Transparency in Diversity Action at the University of Chicago

Guy Whittall-Scherfee recently completed the Writing Persuasive Policy Program with the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.

America’s universities are facing a crisis of their own creation. Despite a growing population and increased effort to support higher education, attendance at universities nationwide has decreased. This is not due to a lack of interest from students, but a consequence of the barriers that academia has constructed over the last 200 years. This history has resulted in a system of institutional racism and inaccessibility that disproportionately hinders underrepresented minorities compared to their white counterparts. These policies impact every department within universities, but physics is one of the least accessible departments across the United States, especially for Black students. There are various ways universities can dismantle barriers and increase accessibility, and they can start with transparency about how they use funding to build a more diverse and prosperous learning environment.

The university experience is not equal for all students. Underrepresented students, defined in this piece as Black, Hispanic, Native American or Pacific Islander, are more likely to experience harassment from peers and mentors and are 20% more likely to require additional time to complete a four-year degree when compared with their white counterparts. Increased enrollment time, coupled with private sector scholarship programs that disproportionately benefit white students, lead to increased education costs for underrepresented students. These combine to create an environment where underrepresented students feel unable to pursue undergraduate degrees. But the environment in physics is even worse. The American Institute of Physics conducted a study focused on African American students and found that nearly half of these students reported feeling socially isolated in physics classes and labs. When asked to identify the greatest barrier to success, one student commented, “ Feeling isolated in my department and my field and knowing that as I got further in my education less and less people of color would be there”.  Without a sense of safety and community, students are forced out of their programs. This lack of safety and community is connected to the structure and history of racism in academia and must be addressed to move forward.

Institutional racism is not a recent development for American academia, from slavery to the use of science to justify eugenics. In Craig Wilder’s book Ebony and Ivy, he details how early universities in America, “sought funding and student enrollments from plantations in the Deep South, whose wealth was derived directly from the growth of cotton on acreage tended by African slaves”. He also discusses the development of “race science”, which involved a combination of pseudo-anthropological studies to claim that whites were a superior race.

Just like the institutions themselves, scientists from many disciplines are celebrated and rewarded while their racist beliefs are ignored. In biology, James Watson, a Nobel prize winner, stated, “There’s a difference on the average between blacks and white in IQ tests… the difference is genetic.” Wernher von Braun, who received a National Medal of Science, was accused by multiple prisoners of using slave labor to help construct rockets in Germany. Karl Pearson is credited as one of the founders of mathematical statistics and believed that, “No degenerate and feeble stock will ever be converted into healthy and sound stock by the accumulated effects of education, good laws, and sanitary surroundings”. While these examples could be called bad apples, the fact that these men are venerated by the fields demonstrates a willingness by academia to ignore discrimination in the name of “scientific progress”. This belief has settled into departments as senior faculty and guest lectures are celebrated for their scientific breakthroughs, regardless of the damage their personal beliefs cause their students and the community.

Some argue that the beliefs of a person do not impact the scientific work they do, that it is not the person, but the research that matters. This argument is particularly common in the physical sciences. However, if exceptional research is truly the focus, then academia should do everything they can to increase diversity.  A 2020 study using natural language processing techniques on US PhD theses and early career papers found that “The more students of underrepresented genders or races in their discipline, the more they are likely to introduce novel conceptual linkages”. In other words, the more students from diverse backgrounds that are present in a discipline, the more new ideas are introduced to that discipline. The diverse thinking of underrepresented minority scientists have played leading roles in the Apollo moon landing (Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson), developing high speed internet (Narinder Singh Kapany), and discovering how the Yellow Fever was transmitted (Carlos Juan Finlay). All these advancements were limited in some way or another by educational and scientific racism. How many brilliant and life-saving inventions have been lost because universities have pushed out or rejected underrepresented students?

Many universities have attempted to address these issues through fundraising for underrepresented students but have not reported if the funding actually benefited students. For example, the Impact and Inquiry campaign at the University of Chicago raised over $100 million to support first-generation and URM students; however, there is no clear information about how many students benefited from this increased funding. In fact, the Impact and Inquiry Campaign doesn’t provide any description of how the funding allocated to diversity and inclusion was spent. While a lack of oversight on how funding is allocated and institutional racism are nationwide problems, the consequence of these issues is apparent at UChicago. Underrepresented students face discrimination structurally and personally from their peers and professors in the physics department at the University of Chicago. An internal review found that while 80% of non-minority students felt valued and included by peers, admin, and faculty, only 33% of minority students could say the same. This inequality presents a barrier that prevents underrepresented students from pursuing opportunities outside of the established classroom. This is exacerbated by a lack of diverse faculty at the university and the physics community at large. In the United States, “almost 70 percent of all physics departments have no African-American or Hispanic faculty members at all”.

How has this issue been addressed? The physics department listed no actions that were taken based on the results of this study. The study concluded that there was a difference between the responses of minority and non-minority students but provided no discussion of what might cause this difference or how it could be addressed. For new students, these results show the awareness of an issue but a complete lack of real change to address it. There are thousands of students who are prevented from achieving their dreams due to institutional racism. While dismantling this system will take time, universities can start by being more transparent about the impact of existing efforts to improve diversity. This is a choice between increasing accessibility or remaining entrenched in racist policies that actively harm the growth of the field. Only one of these will allow for a new surge of diverse perspectives and research. If universities want to remain relevant, they must show everyone that they support diverse new perspectives.