Issue of August 4, 2023
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Cross-post: Fewer than 20 Black women physicists in the U.S. have earned tenure. This scholar just joined the club
2. Bias in science: how to fight the good fight
3. Supreme Court rulings will reduce diversity in STEM and set back scientific progress
4. Martha Betz Shapley
5. Diversity and the Law Town Hall
6. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
7. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
8. Access to Past Issues
An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.
By Nadra Nittle for The 19th
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein still remembers how appalled her father was when she pointed to a stream of light spanning the sky and inquired, “What is that?”
“My dad just looked at me like, ‘What. . . is wrong with you?’” Prescod-Weinstein recalled with a laugh. “That’s the Milky Way,” he told her.
Neither one of them knew for sure during their camping trip among the giant sequoias nearly three decades ago that Prescod-Weinstein, then 14, would grow up to be a theoretical physicist specializing in early universe cosmology, though the teenager had already expressed an interest in the field.
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2023/08/crosspost-fewer-than-20-black-women.html
Physicist Athene Donald shares her views on systemic bias in science. In a highly competitive environment, "perverse incentives to publish research don’t always encourage collaboration and support. Such a setting might not lead to the best science, and it certainly does not create an atmosphere in which everyone thrives." She notes that this revelation came relatively late to her in her career, when she realized that her apparent failures were not necessarily down to her personal shortcomings, but also arose from systemic issues. To know it wasn’t just her fault was both reassuring and dispiriting.
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02434-7
By Jacob Carter
This month, we saw rulings from the Supreme Court on affirmative action, student loan forgiveness and LGBTQ+ rights that set back progress on these critical issues. These rulings have me very concerned about the future state of science in the United States. Just last year, the National Science Foundation’s report "The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2022" showed that the U.S., across multiple indices, has lost its place as the world leader in science and technology. These decisions are going to see us slip back further, I’m afraid.
Read more at
https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/opinions/073023/supreme-court-rulings-will-reduce-stem-diversity
This week was the anniversary of the birth, in Kansas City, Missouri on 3 Aug 1890, of the American astronomer Martha Betz Shapley. As well as assisting her husband Harlow Shapley (they married in April 1914) in his astronomical research at Mount Wilson Observatory and Harvard College Observatory (pictured here at around the turn of the century), the couple worked together on numerous scientific endeavours. Martha Betz Shapley was also a recognised and respected authority on eclipsing binaries, carrying out her own research and writing several articles on these and other astronomical topics.
Read more at
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Shapley_Martha/
2023 Diversity and The Law Town Hall: The Scotus Rulings on Race-Conscious Admissions and DEI Efforts
Jamie Lewis Keith (EducationCounsel), Shannon Gundy (University of Maryland), and Maya Kobersy (University of Michigan) join AAAS ISEED Director Travis York to summarize the key aspects of the Court’s decision in the Harvard and UNC admissions cases and share a high-level interpretation of what is immediately clear regarding what colleges and universities could continue to do to support student access and success.
View the Town Hall at
https://www.aaas.org/programs/diversity-and-law
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Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.
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