t get the sense of any sinister motivation, malevolent purposes or nefarious action in the way the new institute is developing, and I don’t think such implications are at all helpful.

 

However, the questions Paola asks in the first paragraph below are reasonable ones. I’d encourage all interim council members to be completely transparent on such issues and all other scholars to refrain from implying that the interim council are acting with malign intent. We don’t want bad faith on either side to damage the new institute before it’s found its feet.

 

Tom

 

From: Paola Di Maio <paolad...@gmail.com>
Sent: 24 June 2025 17:21
To: Regina M <toothso...@gmail.com>
Cc: alain tam <alain...@gmail.com>; Tom Lawrence <t...@warpedandbroken.com>; Institute for Independent Scholarship <ronin-s...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Reframing Ronin Document and changes to this G group

 

Would be interesting to know who decided that RIIS2 was to be incorporated in California, when the decision was made, how consensus was reached on that decision

 

 If the institute is based on the accountability principles. how come

nobody at RIIS will be responsible for anything, including for possible financial fraud or misconduct carried out as part of RIIS ordinary

activities?   This is only one of the possible conflicts/contradictions which fellows need to pay attention to

Under the current bylaws RIIS could well become a criminal organisation where nobody can be held responsible for the crimes!

and all thanks to the nice labels that make it look otherwise.

 

also:

In the current version of the bylaws, these reference a local context document, which is also in the shared folder

This is dated 2022 , any reference/for this document,, where does it come from. in what way was this incorporated in the bylaws? I do not remember seeing this reference in the version of the bylaws that I reviewed earlier this year

 

There is also a document entitled  'feedback by the attorney' in the shared drive, dated April 2025, 

who is the attorney. Who appointed him and who paid for it?  Is this the attorney appointed by Alain T  was much earlier so I am not sure it is the same attorney. Can this feedback be made available to scholars so that we can all learn what it was about?  See screenshot

 

 

😁😁

[Tom Lawrence]

With the phrase “the hypothesis of possible puppeteering from people behind the scene may emerge”, I think this hypothesis is being made – if not explicitly, then by insinuation. I don’t get the sense of any sinister motivation, malevolent purposes or nefarious action in the way the new institute is developing, and I don’t think such implications are at all helpful.

 

However, the questions Paola asks in the first paragraph below are reasonable ones. I’d encourage all interim council members to be completely transparent on such issues and all other scholars to refrain from implying that the interim council are acting with malign intent. We don’t want bad faith on either side to damage the new institute before it’s found its feet.

 

Tom

 

From: Paola Di Maio <paolad...@gmail.com>

Sent: 24 June 2025 17:21
To: Regina M <toothso...@gmail.com>

Cc: alain tam <alain...@gmail.com>; Tom Lawrence <t...@warpedandbroken.com>; Institute for Independent Scholarship <ronin-s...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Reframing Ronin Document and changes to this G group

 

Would be interesting to know who decided that RIIS2 was to be incorporated in California, when the decision was made, how consensus was reached on that decision

 

 If the institute is based on the accountability principles. how come

nobody at RIIS will be responsible for anything, including for possible financial fraud or misconduct carried out as part of RIIS ordinary

activities?   This is only one of the possible conflicts/contradictions which fellows need to pay attention to

Under the current bylaws RIIS could well become a criminal organisation where nobody can be held responsible for the crimes!

and all thanks to the nice labels that make it look otherwise.

 

also:

In the current version of the bylaws, these reference a local context document, which is also in the shared folder

This is dated 2022 , any reference/for this document,, where does it come from. in what way was this incorporated in the bylaws? I do not remember seeing this reference in the version of the bylaws that I reviewed earlier this year

 

There is also a document entitled  'feedback by the attorney' in the shared drive, dated April 2025, 

who is the attorney. Who appointed him and who paid for it?  Is this the attorney appointed by Alain T  was much earlier so I am not sure it is the same attorney. Can this feedback be made available to scholars so that we can all learn what it was about?  See screenshot

 

 

😁😁