Equity & Social Justice in STEM

Recommended Readings from the Committee on Strategies and Tactics for Recruiting to Improve Diversity and Excellence (STRIDE Committee)

STRIDE Recommended Readings were used in the creation of the STRIDE Faculty Recruitment Workshops and are a curated collection of research on creating diverse spaces in academia. The STRIDE Committee provides information and advice about practices that will maximize the likelihood that diverse, well-qualified candidates for faculty positions will be identified, and, if selected for offers, recruited, retained, and promoted at the University of Michigan.

View the resources here. 

A Five-Step Program for the Scientific Community to Address Inequality, from the president of the National Academy of Sciences

In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Dr. Marica McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, discusses how to rectify racial inequalities in STEM fields. She provides examples of current, prevailing inequalities affecting under-served communities. She also suggests five steps for the scientific community to address racial injustices.

Also see related PNAS Editorial from PNAS Editor-in-chief Dr. Mary R. Berenbaum, “PNAS and prejudice”, with a key quote “policies designed in the absence of evidence of efficacy have the potential to perpetuate, rather than resolve, the problems.”

“Recreating Wakanda by promoting Black excellence in ecology and evolution“, co-authored by UCLA’s Shane Campbell-Stanton

This PNAS opinion piece includes concrete actions with citations. Here is an excerpt:

When people take action—individually and collectively—that’s when we see results. Now is the time to act as individuals and institutions. We challenge our colleagues and institutions to take these tangible actions.

• We can adopt practices, initiatives, and models that have been successful in supporting students and faculty of color, including those cited in this article (9). We can continue by also being scientific about the problem of diversity and how to address it. A place to start is rigorous analysis of data about students on our own campuses to understand both our challenges and our opportunities (18).
• As individual researchers and engineers we can mentor students of color and become their champions as they make the transition to graduate school, postdoctoral fellowships, and junior faculty positions (9). We can actively recruit applicants of color for faculty positions (18, 20). We can support colleagues of color as we do any colleague by collaborating with them on grants, research, and papers; reading and citing their work; and inviting them to give talks (20).
• As institutions, we can replicate and adapt those practices and programs, setting and working toward goals for significantly increasing the numbers of students and faculty of color who are succeeding (12, 21).

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6506/884

“One problem in the Western world is that the scientific enterprise is in denial about its inherent racism. Black scientists encounter discrimination when they embark on a science career in Western countries. The overwhelming message from their experiences is that the culture of academic science where Black scientists are underrepresented is riddled with deeply entrenched racism of various forms and subtleties.”