What does the postponement of a plant genetics conference in the Australian tropics have to do with the death of a black American at the hands of the American police?
They couldn’t seem further away, but there’s a thread that binds them together, a thread that turned into a burning wick.
In late January, an Australian organizer of the International Congress on Plant Molecular Biology (IPMB), to be held in October in Cairns, tweeted a poster.
It showed 94 faces, made up of tenured speakers and session chairs.
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While some people were impressed with the lineup, there was also quick criticism.
“International and without Africans!” tweeted a scientific communicator from Africa.
When the congressional organizer tweeted “Look Stronger” and provided a link to the African in the collage of faces, a storm of protests began.
African Americans and others of color, in particular, called the response “disrespectful” and “symbolic.”
The tweet was deleted and apologized, but two weeks later, a key U.S.-based organization involved in the conference called for support.
And not long after, the meeting, waiting for thousands of attendees, was postponed.
Organizers say that the main reason for the postponement of the Congress was the travel restrictions of COVID-19. But the withdrawal of support did not help.
Some suggest that Australian scientists are feeling the heat of what is now a global anti-racism movement, and that they are “alert” to take cultural diversity more seriously.
The background story
The man in the hot seat of the Twitter storm was the chairman of the IPMB conference committee, Josh Mylne, of Curtin University in Western Australia.
He has been working at the conference since early 2018 and was proud of the diversity of faces shown on the poster he tweeted.
“We had one of the best gender balances I’ve ever seen, diversity in the career stage with younger and older scientists, a very different science, more than ever, chairs from around the world, including for the first time the ‘Africa and India,’ he told ABC RN’s Science Friction.
Josh Mylne says the experience has been a great learning curve. (Supplied)
Ros Gleadow of the Global Plant Council, who wrote in support of the proposal to have Congress in Australia, happily retweeted Professor Mylne’s face poster.
“Not everyone was white and there was a reasonable representation of Asia,” says Professor Gleadow, who is based at Monash University.
Most importantly, for her, there was a good proportion of women.
But then came the criticism of the representation of South Americans, black Americans, and Africans.
When Professor Gleadow looked a little closer, she noticed that there was no recognition of the country on the Congress website, an oversight that she said was soon rectified.
Ros Gleadow says it may be too easy to make “unhelpful” comments on social media. (Supplied)
Before Professor Mylne tweeted his poster, he says he had shown it to hundreds of other people and received only positive responses.
So the criticism he received was not expected.
“I was totally blind.”
One day, while Professor Mylne was cycling home from work, his phone rang.
When he got home, he looked at his phone and saw the tweet that there were no Africans on the sign.
Distracted as he entered the garage, he hurriedly tweeted his fateful response to “Look Stronger.”
It was intended as a point of clarification, but instead these two words triggered a chain of events with enormous ramifications.
Congress followers on Twitter were angry at what they perceived as a disrespectful tone and began letting the organizers know.
“The problem is we had to look really good,” he read in a tweet.
“One from Africa (!) Inclusive, that’s not it,” read another.
“End your tokenism,” demanded another.
Another read, “Australia. I love it. My God. What a joke.”
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In the morning, Professor Mylne realized his mistake and deleted his offensive tweet. It was only later that he learned that this made matters worse.
Instead of pacifying the concern, the tweet and its deletion lost the underlying concerns of critics and seemed to close any dialogue on diversity.
Was the direction of the conference diverse enough? Were the organizers making it affordable for people from low-income African and South American countries to attend? And were black people actively prioritized over white speakers?
Professor Gleadow says “useless” answers are too easy to make on Twitter.
But others have been less lenient.
The fall
This is a plant science conference in tropical paradise that will not take place this year. (Provided by: IPMB)
The American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) had hired its staff to organize the logistics of the conference, although they were not involved in the selection of speakers.
President-elect Gustavo MacIntosh learned of the Twitter exchanges, some of which involved members of the ASPB.
And he was also alerted to a follow-up email that Congress leadership sent privately to a Twitter critic: he says it gave the impression that it was up to people of color to fix any issues with the diversity of speakers.
“Again, it’s not about understanding the problem, and then increasing the problem, simply maintaining the same attitude that is aggressive toward a person of color,” he says.
“I can only speak of perception,” adds Professor MacIntosh. “That’s how people perceive communication. Is the person who did it trying to be aggressive? I don’t know.”
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At this stage, things were pretty tense.
Professor Gleadow and his colleagues were called upon to mediate and assist the Australian and American parties in issuing public statements.
For its part, the IPMB’s official apology acknowledged “ill-conceived responses” to the criticism and the failure to properly include under-represented groups.
And he promised to do better in the future.
“This experience has been a wake-up call and we’ve heard it,” the apology said.
But by this time, the damage was done.
The American Society of Plant Biologists was under pressure from its members to take action, and on February 10 withdrew support from Congress, citing the obligation to defend “members of groups that have historically been marginalized.”
Professor MacIntosh says the ASPB’s problem was not with the diversity of speakers, but with how Congress leadership responded to its critics.
“The criticisms may or may not have been valid, but regardless of that, the problem we have is what happened next,” he says.
“This exchange, both public and private, violated our code of conduct and our values about how we treat members and how we want to create an inclusive society for plant biology.”
Scientists on notice
Anna-Maria Arabia says there is still not enough guidance for Australian scientists on cultural diversity.
The use of affirmative action and other measures to increase cultural and gender diversity in the professions is an area of heated debate.
But for Anna-Maria Arabia of the Australian Academy of Sciences, the diversity of science is obvious.
“There is evidence that we make better decisions when we have different voices around a table.”
Plus, he says, it’s “what needs to be done,” and now scientists are putting in “warning” to be more inclusive.
He cites the recent case in which Australia’s largest medical research foundation suspended tens of millions in funding from the University of Melbourne due to concerns about gender and cultural diversity.
“We’re starting to see organizations put their money where their mouths are.”
But Ms Arabia believes Australian scientists need more guidance on cultural diversity, and the Academy hopes to get government funding to help.
This photo of six Caucasian men receiving their honorary doctorates was at the center of the University of Melbourne controversy. (Supplied by: University of Melbourne)
The complexity of diversity
Making major scientific meetings more culturally diverse is ongoing work. And getting there can sometimes be a rocky path.
To begin with, there are different views on what cultural diversity means and how to achieve it, as discovered by Professor Mylne.
For example, he says that some German colleagues were offended by the idea of selecting speakers according to ethnicity.
“[They said]”We remember the last time someone was selected in Germany because of ethnicity. We’re not playing that one with a barge stick.
“Everyone has their own lens on what diversity is.”
Australian Diversity Council Executive Director Lisa Anesse says “the local context is important”.
Lisa Annese says cultural diversity is more than just skin color. (Provided by: Diversity Council Australia)
It also points to the different demographic composition of Australia compared to places like the United States.
“Many Asian faces are relevant in Australia.”
And cultural diversity is more than just skin color, he says.
“I think when people make judgments about whether something is diverse enough, what they really say is, ‘I’m looking for a visible difference’ … that visible difference in the phenotype is one aspect … but not the only one. ‘ .
However, Ms Anesse says, “there is no doubt” that people with darker skin generally experience more significant “marginalization, exclusion and racism”.
And that is the reality behind the Black Lives Matter movement, which has unleashed a global push for racial justice.
In 2020, the shocking assassination of George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin drew the world’s attention to the Black Lives Matter movement.
The ensuing worldwide protests that followed forced even scientists to get on board to eliminate “systemic racism” in its own patch.
It may seem like a world far removed from science, but the campaign for racial justice is being felt in every corner of the globe. (ABC)
But, says Ms Annese, nonetheless, Australia lags behind countries like the US when it comes to race.
She believes the “shame of Australia’s white politics” is behind this.
“We …