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Tempted to join a campus diversity committee? It may not be a good use of your time. Ask your mentors for advice.
Credit: Baylor College of Medicine
In 2020 Antentor Hinton led an online initiative via the Cell Mentor platform to mark the achievements of 1000 Black scientists. The list includes the cell biologist and diversity champion Sandra Murray. “If it wasn’t for her, putting up with certain institutional challenges....I wouldn’t be able to have a postdoc at Iowa, nor be able to be mentored by an African American male”, says Hinton, an assistant professor and mentor who studies mitochondrial dynamics regulation during aging at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Carla Faria, a Brazilian laser physicist whose research group at University College London studies strong-field and attosecond-science, offers advice to scientists from under-represented groups on when to volunteer for workplace diversity initiatives. “You really have to ensure that time and the effort that you're putting there is effective”, she says. “ And what is going to happen is that your white male counterparts are going to publish another paper while you are spending your time doing this”.
