Physics of Life (2022) / Chapter Skim
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10 Building an Inclusive Community
10 Building an Inclusive Community
Pages 304-316
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From page 304... ...
Highly publicized episodes of sexual harassment, including in the scientific community, brought renewed attention to the challenges of achieving equal opportunity for women. All of these issues obviously reach far beyond the field of biological physics, and far beyond the scientific community.
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From page 305... ...
jobs.2 Also as of 2018, immigrants who came to the United States as international students had founded 21 startup companies that are still held privately but with capitalization over $1 billion; more than half of such successful startups have been founded by immigrants.3 More than one-third of doctoral degrees in the sciences and engineering from U.S. institutions are earned by temporary visa holders, and the fraction is even higher for physics, having been above 40 percent consistently since 1998.4 Roughly one-third of all 2 National Association of Foreign Student Advisors, 2020, Losing Talent 2020: An Economic and Foreign Policy Risk America Can't Ignore, Washington, DC, https://www.nafsa.org/sites/default/files/ media/document/nafsa-losing-talent.pdf.
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physics graduate programs but declined these offers:7 32 percent expressed a belief that the United States is "unwelcoming to foreigners," 21 percent said they have better educational opportunities outside the United States, and 20 percent said they have better long-term employment op portunities outside the United States. A more extensive survey, also from the APS, 5 Department of Homeland Security, 2020, "Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media," Federal Register 85(187)
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From page 307... ...
In particular, the Department of Justice launched a "China Initiative," and in February 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that it was conducting 1,000 active investigations involving allegations of intellectual property theft by China.9 A number of researchers in the United States have been accused of conflicts of interest as a consequence of their Chinese collaborations, and some have been removed from their academic posts. The vast majority of scientists targeted in this way are of Asian ethnicity.10 A recent database established by the MIT Technology Review11 shows that the China Initiative has "strayed from economic espionage and hacking cases to ‘research integrity' issues, such as failures to fully disclose foreign affiliations on forms." Their reporting and analysis further showed that "the climate of fear created by the prosecutions has already pushed some talented scientists to leave the United States and made it more difficult for others to enter or 8 American Physical Society, 2021, Research Security Policies & Their Impacts: Key Results of APS Member Survey, APS Government Affairs, https://www.aps.org/policy/analysis/upload/APSResearch-Security-Survey-Key-Findings-2021.pdf.
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From page 308... ...
But the threshold for classification is high, to pre serve the benefits of scientific exchange even on matters that have the potential to impact national security. There are mechanisms by which universities and research institutions handle "controlled unclassified information," such as preserving patient privacy in medical research, but the JASON report cautions against expanding these to create new boundaries around fundamental research activities.
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economy some of our investment in their education and accumulated expertise. These observations echo and extend those articulated in the recent decadal survey of atomic, molecular, and optical physics.17 A 2020 report on safeguarding the bioeconomy, which is more focused on security issues and places its discussion in a larger economic context, nonetheless comes to similar conclusions and recommendations.18 Although concerns about engagement with China may seem tied to the current political situation, it is worth remembering that China was long an exception to general U.S.
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has hosted a Diploma Program designed to help students who take their first degrees in the developing world make the transition to PhD programs in the United States or Europe, and related programs are grow ing at ICTP partner institutes in Brazil, China, Mexico, and Rwanda. Cooperative agreements with these institutes, in the spirit of the original CUSPEA agreement, provide a path for selection of exceptional students from a much broader range of backgrounds than might otherwise find their way to PhD programs in the de veloped world.20 While it is essential that the United States reaffirm its openness to interna tional scientific exchange through changes in both rhetoric and policy, restoring the nation's privileged status in attracting PhD students from around the world will require special attention.
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Inequalities of educational opportunity have been reinforced by racially discriminatory economic practices, even in policy initiatives that, on average, raised the standard of living for poorer Americans.21 In the same way that the progress of U.S. science has been entwined with immigration policy, changing attitudes and policies in the treatment of different ethnic groups also have had impact.
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Conclusion: Inequalities of educational opportunity continue to limit the ac cessibility of physics education for Black students. Although the experience of each group is unique, one can find related problems for all of the underrepresented ethnic groups in our community.
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While there are a variety of programs that support research experiences for undergraduates, especially those from historically excluded groups, this recommendation emphasizes the need to integrate teaching and research. We should not assume that a lack of resources for core educational programs, especially at minority serving institutions, can be compensated by pulling students away from their home institutions for relatively short visits to wealthier research intensive environments.
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In 2005 the APS launched Physical Review Physics Educa tion Research, alongside the other Physical Review journals that address different subfields of physics.29 Among other topics, this journal publishes a steady stream of papers on gender in physics education.
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Conclusion: The biological physics community has a special opportunity to reach broader audiences, leveraging human fascination with the living world to create entrance points to physics for a more diverse population of students and for the general public. This impression -- that the physics of life should provide a more accessible introduction to physics -- is shared quite widely, and was repeated several times in the input from the community, but the committee is unaware of data that could make this claim precise.
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