We are a group of current and former graduate researchers at UCLA who study anthropology, genetics, health, and evolution. We believe that Biological Anthropology as a discipline cannot produce research that is ahistorical and apolitical when it’s clear that its collective work has profound social implications. For a generative conversation to emerge, we must acknowledge the perpetuation of racism, bigotry, and xenophobia in our field since its inception. Rather than focusing on the past, however, we want to direct our efforts toward constructive work that grapples with these issues. 

Towards this goal, we created a series of outreach events and symposia thinking about how community work can be done ethically, who is included and/or described in research, and ways to combat misconceptions around evolution. We partnered with leaders from Center X and the Science Project at UCLA to produce lesson plans on human biology, evolution, and genetics that explicitly include discuss race, racism, and its impact on health for the grade 7-12 classroom.