Kim Medley
Tyson Director
“I think science as it’s done today does depend a bit on cultural stability because of the way it’s funded. Government agencies fund most of the science that we do. In that sense, science is an institution that depends on a solid financial foundation, so yes, it’s dependent on cultural stability.
But in terms of the kinds of questions that people ask, I think what’s happening now will stimulate new and important questions. It will push people to think about how we do science; how it can be more inclusive and anti-racist. How we can address the systemic nature of racism in science and remove those norms of white supremacy that have held up science for too long. I think we have an opportunity to look at the process of science and improve how it’s done in terms of breaking down those systemic barriers to inclusion.
I also think it’s going to stimulate folks to come up with new ideas. For instance, at Tyson we’re planning to push ourselves as scientists to incorporate environmental justice questions into some of the traditional ecological research that is done. This is an opportunity for us to really move forward, think outside the box, push the limits of what science has been able to do and make a difference.
We have been working to increase the human diversity at Tyson and model an inclusive community during the summer field season, but that’s been primarily focused on our students. Now we are trying to think about ourselves and what we need to do.
To date, we have sent six of our nine staff to Crossroads training, which is a two-and-a-half day workshop to understand and analyze systemic racism, and then figure out how to recognize and remove it within our own operations. We’ve established a library of anti-racism resources. But what we really want to improve on in the next academic year is action.
We are going to continue to do some more learning and we’re going to train all of our staff on anti-racism and bystander intervention. But we are also going to establish two advisory boards to guide us on Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion actions to make sure that we are doing things properly.
A lot of this is funding related, so we’re working with our colleagues at WashU to establish funding and grow support for historically marginalized populations. We also want to grow our staff at Tyson and make our staff more diverse. ”