Open Letter to the IEEE VGTC

First posted November 24, 2019

Dear Members of the VGTC Executive Committee,

On October 22, 2019 during the opening session of the IEEE VIS conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada, the IEEE VGTC introduced the new "Visualization Academy". Modeled after the SIGCHI and SIGGRAPH academies, the academy was pronounced a "Hall of Fame" and an "A-list" of visualization (from the press release). While this is a great initiative that could expand the ways to be recognized by the community, it has a serious flaw: its founding thirty members include only two women (6% of the academy). This is not reflective of 2019 values, nor is it representative of the diversity of the visualization community (19% female authors over the past 25 years).

How did this happen? In starting the academy, the VGTC chose to include all of the past recipients of the annual career and technical achievement awards from 2004 to 2019. Unfortunately, this inaugural class does not reflect the diversity of the visualization community—as stated above, only two of the 30 awardees are women and only two are persons of color. When the SIGCHI Academy was established in 2001, they started fresh by inviting seven members not all drawn from past awardees. On the other hand, the first 2018 class of the SIGGRAPH Academy did include all of its past awardees; 52 in total, of which only 6 are women.

These are not just numbers; they can have a profound impact on the people of our community, particularly on its youngest and most inexperienced members. STEM disciplines in general, and computer science and engineering in particular, have a hard time attracting and retaining women and minorities. The people that we, as a community, choose to recognize as an "A-list" or "Hall of Fame" represent clear signals to these newcomers whether they are welcome and can ever be expected to be lauded in this way themselves. During a meetup on diversity at the IEEE VIS 2019 conference in Vancouver, these exact points were made by young female first-time attendees who did not feel like they would be recognized for continued contributions to the field. The same is likely true for underrepresented minorities.

It is true that the diversity of the visualization field has historically been skewed. However, this situation is improving, and there is by no means a shortage of brilliant, senior women and members of underrepresented groups who could have been given this distinction. Thus, we see no reason for the community to double down on award decisions from yesteryear. A better approach would have been to launch the Visualization Academy with just a few individuals chosen anew from the current community, similar to how the SIGCHI Academy was established in 2001.

Note that this letter is not a criticism of the current Visualization Academy members. However, we have a hard time understanding why past winners needed to be awarded once again when several of them are already retired or no longer active in the field. We wonder if this also means that future award recipients will automatically be inducted into the Visualization Academy (as seems to be the case for SIGGRAPH)? If so, what is the purpose of the Visualization Academy?

To begin to address this matter, we propose the following actions be taken by the IEEE VGTC:

1. Develop a policy for and release a statement on the importance of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for the IEEE VGTC, especially as it pertains to the Visualization Academy;
2. Establish a VGTC Executive Committee position on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives; and
3. Ensure that new inductees into the Visualization Academy roughly represent the diversity of the visualization community.

In addition, it would be useful to consider restructuring the award system at IEEE VIS and apply similar measures for the other VGTC awards.

We also want to note that while this letter has many signatories from a broad cross-section of the community, we represent an even larger group of VIS academics and practitioners including many young or minority scholars who perceive themselves to be either too junior or otherwise too vulnerable in their careers to sign an open letter such as this one. Over the last few weeks, we have been approached by many of these individuals, in person or online. These are the people that will form the future of our field, and we are heartbroken to see their hopes and dreams be impacted in this way.

Something must be done. We would be happy to help in any way we can.

Signatories (alphabetical order)

• Wolfgang Aigner, St. Poelten University of Applied Sciences, Austria
• Lyn Bartram, Simon Fraser University, Canada
• Rahul Basole, Accenture AI, USA
• Leilani Battle, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
• Lonni Besançon, Linköping University, Sweden
• Anastasia Bezerianos, Université Paris-Sud, France
• Alex Bigelow, University of Arizona, USA
• Vetria Byrd, Purdue University, USA
• Ángel Cabrera, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
• Polo Chau, Georgia Tech, USA
• Jian Chen, The Ohio State University, USA
• Fanny Chevalier, University of Toronto, Canada
• Christopher Collins, Ontario Tech University, Canada
• Michael Correll, Tableau Research, USA
• R. Jordan Crouser, Smith College, USA
• Christoph Garth, TU Kaiserslautern, Germany
• Pierre Dragicevic, Inria, France
• James Eagan, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France
• Niklas Elmqvist, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
• Mai Elshehaly, University of Leeds, UK
• Ronak Etemadpour, CUNY City College, NYC, NY
• Jean-Daniel Fekete, Inria, France
• Danyel Fisher, Honeycomb, USA
• Angus Forbes, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
• Steven Franconeri, Northwestern University, USA
• Nils Gehlenborg, Harvard Medical School, USA
• Carina S. González, University of La Laguna, Spain
• David Gotz, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
• Steve Haroz, Inria, France
• Hans-Christian Hege, Zuse Institute Berlin, Germany
• Nathalie Henry Riche, Microsoft Research, USA
• Uta Hinrichs, University of St Andrews, UK
• Fred Hohman, Georgia Tech, USA
• Ingrid Hotz, Linköping University, Sweden
• Jessica Hullman, Northwestern University, Illinois, USA
• Katherine E. Isaacs, University of Arizona, USA
• Petra Isenberg, Inria, France
• Tobias Isenberg, Inria, France
• Federico Iuricich, Clemson University, USA
• Alark Joshi, University of San Francisco, USA
• Minsuk Kahng, Oregon State University, USA
• Morteza Karimzadeh, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
• Matthew Kay, University of Michigan, USA
• Nam Wook Kim, Boston College, USA
• Oh-Hyun Kwon, University of California, Davis, USA
• Bongshin Lee, Microsoft Research, USA
• Heike Leitte, TU Kaiserslautern, Germany
• Simone Lenti, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
• Alexander Lex, University of Utah, USA
• Joshua A. Levine, University of Arizona, USA
• Ross Maciejewski, Arizona State University, USA
• Liz Marai, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
• Justin Matejka, Autodesk Research, Canada
• Ronald Metoyer, University of Notre Dame, USA
• Silvia Miksch, TU Wien, Austria
• Robert Monfera, Elastic NV, Switzerland
• Dominik Moritz, Apple/Carnegie Mellon University, USA
• Paul Parsons, Purdue University, USA
• Evan Peck, Bucknell University, USA
• Adam Perer, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
• Charles Perin, University of Victoria, Canada
• Nicola Pezzotti, Philips Research, The Netherlands
• Emmanuel Pietriga, Inria, France
• Arnaud Prouzeau, Monash University, Australia
• Aaron Quigley, University of St Andrews, UK
• Marc Streit, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
• Arjun Srinivasan, Georgia Tech, USA
• Cagatay Turkay, University of Warwick, UK
• Tom Vierjahn, Westphalian University of Applied Sciences, Germany
• Anna Vilanova, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
• Bimlesh Wadhwa, National University of Singapore, Singapore
• Emily Wall, Georgia Tech, USA
• Wesley Willett, University of Calgary, Canada
• Yanhong Wu, Visa Research, USA
• Jian Zhao, University of Waterloo, Canada
• Qiyu Zhi, University of Notre Dame, USA