DEI Resources

Ten Simple Rules for Building an Anti-Racist Research Lab

• Demographics of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce and student body in the U.S. and Europe continue to show severe underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Among the documented causes of the persistent lack of diversity in STEM include bias, discrimination, and harassment of members of underrepresented minority groups (URMs). These issues persist due to continued marginalization, power imbalances, and lack of adequate policies against misconduct in academic and other scientific institutions. All scientists can play important roles in reversing this trend by shifting the culture of academic workplaces to intentionally implement equitable and inclusive policies, set norms for acceptable workplace conduct, and provide opportunities for mentorship and networking. As scientists are increasingly acknowledging the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in science, there is a need for clear direction on how to take anti-racist action. Here we present 10 rules to help labs develop anti-racists policies and action in an effort to promote racial and ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion in science.

Addressing racism and disparities in the biomedical sciences

• Bias and racism in the biomedical community thwart scientific advancement, reduce the pipeline of diverse clinicians and scientists, and contribute to racial and ethnic health disparities. We advocate for proactive antiracism approaches to eliminate barriers impacting people of color, promote equity and achieve a more effective biomedical community.

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: A Model To Guide Cultural Transformation in STEM Departments

• Despite recent interest and pressing need, we lack a clear model of culturally relevant, responsive, sensitive teaching in university STEM departments. Most culturally relevant efforts within STEM education address actions individual professors can take within their own classrooms and mentoring, rather than describing how to go about enacting cultural transformation at the departmental level. In this article, we propose the application of the Ladson-Billings model of culturally relevant pedagogy to promote an inclusive culture within undergraduate STEM departments. The model consists of three components: academic success, cultural competence and integrity, and critical consciousness. We define each component and describe what it looks like and how it can be used to guide departmental transformation, including examples in biology, physics, mathematics, and computer science departments at our own institution. This model can help guide faculty committed to creating departments where all kinds of STEM students can thrive, provided they are willing to work hard.

On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life

• What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? Sara Ahmed offers an account of the diversity world based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education, as well as her own experience of doing diversity work. Diversity is an ordinary, even unremarkable, feature of institutional life. Yet diversity practitioners often experience institutions as resistant to their work, as captured through their use of the metaphor of the "brick wall." On Being Included offers an explanation of this apparent paradox. It explores the gap between symbolic commitments to diversity and the experience of those who embody diversity. Commitments to diversity are understood as "non-performatives" that do not bring about what they name. The book provides an account of institutional whiteness and shows how racism can be obscured by the institutionalization of diversity. Diversity is used as evidence that institutions do not have a problem with racism. On Being Included offers a critique of what happens when diversity is offered as a solution. It also shows how diversity workers generate knowledge of institutions in attempting to transform them.

*This book is available through the UCSF library.*

The Science of Equality in Education: The Effects of Gender Roles, Implicit Bias, and Stereotype Threat on the Lives of Women and Girls

• Perception Institute partnered with the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society and the Center for Policing Equity to produce this report, which synthesizes a wide range of research on the impact of gender roles, implicit gender bias, and stereotype threat on the lives of women and girls, particularly in the workplace and education settings.

A Lesson In Bias: The Relationship Between Implicit Racial Bias and Performance in Pedagogical Context

• We posit instructors' implicit racial bias as a factor in racial disparities in academic achievement and test the relationship between this factor, instructor lesson quality, and learners' subsequent test performance. In Study 1, white participants were assigned to the role of instructor and gave a short lesson to a learner who was either black or white. Instructors' implicit bias predicted diminished test performance on the part of black, but not white, learners. Further, instructors' anxiety and lesson quality, as rated by coders, mediated the relationship between their implicit bias and learners' test performance. In Study 2, a separate sample of non-black participants watched videos of instructors from cross-race lessons from the first experiment. Once again, instructors' implicit bias predicted diminished test performance by participants. These findings suggest that underperformance by minorities in academic domains may be driven by the effect implicit racial biases have on educators' pedagogical effectiveness.