Anti-Racist symposium challenges participants to envision a more inclusive genomics
Rose Miyatsu | UCSC | June 5, 2023
On May 19, members of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute gathered to participate in a half-day symposium aimed at strengthening our commitment to anti-racist action and sparking conversations about how to make genomics a more inclusive field.
The event hosted four guest speakers, a panel of existing UCSC Genomics Institute outreach programs, and an interactive musical experience.
AZA Allsop from Yale University and Bruce Birren from the Broad Institute opened the symposium with a workshop that explored how spaces are created to make certain people more comfortable than others and led participants through exercises exploring their biases and assumptions. One representative exercise presented a scenario of a conversation between a graduate student who wants to attend the annual meeting of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCCHE) and an advisor who expresses that this student’s time and funding would be better spent elsewhere. Workshop participants broke into groups and hypothesized about the assumptions on which this conversation might be based, and the impact it might have on both the graduate student and advisor.
The next session was a panel facilitated by Baskin Engineering’s Associate Dean for DEI, Marcella Gomez. Panelists included Genomics Institute’s DEI Action Award winners Mohammed Mostajo-Radji and Yvonne Vasquez, and Baskin Engineering Anti-Racism Research Fellowship recipient Roman Reggiardo. Each of the three presenters talked about programs they helped lead to expand opportunities for students to participate in biomedical research. They then invited undergraduate participants in these programs to speak about their experiences. Hearing how these students had grown into confident scientists as a result of these opportunities was one of the most meaningful moments in the conference.
In the second workshop of the day, Sadye Paez of Rockefeller University led a conversation on integrity, privilege, inclusivity, and diversity in science. She presented an “academic wheel of privilege” and had everyone discuss in small groups the areas in which they were more or less privileged and how that influenced their feelings of inclusion. Paez was then joined by UCSC Genomics Institute Faculty Director of Diversity Sofie Salama, who helped facilitate discussions on current issues regarding diversifying samples in genomics research. Paez closed her presentation with a call to action for participants: “What is an action step you can commit to be curious about and explore in this next week?”
Erich Jarvis, a professor at Rockefeller University and frequent collaborator with the UCSC Genomics Institute gave the symposium keynote, “Surviving and thriving as an underrepresented minority scientist in a majority environment.” Jarvis was introduced by Genomics Institute Scientific Director David Haussler who expressed his “most incredible respect” for Jarvis for his “off the chart” consortium work on comparative genomics. Jarvis spoke a bit about some of this consortium work on the Vertebrate Genome Project, including what he and his team had learned from challenging assumptions about bird brains and vocal learning that had been based on biased theories about brain hierarchies. He then transitioned into talking about his own background, emphasizing how his upbringing, training as a dancer, and experiences as a scientist of color in spaces that were not welcoming to him influenced his science and how he brings consortiums together. He advised other underrepresented minorities to choose their role models carefully, take advantage of opportunities, lead by example, and embrace every part of themselves. He also argued that diversity breeds success and encouraged participants with privilege to make opportunities available for others.
The symposium concluded with AZA Allsop and his bandmates hosting an interactive musical experience, during which people shared what the conference had meant to them. Participants danced, read poetry they had written, and spoke to the group about how the conference had made them feel welcome to be their whole selves. It created a new space for us to be together, encourage one another, and open up new conversations that organizers hope will continue throughout the next year.