Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
I'm still not up to Black History! I'm still working through white US history. Bear with me! Almost there!
Q: Why does it seem like everything has to be woke now? Even our scientists?! It never used to be that way! Why does it seem like these days, even higher education has to think about race, when it didn't before?
A: Higher education, including STEM, did think about race before. That history has just been hidden from you. Because racism.
1/N
An uninformed LA Times Opinion writer was big mad that UCLA asks faculty applicants to document their contributions to “equity, diversity and inclusion."
She asks, "If Albert Einstein applied for a professorship at UCLA today, would he be hired? The answer is not clear." She asks if his work would "reflect his contributions to equity, diversity and inclusion? Unlikely." Or his “potential to understand the barriers facing women and racial/ethnic minorities? Also unlikely."
🤦🏿♂️Umm.. yes it would.
As previously mentioned, here's what Einstein had to say about segregation:
"There is a separation of white people and colored people in the United States. That separation is not a disease of colored people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it."
For the last 20 years of his career, Einstein declined almost all public speaking engagements, except those at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
This photo was taken at Lincoln University, an HBCU.
Thurgood Marshall graduated from Lincoln, and Einstein has an honorary degree from there, so they have that in common.
But this brings me to an interesting observation: The racism gatekeepers in STEM often invoke the names of the very people who support inclusion! 🤷🏿♂️
Important: Einstein did good things and bad things. As much as he said nice and did nice things for Black folk and Jewish folk in the US, he didn't treat his wife very well, and he said awful things about Chinese people.
Think of how much it would have meant to Black kids studying science, to know that Albert Einstein saw them.
Think of how impactful it would have been for white teachers and professors of science, to know that Einstein thought that focusing on DEI was important, and that anti-Blackness was foolish.
Why did so many professional scientists and educators learn about this for the very first time when some random Black dude (🙋🏿♂️) posted it on Twitter half a decade ago?
Who is served by not talking about this aspect of Einstein's life? Black people? Scientists? Or anti-Black racists?
Why do we prioritize their needs over the needs of normal people? That's a choice. We could decide to stop doing that at any time.
There are over 4000 universities in the US. Only 2.6% of US universities are HBCUs. Despite this, HBCUs graduate 46% of all Black women in the US that receive a degree in a science, technology, engineering, or technology field. Almost half!
@PalmAndNeedle @kcarruthers @mekkaokereke Einstein reacted relatively early, 2 months into nazi rule
he stated on March 10th 1933 that he won't return to Germany because of the rising oppression and was chastised for that by his 'boss' Max Planck
one day after government officials openly incited the public to riot against German Jews
before Dachau concentration camp was established (March 20th)
before the nazis brought the Enabling Act through parliament (march 23rd)
@xian @mekkaokereke Wild — I've met the Chief of Endocrinology/Chairman of the department of medicine from CDU and I didn't know it was an HBCU. 🤦🏽♂️
(Granted, it's missing from some HBCU lists, I imagine maybe because it was only founded in 1966.)
I grew up down the road from Morehouse and Spelman — and I spent time on their campuses as a kid, and I knew that Einstein held antiracist opinions — and I _still_ didn't know that he refused to speak elsewhere than HBCUs (What a mensch!).
Even my (white) math and physics teachers who idolized him never mentioned this part of his career, and my (white) lefty political upbringing never pointed out this clear intersection between his politics and his academic contributions.
@mekkaokereke The closest HBCU to where I live is Langston University, about 40 miles away.
Founded in 1897, Langston is also the only HBCU in #Oklahoma. Some of its well-known graduates include Jennifer Hudson, Anastasia Pittman, Lee Gaines, and Bessie Coleman.
Yeah, that Opinion author clearly has only the "pop sci" idea of who Einstein was. The cartoon like image of the eccentric scientist who did nothing in their life other than the science.
Utterly ignorant and appalling justification for more fascist intellectual bashing.
@dysmento @mekkaokereke Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio, established 1887.
(I organized a two day conference in STEM last fall and sent emails to their various department chairs, inviting their students and offering financial support to attend. I got absolutely no responses, which truly surprised me. 😓 We will keep trying! In Atlanta, we had an ongoing relationship between several depts at GSU, and Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University. Tremendous students!)
FAMU! and i am speaking at Tuskegee in April! This old white guy loves and appreciates HBCUs and their role in our society.
@mekkaokereke Wow. I used to be proud that I have given talks at "top" schools, Harvard Yale Stanford etc. Suddenly I'm troubled and ashamed that I've never even visited an HBCU to my knowledge, let alone spoken at one.
Without closely examining a map, I believe the closest HBCU is Lincoln, since it has a 2nd campus in Philadelphia.
@skyfaller @mekkaokereke HBCUs don't have multi-billion dollar endowments (unlike Harvard et. al.).
Have you considered doubling your speaking fees for non-HBCUs and making HBCU talks free?
@datum @mekkaokereke First, my 15 minutes of fame are over for now, I'm not currently on the speaking circuit; but I'll certainly consider this option if lightning strikes again.
Second, I was a college student when I was speaking, and I didn't have a standard speaking fee because I had no idea what I was doing. IIRC, I pulled a "well what do you think is fair?" most of the time.
Finally, I didn't speak at HBCUs simply because none invited me. I wouldn't have turned them down for any reason.
@datum @mekkaokereke But why didn't any HBCUs invite me to speak?
The obvious answer is the college activism I was organizing had zero presence at HBCUs. I was so busy supporting the volunteers we had; it never occurred to me that we needed to reach out to HBCUs or other sorts of campuses where we had no contacts.
Why didn't we have volunteers at HBCUs? Did they read the news sources reporting on our activism, like the NY Times? Could they afford to volunteer? Were our issues relevant?
@jspath55 @mekkaokereke yup. since i move to Chicago obv it's no longer my closest. but i grew up not far from Morgan State, my cousin graduated from there, and an old colleague of mine works there now as a prof.
they've invested a lot in the campus over the past few decades and it looks like a v cool place now. when i was a kid it was so small
i was very happy for them when i saw this news:
https://www.morgan.edu/news/first-hbcu-to-open-a-medical-school
@mekkaokereke good question re: closest HBCU. This is unfortunate:
"Colorado has no accredited Historically Black College or University, or HBCU"
This makes sense when you think about when HBCUs (and why) were created.
Just a side note. I made a GitHub repo that has all HBCUs (and Primarily Black institutions) by state according to the US Dept of Education.
A List of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Primarily Black Institutions as labeled by the US Dept. of Education. - kjaymiller/hbcu-list
@cnsyoung @bascule @mekkaokereke The list was compiled from the 2021 list of colleges and universities that report to the US Dept. of Edu. HBCU is a recognized class of schools (I don't know the criteria). PBI designation is based on a percentage of students that identify as black.
At the bottom of the README there is a link to download the list and see (WARNING that dataset is really hard to parse)
@kjaymiller There's a requirements file but no python in this repo. Is that vestigial from one-time use tool written to pull from DoE or something still around for handling updates?
And some broken URLs; would manual PRs to correct them be useful or get in the way of any update-handling code?
@ellie it was originally a one shot pull. I’ve used it in a couple project in the past (no-longer maintained).
Sadly I don't think the DoE has updated this dataset since (updates seem to be based on metadata but not content)
I do plan to revisit this and make it easer to work with.
Future repo for making this easier is at - https://github.com/kjaymiller/dept-of-edu-scorecard-ingest.
A List of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Primarily Black Institutions as labeled by the US Dept. of Education. - kjaymiller/hbcu-list
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