Equity and inclusion in everything is a core human value of mine, and I strongly believe that STEM research should be accessible to everyone. Women, scientists of color, LGBTQ+ scientists, and other groups historically excluded from STEM research face inequities and barriers to success daily in academia. Some are obvious (e.g., direct racial and sexual biases), but many are subtle and their effects compound with time. These systemic inequities exist in all facets of STEM research, including hiring(1), work environment(2), citation practices(3), funding(4), and publishing(3), and they are set up and maintained by institutional policies and norms(5-10). These inequities and obstacles combined with the lack of privileges held by others force these individuals to work additionally hard for the same level of success as their more privileged colleagues.

This is an immense and immoral burden we place upon many members of our community, and it directly impedes a thriving academic culture. Diverse scientists foster scientific discovery by expanding viewpoints, countering biases, offering unique approaches, and even redefining which questions we should ask. Scientific innovation does not happen without diversity of thought and experiences. Therefore, it is essential to recruit diverse scientists in all areas- culture, race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic, status, sexual orientation, religion, and physical and learning differences. By empowering diverse scientists to succeed and obtain positions of leadership, we are also diversifying power structures that have historically oppressed marginalized groups.

Critically, in addition to recruiting more diverse scientists, we must also do the hard work of addressing and changing institutional policies, norms, and work environments that are toxic for and disproportionately disadvantage people from minoritized groups(10). Moreover, people from minoritized groups are not the ones who created these policies and norms or the inequity and under-representation, so they should not be unduly charged with solving these problems alone. Indeed, people from minoritized groups can face additional negative biases against them for doing DEI work(8). Therefore, everyone in the academic community must work together to make positive change happen, and that especially includes people with identities that come with privilege and power such as myself as a straight cis-gender white man.

Neuroscience is a quickly expanding field, and we must take direct actions to ensure that it is welcoming and accessible. Rectifying systemic inequities in STEM research will begin to mend historical injustices and will benefit everyone. Both my core human values and my awareness of the inequities in neuroscience drive me to do DEI work. I am committed to using my privilege and power as a member of the majority group to amplify voices of minoritized community members and help change academic culture and work environments to be more equitable and inclusive for all scientists and staff. I am very much looking forward to continuing this work as a faculty member.

References

1. Moss-Racusin, CA, Dovidio, JF, Brescoll, VL, Graham, MJ, Handelsman, J. Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students (2012) PNAS, 109(41):16474-16479.

2. Williams, JC, Phillips, KW, Hall, EV. Double Jeopardy? Gender Bias Against Women in Science (2014) www.worklifelaw.org.

3. Bertolero, MA, Dworkin JD, David, SU, Lloreda, CL, Srivastava, P, Stiso, J, Zhou, D, Dzirasa, K, Fair, D, Kaczkurkin, AN, Marlin, BJ, Shohmay, D, Uddin, LQ, Zurn, P, Bassett, DS. Racial and ethnic imbalance in neuroscience reference lists and intersections with gender (2020) bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.12.336230

4. Taffe, MA, Gilpin NW. Racial inequity in grant funding from the US National Institutes of Health (2021) eLife, 2021,10e65697

5. Bailey, ZD, Krieger, N, Agénor, M, Graves, J, Linos, N, Bassett, MT. Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: evidence and interventions (2017) Lancet, 389:1453–1463.

6. Martinez, LR, O’Brien KR, Hebl, MR. Fleeing the Ivory Tower: Gender Differences in the Turnover Experiences of Women Faculty (2017) J. Women’s Health, 26:580-586.

7. Huang, J, Gates, AJ, Sinatra, R, Barabasi, AL. Historical comparison of gender inequality in scientific careers across countries and disciplines (2020) PNAS, 117(9):4609-4616.

8. Thornhill T. We Want Black Students, Just Not You: How White Admissions Counselors Screen Black Prospective Students (2019) Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 5(4):456-470.

9. Chaudhary, VB, Berhe, AA. Ten simple rules for building an antiracist lab (2020) PLoS Comput. Biol. 16(10):e1008210.

10. Singleton KS, Murray DRK, Dukes AJ, Richardson LNS. A year in review: Are diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives fixing systemic barriers? (2021) Neuron, 109:1-3.