“The revolution will not be diversity training”

I know that some of you are probably tired of these emails about Black lives and diversity, but others of us don’t just have the luxury of looking away.
I can’t just look away, and I especially can’t just stand by and accept the tepid responses and approaches to diversity in our department.

I know that many of you think that we should just be sticking to our science (whatever that means), or that the year-old DEI committee is somehow already solving all of the department’s problems, or that you don’t have a personal responsibility to improve diversity in our dept or better understand issues of social injustice.
But I’m here to tell you that you are wrong and that you are part of the problem.

PART 1 OF 4 — My personal experiences
About a year ago, I read a blog post by a prominent white male oceanographer with one statement that COMPLETELY BLEW ME AWAY. He said: “I never experienced anything less than full support, encouragement, and validation for pursuing a scientific career. I never felt uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe in any academic situation.”

At that moment, I finally got it. This is what some of you have encountered your whole academic lives. This type of experience was so foreign to me that I didn’t even know it was possible. No wonder some of you think we can all just happily “stick to our science” and go about our merry way.

So I’m going to share with you just SOME of the things I’ve experienced as a first-generation, Asian American woman during my time in academia and this department from 2013–2020:
- Was told that I’m fundamentally, unteachably bad at science
- Was told that I’m bad at communicating science
- Came up with an amazing paper-generating idea and was then told that I didn’t even understand my own idea
- When the paper that was sparked from my idea was finished by another colleague, was told that I didn’t deserve to be on it and that the senior author was “stretching their own credibility” (direct quote) by adding my name (I never even asked for coauthorship in the first place though)
- Walked into rooms multiple times where people set up meetings to talk about work that I helped start without me
- Was actively excluded from and kicked off of a project/paper, with not even a mention in the acknowledgments
- Been told that actually, I’m the entire problem as an advisee (“You question whether I have been a supportive advisor, but your definition of supportive seems rather partial.” Direct quote.)
- Was told that based on my abilities, I wouldn’t be able to finish a PhD, but no worries, it’s not for everyone; was told that I would later be happy about hearing this and the earlier the better
- Was completely unsupported/undefended by fellow grad students who were supposed to be my closest friends/allies when all of the above happened
- Consistently get the subject changed after <5 min, usually with the conversation steered towards unrelated events in their personal lives, whenever I’ve tried to discuss any departmental race/gender/etc. problems w/ fellow grad students
- Was introduced to an older white male colleague at the same time as a fellow white male grad student at a symposium; got pointedly ignored, physically excluded, and then left behind by the all white male group of 3 (of course, none of them noticed)
- Went to a poster of a senior white male prof from another university at OSM, who completely brushed off both me and my questions about his poster, even though I had already written 2 papers about the same thing; watched as he happily spoke with the next white male scientist to come up and ask him questions
- Was told that “Chinese” (read: Mandarin) is “weird” because it’s a tonal language
- Was told that Chinese people just aren’t as good at research because they aren’t creative or something like that, except oh oh, not Chinese Americans, they’re fine!
- Tried one time to explain how I actually see myself as Hong Kongnese, not Chinese (an extremely important distinction); was met w/ blank stares, silence, and changing the subject (never tried again after that)
- When lamenting how sad it made me that Harvard systematically ranks their Asian applicants as having “worse personalities” than their non-Asian peers, was told “Well, my child got into <prestigious college> because they have a good personality and do <non-Asian associated extracurriculars>”
- Got my last name misspelled in a dept-wide message congratulating me on finishing my PhD; received an apology for the misspelling from a white male (with an extremely white last name) who said they totally know how frustrating it is when people misspell your name (no, sorry, but you don’t know how frustrating it is when people mess up your Cantonese last name that’s as common as “Johnson” or “Miller” in Hong Kong)
- Got asked when hanging out with a Chinese student “oh, are you going to go off and be all Chinese together?”
- Got told that I answered a trivia question about my own culture incorrectly at a dept event run by a white male b/c it didn’t match the answer they had gotten from the internet (there’s more than 1 correct answer, which incidentally, is also explained on the internet)
- Watch democracy break down in my motherland over many months while knowing that there’s literally no one in the dept I can talk to about it; of course, it’s the biggest news in the world for a long time, but no one even asks and I just act like there’s no existential crisis continually playing out in my head
- Got asked to help edit/improve a diversity statement in which mentoring ME was the only seeming act of “diversity” in it
- Get told to dress and present myself more professionally, when fellow white male grad students get to show up to their defenses in backward hats, old T-shirts, and jeans
- Got told that “well, being Asian shouldn’t make you more likely to have COVID anymore now that it has spread enough,” when being Asian never made you more likely to have COVID (and yes, I have had terrifying encounters in public w/ white people threatening me b/c of COVID)
- Got called “unprofessional” and “should be disallowed from doing front-facing tasks; instead should only be allowed to grade” by a white student
- Hear constantly about profs/staff/even other grad students in the dept saying racist/sexist things, but never hear of anyone addressing/disciplining these people (I’m obviously sometimes guilty of this, too)
- Hear about profs saying racist/sexist things, then listen to another prof defend those profs as good people who are helping to improve the dept in other ways
- Get repeatedly, completely, ACTIVELY ignored when bringing up these problems with the very people in charge who are supposed to be addressing them (they answer everything else in my email)
- Get told by these same people that if I push any harder on the problems, they don’t know how much more they can take
- Have all the above happen without anyone willing to acknowledge that it all had everything to do with race/gender/marginalized identity

PART 2 OF 4 — If you continue to just “stick to your science,” you are the problem
Besides these, there are so many more stories, most of which are longer and even more painful, but are too difficult to explain in pithy one-liners. (I’m also sure there would’ve been many more if I didn’t start distancing myself from y’all years ago.) And these are just the things I’ve faced as an Ivy League-educated, abled, cis, straight Asian American woman with a stable and economically secure family life…
WE CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO IMAGINE THE THINGS THAT OUR BLACK (AND BLACK+TRANS/DISABLED/GAY/ETC.) COLLEAGUES AND GRAD STUDENTS HAVE TO FACE AND PUT UP WITH EVERYDAY. ALL WHILE CONTINUING TO DO THEIR SCIENCE.

I won’t lie; I had to try somewhat harder and prove myself somewhat more than a lot of you to keep doing my science while overcoming all of these other obstacles, but Black colleagues who have made it here had to be 1000x better and more focused/resilient than you (non-Black colleagues) and me. Still, there are so many more brilliant Black students who already got excluded, doubted, othered, neglected, killed before they even had a chance to face the many microaggressions and traumas waiting for them in grad school. These students would’ve been 999x better at science than you and me. Many more will also keep getting pushed out by our department and other departments like ours during and after grad school by the same mechanisms.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T JUST “STICK TO DOING SCIENCE.” THIS IS WHY WE MUST EXAMINE OUR OWN PRIVILEGE/BIASES AND WHY WE NEED STRUCTURAL CHANGE.

If after reading all this, you still put your head down and simply continue to “focus on your science,” YOU ARE THE ENTIRE PROBLEM. I can promise you that if you can’t even do the barest minimum of acknowledging your privilege/biases, posting support for #BlackLivesMatter on social media (many of you have large followings), talking about these issues with the people in your life, and reading a book or two, then at some point, you WILL be the straw that breaks a BIPOC student’s back. (I can, but won’t, point to the single incident associated w/ a white male prof that was my last straw this past year.)

A single one of you can (and have) done more damage than 100 DEI committee meetings and initiatives could ever hope to undo. I could also point to all of the studies showing how diversity improves science and leads to more innovation, but I won’t, because you know what? THAT DOESN’T MATTER. Anyone who wants to do science should be able to, free from all of the trauma you all are constantly causing.

PART 3 OF 4 — Structural change:
So besides reckoning with your own individual biases, what kind of changes am I asking for?

I’m trying to be as diplomatic as possible here, so I will begin by acknowledging that efforts by the DEI committee so far are a well-intentioned start. However, much of all DEI-industrial complex work is problematic and equates to a bandaid placed over a gunshot wound, when we really need to be better regulating guns in the first place.

As an example, one of the first things the DEI committee did was add a diversity statement webpage to our website. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but this is a perfect example of something that is almost TOO easy to do that it’s harmful. The generic wording and fact that half of the webpage is spent emphasizing the NAMES of people on the DEI committee would IMMEDIATELY signal to any URM student visiting this webpage that our efforts are performative and shallow. (Also, is there a reason why the DEI committee needs this much recognition? And does it really make sense to add a diversity statement before we’ve even done anything to address diversity?)

Improving the grad application process was easy and a no-brainer, so is hiring more diverse faculty. But what does this really involve/how much is enough?

The following is a list of my thoughts on what needs to be done STRUCTURALLY (based on an extensive lit review of DEI practices in academia), with some minimum requirements made as concrete as possible. (Obvious, low-effort, non-structural things like starting a book club or attending a microaggressions training are purposely left off.)

1.) Yes, hire more diverse (read: BLACK, indigenous) faculty. But don’t just hire 1, or even 2 (yes, I’m upping the # from what I said in my defense). Retention is just as important as recruiting and trust me, it’ll be difficult to retain these people (and they will be miserable) if you just brought them into the current environment alone or with just 1 other person they can conspire with. Let’s shoot for 3. IN FACT, LET’S REQUIRE THAT THE NEXT 3 FACULTY HIRES BE BIPOC (WITH AT LEAST 1 BLACK, SAY). This isn’t radical. Get it done.

2.) Actually put money where your mouth is. Hire a full-time “Director of Diversity Initiatives,” like Scripps already has. (Google this for more info.) People doing this extremely important work should get PAID for it and they should have enough hours to be able to implement it well. Also, we shouldn’t be only tackling ONE SMALL ISSUE PER YEAR (seriously, I don’t want to be dead before things really change in our dept). You’re going to make an excuse about funding, but just do it anyway.

3.) COMPLETELY reform faculty evaluation metrics. Diversity efforts and community outreach should be weighted a LOT more heavily. Promotions should be directly tied to the number and outcomes of BIPOC students mentored.

4.) Regularly release faculty mentorship records. Records of faculty mentorship should be open to scrutiny by incoming and prospective students who are signing away their next 5–7 years, PERIOD. Students need to know if faculty have a consistent record of pushing out, firing, excluding, or mastering-out students, especially BIPOC ones. If prospective/incoming students only ever hear glowing reviews of white male PIs from their white male students while others are too traumatized or afraid to speak up, nothing will ever change.

5.) Require all faculty to form deep, concrete, long-term collaborations and relationships with faculty at minority-serving (mostly undergrad) institutions (or at least with BIPOC-led labs at another institution). This includes but is not limited to doing outreach at one another’s institutions, conducting faculty/postdoc/grad/undergrad exchanges, creating research/internship opportunities for the other institution’s students, learning pedagogy from each other, and making sure undergrad and grad coursework are aligning so that undergrad students are prepared for grad school. How well our faculty maintain and foster these collaborations will be part of their evaluation. You might think this sounds onerous, but I promise you that your science is gonna be way cooler/more collaborative and have a way bigger impact/reach if you do this.

6.) Require grad students to be involved in the above and spend at least some time at a partner minority-serving institution as part of an exchange program.

7.) Require grad students to become WAY more well-rounded (something that URMs repeatedly ask for in the literature). Require cultural competency/bystander intervention training during new student orientation. Require community service, outreach, and mentorship of undergrads. Require courses/workshops in sci comm, environmental justice, and data science. Recognize and reward us for our service efforts. Give us the opportunity to earn bonafide certificates in sci comm/outreach/diversity to boost our CVs. (Obviously this means creating these certificate programs, but again, Scripps has examples already.) We will grow up to be the next generation of faculty, so let’s cut the crap at the current root. If you are a grad student who wants to complain about this, good luck writing your faculty application diversity statements or getting a job that does anything other than pure science in academia. Also, good luck being friends with and allies to URM students.

8.) Report student demographic and cultural survey data regularly (once a year). Each year, this would involve tracking students’ statuses, as well as having students complete a survey on our dept’s cultural climate (this is easy — you can just copy the questions from the exit survey we have to take when we graduate). We need to know where we’re at each year to see if we’re improving over time.

9.) Allow for way more flexibility in defining what a “chapter” or “project” is. Well-researched and actionable reports for a public agency, creation of a cool new sensor, and substantial scientific assistance on a community science project (all of which are examples of project types that attract URMs), among others, can and should be counted as chapters. You, the faculty, are all smart people, so you should be able to tell when something was done in a scientifically sound way and represents a significant contribution to society. These should be the only 2 criteria for what makes up a chapter.

There are so many more things I could list, but I’m getting really tired and want to use my weekend to actually rest. Hopefully these give you enough of a framework to spark further ideas. Hopefully you can also begin to see the difference between more structural changes and bandaids. And hopefully you actually have the courage to implement some of them.

PART 4 OF 4 — TO STUDENTS: I will be your personal advocate
Because I’m pretty sure that almost everyone with authority in the dept hates me at least a little by now/after reading this email (goodbye forever, all-important letters of rec!!!!), I will do whatever it is that you need someone to do for you, that you can’t do yourself. If you need your advisor to be put on blast on social media, I will do that for you. If you want someone to have a chat with another grad student about a racist/sexist/etc. remark, I will do that for you and I won’t give up until they’ve understood. If you want to tell me your story ONCE, so that you never have to tell it again, I will keep telling it for you (especially to prospective students — you shouldn’t have to relive your trauma EVERY SINGLE YEAR). I will use whatever tone you deem most appropriate for the situation, ranging from nicely asking the person of interest a self-reflective question, to calling them out loudly, publicly, and with swear words. This offer stands indefinitely.

CONCLUSION:
I will not be at the town hall because y’all don’t deserve me there.
I will also NOT be accepting any responses to this email…EXCEPT from students wanting to use me as their personal advocate and fellow BIPOC oceanographers who either want to support me or point out something I may have gotten wrong/misrepresented (I will then send out a correction).
I will especially NOT be hearing any apologies if you realized that you did one/some of the things I listed in my personal experiences.

Black lives matter, including in science, so start fucking acting like it. That is all.

-Shirley Leung