Terms of use.

These Terms of Use ("Terms") govern your use of tokatinstitute.org and of the courses, lectures, recordings, memberships, certificates and other services offered there (the "Services"). The Services are provided by THE IAIS LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company doing business as Tokat Institute ("Tokat Institute", "we", "us").

By creating an account, registering for a course or lecture, buying a membership or otherwise using the Services, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Services.

1. Who may use the Services

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, register for a course or lecture, or buy anything from us. The information you give us when you register or apply must be accurate and kept up to date.

2. Your account

Your account is personal. Do not share your login, your course or meeting links, or your access to recordings with anyone else. Keep your password safe and write to admin@tokatinstitute.org if you think someone else has used your account. You are responsible for what happens under your account.

3. Courses, lectures and recordings

Courses are paid live classes that run over several weeks on the dates shown on the course page. Registering gives you a place in the live sessions and access to the recordings of that course's sessions.

Access to recordings. We offer access to a course's recordings with no set end date. However, once the course has ended, the Institute may end that access at any time, without notice and without giving a reason. No refund is due when it does.

Lectures are single live events, free to attend with registration.

Tokat Studio is a library of recorded material, available to the courses and memberships that include it.

We may change a schedule, a session or an instructor when we have to. If we cancel a course before it begins, you receive a full refund. If a live session cannot take place, we will reschedule it or provide a recording.

Sessions are recorded. If you turn on your camera or microphone, or write in the chat, your image, voice, display name and contributions may appear in the recording. Course recordings are shown only to the students registered for that course. Lecture recordings may be published openly, for example on our YouTube channel, but without you in them unless you agree.

We do not use your recorded image, voice or contributions in promotional material, and we do not distribute them in any other way. If we ever want to, we will first ask for your permission in a separate written email. If you prefer not to appear at all, keep your camera and microphone off and choose your display name accordingly.

You may not record, download, capture or redistribute any session or recording yourself.

4. Fees and payment

Prices are shown on the site in the currency charged at checkout. Payments are processed by Stripe through our membership provider, Memberstack. We do not see or store your full card details. Taxes may apply where the law requires them.

Scholarship awards, coupons and promotional codes are personal and cannot be transferred or sold. They cannot be combined unless we say so. We may withdraw an award or code that was obtained with false or misleading information.

5. Memberships and automatic renewal

Associate and Companion memberships are annual subscriptions that renew automatically. Each year, on the anniversary of your purchase, we charge the then-current membership price to your payment method on file until you cancel. If the price changes, we will tell you before the renewal it applies to.

You can cancel at any time online from My Library → Membership → "Manage current membership". Cancellation stops the next renewal. Your membership and its benefits continue until the end of the year you have paid for. Membership fees already paid are not refundable, except where the law requires a refund.

Moving to a higher membership takes effect immediately, and the price is prorated for the rest of your current year. The benefits of each membership are described on the membership page. We may change benefits from time to time. A change that reduces your benefits applies from your next renewal.

6. Refunds

• Courses: a full refund if you ask at least seven days before the first session. No refund is available after that.
• Certificate bundles: a full refund if you ask at least seven days before the first session of the first course in the bundle. No refund is available after that.
• A course we cancel: a full refund.
• Memberships and the capstone assessment fee: not refundable.

To ask for a refund, write to admin@tokatinstitute.org. Refunds go back to the original payment method. When a payment is refunded or charged back, the access it paid for ends, and any certificate that depended on it may be withdrawn (section 8).

Consumers in the European Union or the United Kingdom may have a legal right to withdraw from a purchase within 14 days. If you ask us to give you immediate access to digital content or to a membership, and confirm at checkout that you understand this, you lose that right once access has begun, to the extent the law allows. Nothing in these Terms limits rights you have under consumer law that cannot be waived.

7. Scholarships

Scholarships are awarded at the Institute's discretion, on the basis described on the scholarship form and in our FAQs. An award reduces only the fees it names. It is personal to you, and it may be withdrawn if your application contained false information.

8. Certificates

A Tokat Certificate is awarded when you complete the requirements published on our Certificates and Capstone pages within the academic year. A Tokat Certificate is not an academic degree and does not carry academic credit.

Your capstone paper must be your own original work, and any sources and tools you used must be acknowledged.

We may withdraw a certificate if it was awarded on the basis of plagiarism, misconduct or false information, or if a payment it depended on was refunded or charged back. Anyone with a certificate's reference can check it on our public register at /verify. The register shows the holder's name, the credential, the date awarded and whether it has been withdrawn.

9. Our content

The videos, recordings, slides, readings, texts, designs and logos on the Services belong to Tokat Institute, its instructors or its licensors. While you have access, we give you a personal, non-transferable, non-commercial licence to use them for your own study.

You may not copy, download, record, share, sell, publish or upload them elsewhere, and you may not use them to train artificial-intelligence systems. Short quotations with proper attribution for scholarly purposes are welcome.

Instructors' and speakers' views are their own and are not necessarily those of the Institute.

10. Your content

You keep the rights to what you submit to us: capstone papers, applications, questions, chat messages and feedback. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use these as needed to run the Services, for example to assess your capstone or to keep a recording that includes your question.

We will not publish your capstone paper without your permission. If you send us feedback about a course, we may quote it on our site with the name you gave, unless you ask us not to.

You confirm that what you submit does not infringe anyone else's rights.

11. Conduct

In live sessions, chats, our WhatsApp and Discord communities and anywhere else on the Services, please be respectful. Do not harass anyone, post hateful or abusive content, advertise or spam, impersonate others, disrupt a session, or share another participant's personal information.

Do not try to get around access controls, scrape the site, or access the Services by automated means. We may remove anyone who does these things from a session or community.

12. Suspension and closing your account

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these Terms, that is involved in fraud or a payment dispute, or where the law requires it. In that case we refund only where these Terms or the law require a refund.

You may close your account at any time by writing to admin@tokatinstitute.org.

13. Other services we use

Parts of the Services run on third-party services: Memberstack (accounts), Stripe (payments), Zoom (live sessions), Vimeo and YouTube (video), Mailchimp (email), and WhatsApp and Discord (communities). Their own terms apply to your use of them. We are not responsible for their availability.

14. Disclaimer

The Services are provided for education, "as is" and "as available". Course content is academic study. It is not professional, legal, medical, financial or religious advice. We do not promise that the Services will be uninterrupted or error-free.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential losses. Our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot be excluded by law.

16. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, USA, and claims are heard in the state and federal courts located in New Jersey. If you are a consumer living in another country, you keep the protection of the mandatory laws of that country and may bring a claim in your local courts where those laws allow it.

Please write to us first. Most problems are solved by email.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. The new version will be posted on this page with a new date. If a change is significant, we will email registered members at least 14 days before it takes effect. A change to fees or refund rules does not affect a purchase made before the change.

18. Language

These Terms are written in English. If we provide a translation, the English version governs.

19. Contact

THE IAIS LLC, doing business as Tokat Institute
PO Box 1200, Montclair, NJ 07042, USA
admin@tokatinstitute.org