[hither_shores]

If by "EA the organization" you mean the Center for Effective Altruism, it came out of the Oxford philosophy department.

[shuckles]

No, Oxford is incidental to the story. The term was used to mean roughly those ideas at least half a decade before CEA was founded. Some history is here: https://jacyanthis.com/some-early-history-of-effective-altru...