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Thank you for the invitation to contribute @mjbojdys. I will not be doing so as I feel that your efforts completely undermine the goals that you have stated that you are working towards. https://twitter.com/mjbojdys/status/1296029330263416832
In particular, I see a great deal of erasure of the efforts of scholars who have dedicated their careers and their intellect in your efforts in this regard.
If we cherished our colleagues and actually valued their work, you would have found a way to place them front and center and, in all honesty, if I were part of this, I would have done all that I could to remove myself from any 'leadership' role here.
If the leaders of your project valued DEI issues, they would have valued the scholars and the work that inform real DEI efforts.
That these scholars are often women, often Black women or Latina women, and they have been disregarded from the process in the organization and centering of this project is shameful.
The fact that the project is well-intentioned does not absolve it from critique. If I wanted to publish a paper in JACS on a topic that I have no idea about and no basis in training for, my good intentions would mean nothing.
The platform that has been garnered here from the good intentions of a few well-placed white men is astounding. That they showed a disregard for the hard work and scholarship and gains of DEI scholars in the process is just sad.
That the journals involved gave platform to this project of good intentions also shows that the journals and their editors don't actually think that DEI scholarship is a venture worthy of publication in their spaces.
If the journals did think so, the published piece would have been peer reviewed and given the editorial oversight and thought that the topic so very much deserves.
That the published piece contains so many errors/incorrect definitions/poorly thought out logical arguments just shows what will be accepted in our scholarly publications if a few White men with power show good intentions.
A colleague of our said the other day that your piece was dangerous because it will be cited and read at the expense of and neglect of scholars who have standing to do this work and to make pronouncements of best practices in DEI
That means that the published piece is literally dangerous to advancing DEI initiatives.
I also really feel for the younger chemists who have been taken for a ride on this project. It is a PI's responsibility to make sure the people that they outrank receive good training and are given the best possible path for success.
If this effort had been taken as seriously as it should have been, DEI scholars would have been included for helping to train and educate the young scholars of chemistry who were part of this process. You have done a great disservice to these young chemists in many ways.
I cannot fathom, especially during our current pandemic, when we are seeing virologists and epidemiologists having their expertise questioned and challenged by people with no background to do so.
Yet here we are and a group of chemist PIs, who should know better, are claiming the mantle of DEI scholarship and leadership when other folks have been actually doing the work for so long.
Do I think that there is room for chemists to do DEI scholarship and publish on DEI issues? Yes. Of course I also think that non-chemists can do the same. But ... if you want to try your hand at this, you had better not miss.
The publication missed in a great many of ways. It did not respect or understand the hard work that has been done in this field. It did not respect the scholars who have done this work.
By not doing the work to respect the scholarship in this area, the publication completely works against DEI efforts.
We shouldn't be at this point.
Chemistry has a huge problem with equitable access to our field. It is a fundamental problem of chemistry. Our flagship chemistry journals should be publishing real research in this area because it affects our field.
The equitable education of chemists is a huge problem in the field of chemistry. Advances in chemical education are critical for the advancement of chemistry. Flagship journals should be publishing real research in this area.
The way we communicate chemistry to non-scientists has HUGE bearing on how chemistry progresses as a field. Our flagship journals should be publishing real research in this area.
The fact that efforts in those areas are not deemed important enough for our flagship journals and equitable funding from govt agencies is criminal. That these areas are led by minoritized, non-male chemistry scholars shows how little we value their ideas.
That we neglect or disregard the importance of the work of minoritized, non-male scientists shouldn't surprise us. Real scholars of diversity/equity/inclusion have been telling us this for a loooooong time. We continue to refuse to listen.
