On March 14, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the left-liberal civil rights nonprofit group known for its conspicuous wealth and ever-expanding lists of right-wing “hate” figures and organizations, abruptly fired 82-year-old Morris Dees. Dees, an Alabama lawyer, is the man who founded the SPLC in Montgomery in 1971 and built it into a fundraising powerhouse with assets approaching $500 million. Not long after his departure, President Richard Cohen and legal director Rhonda Brownstein, both of whom have been at the center since 1986, resigned.

The SPLC hasn’t said much about the three departures, especially that of Dees, whose profile, though not photos, it scrubbed from its website. News media reported allegations of sexual harassment and racial and gender discrimination that had circulated on in-house emails. New female members of staff had allegedly been warned repeatedly about overtures from the five-times-married Dees. The SPLC’s highest-ranking black woman, senior attorney Meredith Horton, had resigned, and according to the Los Angeles Times, other female staffers had signed letters protesting office mistreatment and discrimination. Cohen issued a statement implying that Dees had failed to meet the SPLC’s “standards” of “truth, justice, equity and inclusion.” Dees denies any wrongdoing. Cohen’s March 22 resignation email stated, “Whatever problems exist at the SPLC happened on my watch, so I take responsibility for them.”