STEM, A Return to Sanity — Part One
By: Will Sommers
Tags: Stem Education, Diversity, STEM, Inclusion, Equality

Exploring possibilities for STEM in an uncertain future

An Excerpt from the book Cu*t — by Will Sommers

Available here

Get Mad STEM Folk

In calling for an improvement in EDI standards in STEM, many have already begun work within existing non-subject specific learning and development provided to undergraduate, PhD students and others.

This personal development is crucial as we move towards a world where the ability to deal with and work with others will become as important as your ability in your chosen STEM field.

A large element of this is in the EDI sphere, and it behoves us to ensure that the right EDI is being taught.

STEM must also be aware that it has some tidying to do in its own house, that the importance of providing environments in which everyone can feel comfortably able to take advantage of the equality of opportunity that EDI affords them.

They must, as has already been done in many ways, pick carefully through the myriad of resources EDI has available and differentiate between what is good advice that can benefit STEM and what is simply authoritarian credo masquerading as advice.

As an example of practical EDI, you may recognize, as so many are already doing, that people with greater life responsibilities, on average, are more likely to take into account the holistic view of life when looking for work, life balance, benefits, flexibility etc, and recruitment processes and procedures should reflect this.

Conversely, this also means that we need to see more of those who have a different mindset than above (live to work), and are in the workplace; continue to embrace that many people neither want to; or may not have the actual time capacity to; work at the pace they would like, and perhaps they should consider a more holistic approach too.

Illustrated beautifully by that term “goes the extra mile”, which is code for working for nothing, this is accepted as a slogan on a daily basis, but is inherently discriminatory if you have a disability, have dependents, live to work, rather than work to live or value the time you get not working in other ways and don’t want to be psychologically coerced by your prospective employers.

Isn’t it extraordinary that the fight to gain equality within the workplace, important though it has been, is now in a position where with the use of technology, we should all be finding ways to keep people out of work and yet maintain pay and outcomes as well. Now that is an EDI challenge, we should all get behind because socializing is fun!

Such actions may well be the seedlings of what can move us forward to a more egalitarian future based on the practicalities for the individual, that afford equality of opportunity, even if they choose not to take it.

Goodness knows how it will eventually be achieved, nobodies done it yet, we all work too much, too long and not smart enough, so we have lots of work to do.

Character development is paramount to success in HE, the difficulty is that this aim, laudable though it may be is utterly dependent on the individual and incredibly burdensome for the institution.

It is a supply and demand problem and becomes particularly bothersome at STEM PhD levels as the sheer volume of work involved in achieving the PhD means that every credit counts, and to what degree is it helping the aims of STEM as disciplines when we attach credits for extraneous EDI or Leadership seminars?

But attach them in some way the cultist will, and in doing so, we have got to sort the worst from the best and imbue these extraneous opportunities with the spirit of enlightenment and self-betterment, not the tenants of the cult.

STEM must avoid the enablement of the dogmatic, anti-human, intellectually moribund and righteous cause mentality driven fluff that masquerades as development and a social good.

It must be critical and condemning no matter what guise and honeyed words or good intentions these bad actors manifest, for after all, again “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain”.

These attempts at righting perceived or real wrongs is a cause that it is hard not to get behind as we have discussed, but a lot of this is in fact steeped in a morose and miserabilist view of the world, encourages personal weakness and posits victim and aggressor narratives that are a prelude for indoctrination into the dominant narrative of the misanthropic.

Those who do not acquiesce to, for example, the nice idea that we should all be nice, will find themselves trapped by the unwitting narrative in which they have, often, for expedience’ sake, bought into.

For it is inevitable that every witch hunt in history has only ended when those who began the hunt become the witches, and we have myriad examples of this in academic life today, as well as examples of the wrong kind of gay, or the wrong kind of black.

The end may be nearer than my dystopian thinking allows.

However, we must firstly place EDI where it should be in relation to STEM, to recognize it as an area of interest that is a visitor to STEM and that it should NEVER take any other position than that.

In other words, no edicts and rules must impede the STEM process, and as such ensuring that we do not let the adherents and acolytes of EDI empty their emotional bowels in the middle of it all.

STEM is already under attack, biology in particular, and as I have stated previously, my belief in their nefarious aim of undermining STEM means vigilance, and the constant challenging of any interference NO MATTER HOW SMALL AND INSIGNIFICANT it may seem.

I have no doubt, for I have experienced it, the likes of “The Iron Maiden of Unconscious Bias” is alive and well in the University estates. Its eradication, along with all other activities that utilize the oppressor/oppressed narrative, should be of paramountcy as we move forward, so for the first principle, I lay down for the new vision is…

In the next Blog I shall continue by looking at a number of actions we can take that may be helpful to all in STEM, principles of engagement if you will.