Helping the Minoritized Achieve in Academic Science

Archive for November, 2016

How to Deal

Nagasakibomb-colorOMG. My worst nightmare is a reality. Our next President is a confirmed woman assaulting, hate mongering, xenophobic, narcissist. Or at least he plays one on TV.

In the spirit of this blog, we all know what happened, and we know it sucks, but the question is: how do we deal with it? I have to say that I have become quite an expert at having difficult conversations with my students – and not just the shit sandwich kind. Here is what I did today (perhaps others can share what they did in the comments).

  1. If you are teaching, there are already a couple of resources online. One from the University of Michigan and a good article What Should We Tell The Children? You should decide for yourself if you want to bring it up or not. You should probably have a plan of what to say if a student brings it up. If you are a woman or person of color, students will likely come to you to talk, if they feel badly.
  2. If you have students who are at risk or feeling vulnerable, here is what I did.
    • We had a casual group conversation in the hallway with students who were supportive and positive about supporting these students. Much of it was the commiseration, but some of it was expressions of fears of people saying or doing something and stories of having people yell, “Go back from where you came!” at students in various places. As most college towns, the students feel, and probably are, safer here than in other rural places in the US, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t the target of bigoted, xenophobic slurs.
    • I already had a meeting with my middle eastern student, a wonderful scientist who works in a hijab. We discussed her abstract to be submitted Friday to a national conference. After the editing was done, I turned to her and asked if she was OK and if I could do anything to help her feel better. I told her that I wanted to have a diverse lab, and that she should always feel safe in the lab. That was the most important. If she ever didn’t feel safe, or was scared from people who might yell or harm her, that she should call or text me. And if something did happen, she should report it to me immediately. She was very grateful for my offer and appeared visibly relieved.
  3. Because I didn’t get to talk to everyone, and one student sent out an announcement about an on campus vigil that she was attending, I decided to officially condone the activity (despite missing it because I needed to get home to my kids). I also used the opportunity to send a message to my students. Here is what I wrote:
Dear Labbies,
I encourage anyone who needs help or support to consider going to the vigil tonight.
I am happy to talk with anyone personally about my views on these subjects, but I won’t put them in this email.
Also, I would like to say that it is important to me that my lab be inclusive and diverse. I strive to make it that way purposely. You should feel safe within the lab. Feeling safe is not the same thing as feeling comfortable. Being in a diverse environment can be uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable can be an important place for learning and growing. Part of being in college is being pushed to think about and discuss uncomfortable things in a controlled, respectful, and civilized manner using FACTS and not just opinions. I encourage conversations about our differences in experience in a calm, respectful manner. You may use humor, but not as a weapon.
Further, I want you to know that if you do not feel safe because of your faith, skin tone, or heritage, please come to talk to me immediately. You may call or text me (XXX-XXX-XXXX) if you are concerned for yourself outside the lab and you need help immediately, please call.
Finally, please watch out for each other. Many of you already text and chat to each other. Please do exchange numbers and call or text if you are in an unsafe or hostile situation and need help. I do not expect that to occur in SmallUniversityTown, but it can happen, as I am most worried that a Trump administration has emboldened hate groups with racist, misogynist, and violent intentions in our country. We can help each other. The best way to defeat a bully is by having friends nearby to help.
Please be safe and help each other,
WomanOfScience

Honestly, having all these conversations was as really good for me. It felt good to be in action and to feel like I could help in this terrible situation. But, my students helped me, as well. My middle eastern student told me about a time in her country’s history when they elected someone very similar to Trump and then had to live through it. For 8 years of his rule, student activists were jailed, killed, or forced to leave their country forever. If they could live through that, we would make it through Trump.

I told her I hoped that the Founding Fathers’ system of checks and balances and our active civil rights organizations hold better than that.Then she gave me some excellent advise: Don’t spend too much energy on this. Save your energy because it will be many years to fight. She told me that I am needed here to give energy to our work, including science and educating and helping my students. This is what she learned from watching others who lost their freedom, their lives, their families, and/or their countries during those 8 years (he was re-elected, and his second term was far worse than his first, apparently).

So, what do you think? Do you have a story to share? What did you say to your students today? Do you have better words of wisdom? Please share in a comment. To get an email every time I post, push the +Follow button.

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Mentoring

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Wrong Kind of Attention

conferenceThe election is bringing out a lot of issues about sexual harassment, assault, and unwanted sexual advances. There has also been a lot of news about sexual harassment in science over the past couple years with the outing of three male scientists who appear to be serial harassers. There have been many, many excellent articles about exactly the kind of harassment women encounter and how is negatively affects the women and makes many women leave science. I am making a little list of some of my favorite and important articles here:

This one written by a cool WomanOfScience blogger, Hope Jahren: “She Wanted to do Her Science…”

This one on TenureSheWrote from a woman who is standing up for the next generation and the follow-up on collaborations with harassers.

A story on NPR: science’s dark secret

And in Nature: astronomy roiled

Last year, one of the big conferences I attend annually,  decided to make a new anti-harassment policy. Because I think this is a very important step in protecting women, I am going to link to the policy at the Biophysical Society. My conference roomie and I were talking about how this is a really good step for the society. Because the society has a lot of young women, it is important to protect them. This policy gives them the ability to stand up for themselves.

At the first session of the first day of the conference, a senior male in my field asked me about the policy. He said that he was worried that men wouldn’t be able to flirt with women anymore without getting in trouble. I joked, but said that I think, if the woman is receptive to the flirting, you are safe. I did say that I, for one, was happy for this change. I briefly relayed a terrible conversation I had the previous year at the meeting where a program officer was very rude and threatening to me at a reception (I haven’t blogged about this, but will if people are interested). It was not explicitly sexual, but it was harassment, and he was using his power over me (as a program officer at a federal agency) to try to intimidate me. I didn’t report it to the society, but I did report it to the funding agency. The guy was actually reprimanded, but not for all that long.

Thinking back on it now, I am troubled by this conversation at the conference with the senior guy. I assume my male colleague was asking about flirting for other men, and not himself, as he is much older and happily married. But, even if he were asking for some other man, what right is there to flirting? Don’t get me wrong, I love flirting. I flirt with men and women in a professional manner asking them about their science and teasing about recent publications and students. But, is there a right to sexual flirting? At a conference? I don’t flirt that way, and I don’t expect to be flirted with that way. I don’t think there is a reasonable right to sexual flirting at a scientific conference.

There is another side effect. When older men flirt with young women, even if it is harmless-seeming, and the woman doesn’t mind, you are putting the woman in an uncomfortable position, nonetheless. Let me explain. When I was in graduate school, one of my peers said that women had it easier in male-dominated fields. I was surprised that he said that, and asked him to explain. He said that when you are a woman, you get all sorts of attention from senior guys. He said he never gets as much attention as cute girls get. So, when a senior guy flirts with a young woman, you are putting her in the position to raise the ire of her male colleagues who grumble that the woman is only getting the attention because she is attractive. This is also detrimental to the woman, who is there to talk about science and isn’t trying to get *that* kind of attention. We want attention for our science – not our looks. Further, for women who don’t want attention for their looks, it can drive them to dress more man-ish – perhaps in a way they don’t want to. So, now the woman has to look like a man in order to stave off unwanted attention, and that isn’t fair either.

What do you think? Do you think conferences should have sexual harassment policies? Do you think they help or hurt? Comment or send me a post. To get an email each time I post, push the +Follow button.

Category:

Career, ImpostorSyndrome, Research, Self-Promotion, StereotypeThreat

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