キャリアニュース2021年4月11～14日

The question was simple, clear, and brutal. A few days earlier, I had announced my third pregnancy during a department meeting. My female colleague—more senior than I am, with two young children—congratulated me. Then, apologizing for her bluntness, she asked a question that had been nagging at me for months: “How do you feel about having another child and your career? Aren't you afraid of not making it this time?” Hearing it from someone else sharpened my fears. My answer was also simple, clear, and brutal: “Yes, I know this could potentially wipe me out of academia.” > “Having this third child comes with trade-offs [but] I've tried to plant as many seeds as possible.” Maybe I have been too daring. I already have a 7-year-old boy and a 5-and-a-half-year-old girl; why do I want more? Here I am, a young associate professor, having one more child when I should be focusing on establishing myself in my department and in the scientific community, and building up my CV and publication r

The recent events that precipitated the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the disproportionately devastating impact of COVID-19 on many communities of color are stark reminders of the pernicious effects of systemic racism on all aspects of our society, including science, medicine, and public health. The lack of diversity in the scientific and health professions—a longstanding manifestation of racism—can no longer be ignored, excused, or attributed to uncontrollable factors. We write at this moment of reckoning to explain what is lost by a lack of diversity; to describe some promising efforts to achieve it; and to propose urgent, larger-scale actions that political and institutional leaders, educators, and scientists can take to redress the inequities that pervade our professions. African American, Latinx, and Indigenous peoples have historically been underrepresented in the research enterprise, with their proportions declining as they progress from undergraduate to gra