Just because they mentioned on Twitter last week that they wanted tea doesn’t mean they want it today.

Don’t Make Them Serve The Diversity

There’s a great video that is intended to clarify how sexual consent works, “Tea consent.” The punch line is, “don’t make them drink the tea!” It’s not a perfect analogy for the violence of sexual assault because tea drinking is not sexual assault, but it makes pretty clear how consent broadly should work:

I was recently thinking about how apt some parts of this analogy were for how people from underrepresented groups are sometimes forced into conversations about sexism, racism, homophobia &etc that they don’t actually want to be having.

This is especially true if someone who fits into one of these marginalized groups (a minority let’s say) is invited as your colloquium speaker. Sure they may be an expert on the marginalized experience. But if they’ve been invited to give a colloquium on their research, it may be the case that they just want to talk about their research. It has to be respected that we are already experiencing marginalization in so many ways that when we are a department’s guest, it is paramount that we are treated equally to a straight cis able-bodied white guy who will never be expected to have even thought about these issues. (Although all you cis able-bodied straight white guys really need to think about these things, if you want to be decent, that is!)

If you happen to know that your future speaker who happens to be a minority has a larger activist interest in these issues, it is fine to inquire about whether they would be interested in giving an additional talk or leading a discussion about discrimination or related topics. But there are some rules of engagement:

1. Ask them with plenty of lead time, like a month or two.
2. Offer them an honorarium in addition to the usual travel expenses. Dealing with discrimination in one’s personal life is already shitty. Being asked to educate people who don’t deal with discrimination for free is also shitty. We are not your mammies, and we already do too much work for free. Preparing for these discussions is work and so is recovering from them, especially if they go awry. When calculating the honorarium, think about how much that person probably makes an hour as a researcher and how many hours of work are involved in putting on the event you are asking for.
3. If you cannot offer an honorarium, let your invitee know that you can’t afford it but you’d appreciate the donation of their time and also that you understand if they don’t feel like donating it.
4. Ensure that the person working with the invitee to put on this event is truly prepared to do this work in a respectful manner and understands the language involved and/or is willing to ask questions when they don’t. A trans person for example doesn’t need an email saying, “What’s cis?” Google, my friends, Google. Make sure also that they are not saying things to your Black speakers like, “I want to make sure this event is a safe space for white physicists.” Remember and share with your department How to Talk to Minorities, Part I and II.
5. Do everything in your power to ensure that this is an event that will be attended by faculty, since they are the ones who have the most power to end and engage in acts of discrimination.
6. Ask all invitees — whether just for colloquia or for other talks as well — whether standing for their talks is okay for them or if seating arrangements should be made. Don’t ask why, don’t judge, just let them have a fucking seat. Your speaker may have a disability that requires it, and this can be extra important if you are asking them to do extra talking. In general proactively ask if they need any accommodations. Don’t pry about why.
7. Make it clear that if the invitee declines to do this extra work that it will not impact the department’s excitement about their visit or harm their future professional opportunities. Y’all are in academia, so I don’t really need to explain to you why this is paramount. In other words

Don’t make them serve you the diversity.

They are visiting your department because you invited them to give a talk about their exciting research, and it seemed like a great professional opportunity for them to accept. They have a Masters/PhD (or are earning one as the case may be), so they have made a professional commitment to the practice of doing science, including visiting institutions to talk about it! Don’t assume they want to meet with your women in science group or your diversity committee. You know what they say about ass-umptions. Many of us do want to meet with those groups, but we are not a monolith, so you have to ask first.

Finally, if your speaker makes a request to have an opportunity to meet with minority students, this is not the same as saying that they would prefer not to meet with non-minorities as part of their regular scientific schedule. Yes, this happened to me recently, and I was mortified and frankly humiliated to hear from some Asian and white students that they thought I didn’t want to talk to them. It got sorted out, and it continues to be the case that I am happy to talk science/research (and become friends) with anyone. But yes, if your department has underrepresented minority students, I like to have a time slot meet to with them privately, if they want to meet with me. You don’t want to make your students drink or serve the tea either, right?

Essentially: if you remember that your speaker is a person, not a resource, you’ll probably manage not to totally embarrass your department or your speaker. With the exception of the trans example, all of these things have happened to me, so don’t tell yourself, “It can’t happen here.” Make sure it doesn’t happen wherever you are. You want people of marginalized backgrounds to walk away from your department feeling so warm, safe and cozy that they will tell other people that a job there would be an exciting opportunity for them! You don’t want them sitting up half the night fretting about what they were just put through, just because of their demographic characteristics. It is their choice whether and how they talk about anything besides their research and your research while visiting your department.

It is especially important that professors take responsibility for making sure their department presents this kind of climate. It’s great that the grad students and postdocs in various departments are excited about agitating for change, but the people with the real power in the room are professors. It is not okay to ask all of the young people to do your work for you.

ALLLLLLLL of that said: it’s probably a good idea to invite someone to talk to your department about confronting and ending discrimination because we have a lot of problems with it. Just make sure you don’t contribute to the discriminatory atmosphere in the process of doing it. Actually, you know what? Hire some minority faculty, that’s even better. Then some of your faculty won’t need so much help understanding discrimination, and you’ll be able to recruit and graduate more minority students! Also, watch this speech by Dean Spade, where he points out how much better it will be for all of us when things are better for poor trans people of color:

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