They are speaking of the feud between ZIOs creator John de Goes and long-time Typelevel steering committee member Travis Brown (https://meta.plasm.us/posts/2019/09/01/jdg-and-the-fp-commun...) and split the community along those same party lines.
It's also a very US-centric kind of political battle that I'm sure a lot of European Scala programmers feel is strange and doesn't apply to them, but has nonetheless taken their ecosystem by hostage.
Actually, it wasn't the "committee" that allowed it, it was a subset of speakers from under represented groups in tech (women, minorities, PoC etc whatever term you prefer) that voted to let him speak as long as he kept to his topic.
I have no stake in the process here. As I said, it was clearly well thought-out. But the outcome is regrettable.