A little over a year ago, the world witnessed the tragic death of George Floyd in the U.S. that ignited protests around the world in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and compelled all of us to look more closely at ourselves and our racist past and history, and try to dismantle racism in a way to move forward. Globally, there has been a call for scientific societies to acknowledge and actively dismantle the ways in which Black and indigenous and people of color, as well as people from other historically excluded groups, are marginalized in STEM fields. ASLO acknowledges that the scientific community has a history of racial inequality and implicit bias that it must address. Further, our efforts to promote diversity and build inclusivity into core values of ASLO are far from complete. In an effort to not only acknowledge these injustices and biases that persist in STEM, but to actively dissolve them, we created a Race Relations Task Force a little over a year ago, that seeks to actively work with and for our membership, to encourage and enable the creation of a more inclusive, equitable, and diverse space at ASLO. This task force, co-chaired by Camille Gaynus, Amina Pollard, and Kim Wickland, produced a guidance document for the ASLO Board to follow to address these issues to create a more welcoming community. ASLO has taken on many activities over the past months, and I will be speaking to this more in my upcoming President’s Message in the ASLO Bulletin.
One activity I am excited to announce here is that next week, ASLO will be hosting a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Forum, where we will host conversations around dismantling racism, inequalities and inequities to foster greater inclusivity and grow diversity. I invite you to participate in that forum. I wish to thank Camille Gaynus, Ajit Subramaniam, and Paul Kemp for creating and designing this forum, and Leslie Townsell for hosting its activities. The first activities will be defining the terms Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice.
Our ultimate aim as a society is that all members feel completely welcome and comfortable in such a way that they can flourish by bringing their authentic selves and full creativity to our science. Our organization as well as our science would profit from the great equity, inclusion to unleash the creative potential of all , but also how we engage on a more human level by being more conscious of those injustices. Water belongs to all of us, and understanding and protecting the Earth’s freshwaters and oceans needs everyone to feel welcome in participating in this critical work.
