The AI team takes a hilarious deep dive into the official correspondence and internal memoranda related to a grievance filed by Joe Kasser against several officers of INCOSE, the International Council on Systems Engineering. The initial letters from December 2014 inform Kasser that an informal committee decided to ban him from presenting at the next two symposia (IS 2015-2016) and reject his submitted papers due to past "non-conciliatory" behavior during panel discussions in 2012 and 2014. Kasser's extensive replies protest the ban, alleging that the process was handled by a "kangaroo court" in violation of INCOSE policies. Subsequent communications document the attempts to resolve the grievance, including the President-Elect's initial determination to cancel the sanction and subject Kasser's papers to peer review, which Kasser found unsatisfactory because the "guilty verdict" remained and the issue of policy violations was completely ignored. The final letter, dated December 2015, concludes the formal grievance review, ignored the root cause of the complaint, namely policy violations confirming Kasser's and the named officers' good standing, declining to issue reprimands, and stating that the matter is resolved because one of Kasser's papers was ultimately accepted and presented at IS 2015, a conclusion Kasser deemed unacceptable.

If you are an INCOSE member, why not try to find out why the process focused on the actions of the kangaroo court and ignored the violations of the bylaws. Post the question in the official (members only) INCOSE LinkedIn group, or email it to [email protected]. Please let me know if you get an answer and/or if your posted question is deleted or ignored.