Here's a recap if you missed the #AGU2020 plenary panel "Toxic Ivory Towers and Conversations with Underrepresented Voices" with Drs. Kendall Moore, @lisatoafault, Ruth Enid Zambrana, @vernon_morris , and @doctorbjones. 1/

Dr. Moore opened up with a really powerful video discussing the history of racism and colonization that pervades the culture of STEM and the experiences of BIPOC in higher ed. She shared her experience in seeing how the same issues her mother experienced replicate itself in 2/

her own experience in higher ed and in those of the students she interviewed for "Can We Talk?". "We need to have the hardest conversations with the willingness to not look away." 3/

Dr. Zambrana: "I have seen an explosion of literature and writing on [inequities]. What is distressing is that no one is reading this... How do we get to that allyship?" 4/

Dr. Moore asks about how the structure of NSF and the separation of the human experience from science is being addressed. In Indigenous science, it's all interwoven. 5/

Dr. Jones explained: the root of this is the history of the country and who had a say in the making of these institutions and structures that support the NSF and NIH. The separation of missions via agencies is a distillation of science. 6/

Audience question: How can you be a mentor to students from communities of color? Dr. Moore: "Have a conversation where you're completely listening... Students are giving you a great deal (putting in work) when they are... sharing their lives." 7/

Dr. Moore further explains that the immediate response shouldn't be "I can fix this" when students come with their experiences and share them. "You can't have an immediate solution to decades, sometimes centuries, long issues." 8/

Dr. Zambrana tells the audience not to treat BIPOC as a monolith. You need to listen and do your research. "A feeling of belonging and safety needs to be nurtured." 9/

Audience question: Can you speak more about the separation of science from the self? Dr. Moore: other modes of doing science undermined dominant practices. Science was used to benefit the colonial enterprise. 10/

Dr. White recognized Indigenous scholar @DarrylReano and invited him to respond. Dr. Reano weighed in and said there needs to be more inviting of Indigenous folx into informal mentoring spaces. 11/

He highlighted frameworks such as the CARE principles. https://datascience.codata.org/articles/10.5334/dsj-2020-043
Dr. White then talked about the dark history of museum collections. Dr. Jones then highlighted the NSF GOLD-EN (prev. "GOLD") program. https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2020/nsf20058/nsf20058.jsp 12/

Q: Can panelists share recommendations for diversifying review processes (of various kinds)?
Dr. Moore: You have white panelists providing money to white scientists who will do work in Indigenous communities. That's highly unethical. 13/

@Paragorgia012 weighed in: If you don't have diverse panelists in-house, you're not going to make different choices and you're not going to get different results. 14/

Q: Someone asked about BLM and the rush to educate and be a "white ally" after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others.
Dr. Moore mentioned that a lot of jr level people may not feel safe saying no to being asked to take on the labor 15/

of crafting and working on responses institutions ask for. "The other part of this question is white ally performativity and that produces a lot of toxicity."
Dr. Morris talked about how many allies have not identified correctly where they are on "the woke scale". 16/

Q: It feels like many of us (minoritized/non-dominant identifying folx) are just a checkmark and get asked to do DEI labor. What would you say to those of us who are emotionally and physically drained but still want to see these changes occur? 17/

Dr. Moore: This is all of us.
Q: What can I do as a white ally? I consider myself fairly woke but don't always see the issues in my culture.
@ClumpedIsotopes : Speak up when you see things happen. It's important to have a groundswell of people saying when things aren't... 18/

... appropriate. Think about the nature of trauma and how to support people and how to deal with that.
Dr. Moore then signal boosted UCLA'S CDLS. https://www.ioes.ucla.edu/diversity/  (I cannot say enough great things about the awesome work that the CDLS does) 19/

Someone asked about affirmative action (this was a very nuanced question so I'm not going detail the full question since people may misinterpret. The answers do a good job at highlighting the nuances so I'll let them stand in place of the rest of this q). 20/

Dr. Moore talked about being treated as an AA hire "Even if we're not affirmative action hires, we're treated like we are... for the entirety of your career." 21/

Dr. Morris talked about how AA is often misunderstood. If AA were "reverse racism" we would see a much different demographic right now. Book rec: On Privilege, Fraudulence, and Teaching As Learning 22/

Q: How do you identify allies among gatekeepers to change?
Dr. Moore has noticed well-intentioned people are often hesitant to help do the work. She suggested people reach out as an ally.
Dr. White suggested creating allies. 23/

The conversation will continue during the screening of the draft ver. of Dr. Moore's upcoming film "Decolonizing Science" that will be at U013 on Friday, Dec. 11 at 7 AM PST/10 AM EST http://agu.confex.com/agu/fm20/meetingapp.cgi/Session/103534 24/

These are the handles of the panelists (that I could find) and people mentioned in this long chain of tweets: Dr. White @lisatoafault, Dr. Jones @doctorbjones , Dr. Morris @vernon_morris, Dr. Tripati @ClumpedIsotopes, Dr. Reano @DarrylReano, Catalina Martinez @Paragorgia012. /25