Instead of affirmative action, let’s start by increasing the amount of financial aid available for students from poorer neighborhoods, and making that financial aid easier to obtain. At the same time, we need to improve the high schools that these students attend. Over time, this would increase number of qualified students from underrepresented backgrounds (who attend these schools), and increase the number of them that can afford college. If we combine that with active efforts (such as those are featured on this blog) to fight prejudice among the faculty and staff at our universities, then we will have gone a very long way to fixing the pipelines that feed students from underrepresented backgrounds into physics.

The problem, of course, is that improving financial aid takes money, and improving the quality of physics teaching in high schools in poor neighborhoods will take a great deal of time, money, and effort! Results will also not be forthcoming immediately, but will take 10 or 20 years to appear as new generations of students experience the improvements. I’m unconvinced, however, that there is any other viable solution to the problem. Affirmative action, while seductively easy to implement (doesn’t take much time, money, or effort) is a band-aid that creates more problems than it solves.

thanks for this important and thoughtful post. I meant to write a comment, but it got too long, so I’ve posted it on my blog, see

Diversity in Science

Cu,

B.

Thanks for answering my question from the beginning about how to widen the talent pool. Though I am a member of an overrepresented minority, being mentored as been very effective in my own life.

However, in the course of this thread, my second question was not answered to my satisfaction: how does sociological diversity lead to a more productive population of physicists?

I am also skeptical of the efficacy of physics as an engine for social change. It is true that female, Latino, etc. physicists are signficant role models. But, there is something distasteful about that being about “hey, someone like me can ‘make it’” over “someone like me can be a renowned scientist.” In science particularly, it is the value of ideas that must be first and foremost, otherwise it’s lost its very reason for existence as a discipline.

This is not to say that education should not be widely and cheaply available — but we must be very careful what we are teaching.

Best,

Sourav

BTW, Chanda, I did finally track Aaron Saenz down and give him your greetings. About a week before he left since he’d finished the MS and was moving along… I’m glad to hear that you’re off and successfully pursuing what you want.

But to me this highlights the problem — if the North American physics community has been able to welcome an international populace with open arms, why can’t they do the same with the diversity that already exists at home?
For what it’s worth, Richard Tapia has been at this topic for 30-odd years, and he has been known to point this out as the largest problem with the shift in consciousness from “affirmative action” to a focus on “diversity”. On the other hand, the cohort I entered with was the rowdiest in years — the joke is that the university will never let two Hispanics into the department in the same year again after us.

E.g., if a person identifies himself as “Christian”, then I accept that person’s identification. But I don’t think of myself as “non-Christian” (which I am) except in very specific contexts. I would not be happy to have a “non-Christian” identity – it is the same as being “infidel”, “pagan” or “kafir”. I do not accept any of those identities either.

Similarly, (white/non-white/people of colour) is not my construct. If a person wants to self-identify as “white”, I’ll accept that. But I don’t accept the “not-white” or “people of colour” as part of my identity. I don’t think of myself as “brown” either.

Both in the case of my first example and in this case, I consider any concession to these labels as a form of colonialism. Anybody’s classification as “me=X” and “not-X” is not binding on the not-Xes.

I’ve taught thousands of Asian students. Their groups on the UCI campus do not remotely reflect the feelings she saw in a self-selected group that went to UCSC. Of course there’s diversity of opinion among the 58% Asian population at UCI, but I have 35 years experience with this issue, and have seen it take its daily toll. Belizean’s comments are spot on.

A far more effective method than affirmative action would be to work on the cultures that affirmative action sought to help. The problem isn’t at the UC level; it’s back in grade school, etc.

More’s to the point, amid all the talk of social justice: a colleague of mine served on the Med School admission comm, back in the 1990s when Calif by a large vote on a state initiative ballot made affirmative action illegal in all state processes.

Just to see the impact, the comm ran their previous sorting software, this time leaving out the weighted credits for affirmative action. About 15% of the previous incoming class was eliminated — completely. Even folding in the “soft” parameters didn’t overcome their scores and grades deficit.

This isn’t just a matter of simple justice. Think of those who didn’t get into med school, and the public that got doctors from this weighted method. We owe them something, too.

Not only was I born and raised in California, but I was also a high-achieving student who chose not to attend a University of California campus for a couple of reasons:
1. The financial aid was so bad that it was virtually impossible.
2. The anti-affirmative action movement made me and others like me feel terribly unwelcome in the University.

Having said that, I was strongly encouraged to return as a student at Santa Cruz to enter the Phd program in Astronomy and Astrophysics. What I found was a University who was struggling to keep its underrepresented minority enrolment up. In fact, the number of Black freshman entering at UCLA this fall was so low that it sparked protests! One person I know who has been reading applications for UCLA for years refused to do so for this entering class because she was sickened by the way students of colour were being weeded out of the university system.

I too was upset by what I saw as a growing trend of high fees, low financial aid, and continuing low enrolment of minorities, so I got involved. Last year I represented the UCSC grad students on the governing board of the officially recognized statewide student government, the University of California Students Association, which represents the over 200,000 students in the system. What I learned during my year in UCSA is that overwhelmingly, the faculty, students, staff, and some admin are concerned about these issues of diversity, fiscal accessibility, and the general health of the university. The only people who seemed to turn a deaf ear to these concerns were those making the decisions — our state legislators, the Governor, and the Regents who decide the UC’s budget and how it is spent.

Before I am accused of going off topic, I want to say that these things go to the heart of diversity in academia and therefore, to the heart of diversity in science. It seems to me that the more people are forced to struggle to get an university education, the less likely they are to choose fields considered impractical or out of reach, like our beloved physics. Financial aid, as well as funding for Student-Initiated Outreach programs, which draw in many of the students of colour and students from low-income backgrounds now attending the UC, are crucial to the success of students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Simply put, if they can’t go to college, they can’t become physicists. There’s a leak in the pipeline right there!

I’d also like to strongly challenge Gregory Benford’s generalization about “the asians.” Not only do sweeping generalizations like this make me cringe, but such comments are troublingly divisive. Students of all minority backgrounds are concerned about trends relating to diversity, and many of us stand in solidarity with one another. In my role on UCSA’s board, I had the opportunity to work with many students at UC Irvine, which hosted the annual Student of Color Conference this past April. The organizers of that program were overwhelmingly of East- and Southeast-Asian descent, and they were all pro-affirmative action and as troubled by the low enrolment numbers of minorities across the board as I am.

Moreover, while attending the conference I found myself amongst peers who shared the same concerns about affirmative action and have since become great friends with one of them. Like many of them, I am hoping to not only see affirmative action protected, but I hope to see it expand beyond communities that have suffered systematic racial or gender bias to also include communities that face economic inequity.

I can think of many examples of now-accomplished scientists, women and people of colour, who might never have made it without affirmative action programs, and I continue to see how it benefits the intended communities. I won’t make any claims about it’s perfection, but I believe it is integral to any program that seeks to truly diversify physics.

And kudos to Logizmo for wanting a diverse peer group!

Chanda (not Chandra )

It strikes me as a type of myth thats perpetuated in some circles b/c the fact is, say across the history of science, a fairly homogenous group of people have outputed radically different ‘working’ ideas.

So not surprisingly uniqueness is very much about the individual and his/her mind, rather than arbitrary social constructs. Particularly in the age of free information and instant access to material, where everyone is on the same boat.

People can clump people together however they want, for instance im sure the set of physicists with blond hair have outputed considerably different ideas than those with red hair. That doesn’t mean their is some sort of weird (either intrinsic or environmental) difference that favoritizes producing different ideas amongst the two groups.

Perhaps more convincing would be to argue that *language* has some effect on the way a persons mind thinks. Indeed there is evidence for this in the literature, but again it strikes me as a horribly hasty conclusion to put too much weight on that.