Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

My views and philosophy

Academic institutions must serve and support all students, faculty, and staff by creating inclusive environments where all members of the community feel valued and are able to thrive. To do this, data show it is not enough to just value diversity, institutions must actively practice inclusivity, continually assess equity, and interrogate (explicit and implicit) biases. We often assume that science is objective and lacks bias. This is not accurate. Although data themselves are not necessarily biased, the tools, metrics, assessments, and methods used to obtain, analyze, and interpret those data are created by humans. This fact means we introduce biases – intentional or not – to the evaluation metrics, to the data and their interpretation, and to the scientific record. Thus, processes can never be completely unbiased, fully objective, and totally apolitical. This fact is not necessarily negative, as the experiences and preconceptions that people bring to situations can absolutely be beneficial, but it is nonetheless a fact that must be acknowledged. On the other hand, there are also swaths of science that are based on explicitly racist and sexist assumptions, and often flawed science has been used to promote these views. These are not easy realities to acknowledge, but as scientists and public servants, we need to be cognizant of biases – in ourselves and others – and work to make the academy and our society better able to serve all its members.

I have grown tremendously in how I think about, approach, practice, and advocate for inclusion and equity in science and in higher education. This growth has occurred for me as a scholar and mentor and for me as a teacher and educator. Over the past 6 years, I have engaged in many hours of personal education and engagement with topics related to racism, sexism, discrimination, bias, and inclusive management and teaching, particularly as these topics pertain to academia and the biomedical sciences. I have learned a tremendous amount about racial and gender biases that, as a science student, I never learned in my course work or educational training. I have taken what I have learned and translated that information to my department, my campus community, to my research program, and to my undergraduate classrooms.

Three concepts that have fundamentally shaped my thinking about equity and inclusion are: 1) intersectionality, 2) the deficit model and related benevolent prejudice, and 3) structural biases and barriers. Intersectionality, or the idea that an individual’s multiple identities can overlap to influence outcomes and experiences, allows for more complete understanding of how different people move through our educational system or pipeline. For example, the experiences of a Black woman in academia are likely very different than those of Black man or a white woman, as each person holds different combinations of minoritized identities (here: Black, woman). The impacts of these identities can be additive and can influence experiences and interactions. This concept is often not fully realized when we use a seemingly simple phrase that is commonly used by academics and by federal funding agencies: women and people of color (or women and minorities, or simply, underrepresented minorities).

Academia has a long-recognized representation issue, with certain identities being overrepresented and others being underrepresented. These categories are in comparison to demographics of the student body and/or the national population. Typically, this means white men are overrepresented in academia, whereas white women, women and men of color, and those with other marginalized identities, or intersecting identities, are underrepresented. These disparities are particularly pronounced as one moves up the academic ranks. There have been multiple calls to address this disparity and to diversify academia. The most common responses to these calls use deficit model framing. The rhetoric of diversity efforts is often (implicitly) anchored on the idea that specific groups are underrepresented in science due to some deficit or shortcoming that makes them less successful and less competitive than their overrepresented peers. This is untrue. If one internalizes this deficit model thinking, it can lead to benevolent prejudice (e.g., benevolent sexism, benevolent racism, benevolent ableism). Benevolent forms of prejudice are behaviors or policies that seem nice or helpful, but in actuality can undermine the value and skills of those they are purported to support, all the while reinforcing stereotypes and prejudice. The issue with academia’s representation discrepancies is not shortcomings or deficits in these individuals, but a structure and culture that has multiple visible and invisible barriers for those who do not look or act like individuals in the overrepresented group. Talent and potential are equally distributed across groups and identities, but access to resources, opportunities, and/or support, is not. Instead of deficit framing, diversity discussions should be rooted in structural and cultural barriers that prevent full participation. Focusing on individual characteristics or decisions, or “helping” select persons from underrepresented groups, without concurrent cultural changes, cannot overcome structural, systemic, and cultural norms that were designed to evaluate and reward a subset of individuals or specific behaviors. Relatedly, attrition or differential attainment in academia is often attributed to personal choices and a leaky pipeline problem. Recently, however, it has been argued that our system is not a pipeline but more of a colander and is working with the designed purpose to exclude certain individuals. Thus, we must shift our collective focus away from addressing individual decisions, choices, and behaviors and pivot to removing structural and systematic barriers.

The above concepts were fully displayed during the COVID19 pandemic. COVID19 upended life for all of us, but some individuals were more impacted than others. This ongoing situation exposed and exacerbated inequities and disparities including in higher education, in the medical system, in our nation, and across the globe. Women and men of color, white women, caregivers, disabled individuals, and those from severely impacted areas (e.g., global south, areas with very high COVID transmission) faced disproportionate burdens of the pandemic. The lens of intersectionality and the recognition of structural barriers are critical for understanding pandemic impacts. This pandemic has further re-enforced my active pursuit of inclusive excellence.

A few suggested readings/listenings

read

Gosztyla, M. L., Kwong, L., Murray, N. A., Williams, C. E., Behnke, N., Curry, P., … & Yamoah, M. A. (2021). Responses to 10 common criticisms of anti-racism action in STEMM. PLOS Computational Biology, 17(7), e1009141. link

Harris, B.N., McCarthy, P.C., Wright, A.M., Schutz, H., Boersma, K.S., Shepherd, S.L., Manning, L.A., Malisch, J.L., Ellington, R.M. (2020). From panic to pedagogy: Using online active learning to promote inclusive instruction in ecology and evolutionary biology courses and beyond. Ecology and Evolution, 10 (22), 12581-12612. link

Malisch, J.L., Harris, B.N., Sherrer, S.M., Lewis, K.A., Shepherd, S.L., McCarthy, P.C., Spott, J.L., Karam, E.P., Moustaid-Moussa, N., Calarco, J.M., Ramalingam, L., Talley, A.E., Canas-Carrell, J.E., Ardon-Dryer, K., Weiser, D.A., Bernal, X.E., Deitloff, J. (2020). Opinion: In the wake of COVID-19, academia needs new solutions to ensure gender equity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117, 15378-15381. link

Tseng, M., El-Sabaawi, R. W., Kantar, M. B., Pantel, J. H., Srivastava, D. S., & Ware, J. L. (2020). Strategies and support for Black, Indigenous, and people of colour in ecology and evolutionary biology. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4(10), 1288-1290. link

Wanelik, K. M., Griffin, J. S., Head, M. L., Ingleby, F. C., & Lewis, Z. (2020). Breaking barriers? Ethnicity and socioeconomic background impact on early career progression in the fields of ecology and evolution. Ecology and Evolution, 10(14), 6870-6880. link

Asai, D. J. (2020). Race matters. Cell, 181(4), 754-757. link

Cardel, M.I., Dhurandhar, E., Yarar-Fisher, C., Foster, M., Hidalgo, B., McClure, L.A., Pagoto, S., Brown, N., Pekmezi, D., Sharafeldin, N. and Willig, A.L., 2020. Turning chutes into ladders for women faculty: A review and roadmap for equity in academia. Journal of Women’s Health, 29(5), 721-733. link

June 14, 2020. North (2020). An open letter to the EEB community. link

Holman, Key and Kreitzer (2019). Evidence of Bias in Standard Evaluations of Teaching. link

Asplund, M., & Welle, C. G. (2018). Advancing science: How bias holds us back. Neuron, 99(4), 635-639. link

Stevens, K.R., Masters, K.S., Imoukhuede, P.I., Haynes, K.A., Setton, L.A., Cosgriff-Hernandez, E., Bell, M.A.L., Rangamani, P., Sakiyama-Elbert, S.E., Finley, S.D. and Willits, R.K., 2021. Fund black scientists. Cell, 184(3), 561-565. link

Esposito, L. A., Daly, M., Fujita, M. K., Gorneau, J. A., Rapacciuolo, G., Rocha, L., … & Bell, R. C. (2022). A new framework for assessing the contributions of professionals in the natural sciences. Bulletin of the Society of Systematic Biologists, 8332.link

O’Brien, L. T., Bart, H. L., & Garcia, D. M. (2020). Why are there so few ethnic minorities in ecology and evolutionary biology? Challenges to inclusion and the role of sense of belonging. Social Psychology of Education, 23(2), 449-477. link

Miriti, M. N. (2020). The elephant in the room: race and STEM diversity. BioScience, 70(3), 237-242. link

Davies, S. W., Putnam, H. M., Ainsworth, T., Baum, J. K., Bove, C. B., Crosby, S. C., … & Bates, A. E. (2021). Promoting inclusive metrics of success and impact to dismantle a discriminatory reward system in science. PLoS biology, 19(6), e3001282. link

Fulweiler, R. W., Davies, S. W., Biddle, J. F., Burgin, A. J., Cooperdock, E. H., Hanley, T. C., … & Ziegler, M. (2021). Rebuild the Academy: Supporting academic mothers during COVID-19 and beyond. PLoS biology, 19(3), e3001100. link

listen

Scene on Radio - Seeing White

Scene on Radio - MEN

Teaching as an act of social justice and equity - Bryan Dewsbury - July 26, 2018. link

Hidden Brain - The Edge Effect (2018) link

Hidden Brain - People Like Us (2020) link

Hidden Brain - Between Two Worlds link

Hidden Brain - How They See Us link

Radiolab - G link

want more?

If you are really interested and want a lot more links to look through, please see this ever-growing Google Doc