The Second National Conference on Justice in Geoscience

By Laura Fattaruso, GSA Science Communication Fellow

Here is a link to Episode 35 of my Lab Talk with Laura podcast, in which I covered the recent Second National Conference on Justice in Geoscience as GSA’s Science Communication Fellow. Below is a written transcript of the episode, along with some links and photographs from this amazing and inspiring event. I hope you enjoy the episode!

###

*opening jingle*

Lab talk with Laura. Listen, I implore ya. Won’t never bore ya. Lab talk with Laura Always more in store. It’s Lab talk with Laura.

Laura

Welcome to the 35th episode of Lab Talk with Laura. I am really excited to share this episode. It has been more than two years since I released a new episode. But I’m back to share interviews from a really special event that happened last month, August 2022. That was the Second National Conference on Justice in Geoscience. This conference was organized by three people, Dr. Benjamin Keisling, Dr. Raquel Bryant, and Dr. Rachel Bernard.

And if you’ve been listening to the podcast in the past, you might recognize the names Raquel Bryant and Benjamin Keisling, because they were interviewed on Episode 12, way back in 2018, when they were both still graduate students.

Also back in 2018, Rachel Bernard and Emily Cooperdock published a paper in Nature Geosciences, titled ‘No progress on diversity in 40 years.’ As the title illuminates, their research showed that while the percentage of white women in geosciences has increased over the last four decades, there has been no increase in the racial diversity of the earth sciences. The need for meaningful change is clear.

Later that same year, Benjamin Keisling went to a meeting of the oSTEM club at UMass, a club for LGBTQ plus students in STEM fields. During the icebreaker, the president of the club Phoebe Bisnoff invited everyone to share a queer scientist from their discipline that they looked up to. When Benjamin realized he didn’t have an answer, except for his friends and peers, he got to work doing research. He learned about Dr. Clyde Wahrhaftig, a field geologist with the United States Geological Survey, who came out in 1989, at the end of his career during his acceptance speech for a Distinguished Career Award at the Geological Society of America meeting.

While looking online for clues about Dr. Wahrhaftig’s life, Benjamin stumbled on a report from the First National Conference on Minority Participation in Earth Science and Mineral Engineering. Looking at the report from the meeting that had taken place in 1972, Keisling saw a familiar name, Dr. Randolph Bromery. Dr. Bromery had been a professor in the UMass geosciences department, as well as the first African American chancellor of UMass, as well as president of the Geological Society of America. Bromery’s accomplishments were vast and his legacy lives on through numerous awards and fellowships, aimed at celebrating and supporting minoritized scientists and students in geosciences, and other fields.

After reading through the 161 page report detailing the events of that meeting, Keisling felt both awe and despair that such great minds had tried to tackle this problem, yet, we still face similar conditions nearly five decades later. When he shared it with Raquel, she convinced him that it was not caused to despair, but to act. They reached out to Rachel and together the three wrote a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation, got the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, and many other major sponsors to support them in organizing a meeting on the 50th anniversary of the First National Conference.

Four years after the ideas for a Second National Conference began to percolate, these three early career scientists had made their vision reality. And so, from August 14 to 18^th, hundreds of people gathered at the American Geophysical Union headquarters in Washington DC, with the shared goal of envisioning change for the next 50 years in geoscience.

The conference had three themes: archival, urgent, and imaginary. The schedule and program were familiar in some ways and unconventional in many. Each day began with a keynote speaker, and we then broke out into discussion groups, which we would return to twice each day for reflection. Sessions included workshops, reading discussions, and creative outlets. The final day of the conference ended with a jam session. Each day of the conference, I convinced somebody to let me ask them questions. And so now, I invite you to join me for the next hour or so on a four day tour of the Second National Conference on Justice in Geoscience.

• [04:39]

The conference began on a Sunday with an opening reception. COVID safety protocols included uploading vaccine cards ahead of time, daily temperature measurements, and daily rapid test and N95 masks provided for everybody. This was my first in-person conference since the pandemic started, and I found these safety measures very comforting. These precautions also seemed to have worked pretty well, as we were notified the second day that one person had tested positive, and no other positive tests were reported.

The opening reception buzzed with energy, as people from different fields and career stages met each other and connected with old friends. The room was packed from the start of the reception until an hour past its official ending, when the building finally closed. I cornered Raquel and Benjamin at the end of the evening to ask them for their reflections. We were tired, but energized and our conversation flowed. After a long day, I had forgotten the formalities of interview introductions, so we’ll jump right into the conversation, as I’m talking about the first time I saw Raquel and Benjamin, give a talk together at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in 2017, abbreviated as AGU.

• [05:47]

Laura

So when I was at AGU in December 2017, in New Orleans, and I just started the Ph. D. program at UMass in September. So I’ve known you a few months, and I went to your talk.

Raquel

Oh, yeah.

Laura

That you gave together about how you had changed the seminar series at UMass. That feels like an early seed of what we’re doing today. So yeah, maybe can you tell me about how this conference came into being?

Benjamin

I think that 2017 example, one of the things that sticks out in my memory of that talk was the like, the fact that we gave it together. I remember, that’s not really something that people do at AGU, like, give a talk where there are two people on stage, and you kind of like, pass the mic. And I had never seen that done. And I remember when we got the talk accepted, Raquel was like, “Oh, we’re just gonna give this together. Like, we’ll both go up on stage, and we’ll kind of like, go back and forth.” And I was like, Oh, I’ve never seen that done, but okay, that sounds good. And when they called up Raquel to give the talk, I also came up and I think one of the first things you said was like, “oh, yeah, we’re just gonna give this together.” And I remember the look on the faces of the people that were like sitting up there convening just being a little bit like, what, like, you can’t, there’s this.

I think that’s the that’s one of the tensions that this conference is also tapping into — that gut reaction of saying, what? you can’t do that. But then also the realization that like, why not? Yeah, like, actually, yeah, you can. And that sort of using that contrast to illuminate what are the possibilities that you might not even be thinking of, or that you’ve like, blocked out as a possibility for no good reason. But just because that’s what the status quo is. And so I think besides like, that kernel of like us working together on something, also just that example of like, how it was done, in many ways, precedes the conference. And then that was also the year where we, like, met Rachel and had lunch with her and got to

Raquel

Free lunch.

Benjamin

It’s cool that that’s resonating with you, and you’re having that flashback, because I think there’s a lot of ways that that is a moment, that’s a part of the archive of how this all came to pass.

Laura

What are you most excited about coming up in the next few days?

Raquel

Okay, it’s a two part answer. I think, I know, I feel like I know what’s gonna happen in the next two days, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen after. So I am kind of most excited slash anxious, excited, which we talked about today, in the facilitator training, anxious/excited about, like, what’s gonna be after.

Benjamin

I’m excited about, just like how we’re using the physical space of the AGU building feels really like radical and like, imaginary in a lot of ways. And I, that’s what I’m just excited to see that physically play out. Because I know that for me, what it means is like, even when you see a space that’s like built for something, or it’s intended for something, there are other ways to use it. And I hope that the attendees also kind of get that sense. It’s like a very like, insurgent and urgent use of the physical space. It’s like taking that map of the building and remapping something on top of it, that is for a very different purpose, but also can be really effective. And that’s, I’m just excited. I’ve been thinking about how that’s going to look for a long time and I’m really excited to like see it actually in practice.

I guess these like breakout groups that we’ve designed, where like, twice a day, there’s just going to be these gatherings of, like 5, 6, 7 people all spread out throughout the building, all talking about like what they’re experiencing or writing down what they’re experiencing. Um, we don’t have that kind of opportunity for like community and reflection built into a lot of the conferences that are like typical that we go to, I feel like the typical conference experience is one of just like, you’re running from one thing to the next thing, and you just, if you ever have a time to reflect, it’s just like afterwards. And so I’m excited to see how it can alter the experience of being at a conference, when you literally build in time to just like, sit back, reflect, talk. And like, write that down. So it gets saved.

Raquel

Do you like our boxes? Did you see them?

Laura

Can you tell me about the boxes?

Raquel

Oh, we had this vision of having like banker boxes, and they’re just like an archive. If you made something and you feel like other people need to see this—that happens to me—just put it in the banker box.

Benjamin

Yeah. So it’s cool. They’re like on each floor, there’s like a slit cut out of the top. So you can just like, put stuff in it. I’m excited to see what comes of that. Like everybody thought was funny today when Raquel referred to it as like, sedimentary. But we talked about this, like Raquel brought this up yesterday when we were talking to Bromery’s grandson.

Raquel

Justin

Benjamin

Justin, about preservation potential. And that’s something we think about a lot, like in the geologic record, that whatever you’re looking at, is not only, like it’s a record of what happened, but it’s incomplete because some things like don’t get preserved. And one of the ways to kind of like combat that is to just to like, make more things. Like the more things that you have, the more likely things are to be preserved. And so I think that like analogy to, like sedimentary and sedimentation, like accumulation, it sort of is like we want people to just kind of be like hoarders here. Like save, we want to save stuff and…

Raquel

Lean into it.

Benjamin

Lean into that because yeah, I don’t know. That’s like what we wish that’s what I asked for myself. Like, that’s what I wish that I had from the First National Conference. That’s one of the things that kind of haunts me about it is just like, how much that we will never know because of how much was like not preserved and like I’ve done my fair share of digging in archive to find like what does exist and it’s just like so selectively preserved you just get these like little viewpoints little vantage points. I think the banker box and the virtual archive, that’s just like one of the ways that we’re kind of trying to, I guess, combat that tendency for things of this nature to like not be preserved. Can I ask you a question?

Laura

Sure.

Benjamin

Well, like what are you excited about the next like three days?

Laura

Oh, boy, ummm, yeah…

Benjamin

It doesn’t have to be comprehensive.

Laura

No, I’m really excited… I’ve been reading ‘Undrowned’. And it is a really wonderful book, umm, oh you got it right there, oh nice.

Benjamin

My copy’s like falling apart because I’ve read it so many times.

Laura

Mine’s in an e-reader, so I do have it with me.

Benjamin

Love that. One of my favorite like parts of Undrowned, just because of who I am and my own obsessions is when she talked about whales. Yeah, we talked, Raquel and I have talked about that, like extensively, the fact that like whales are mammals, we like share a common ancestor not that far apart. We have a lot of like biomechanical things in common. But the difference is like they chose to go back to the ocean. It was a long time ago, we diverged like evolutionarily, but oh,

Raquel

*whisper* It was Antarctica’s fault.

Benjamin

She’s saying it was Antarctica’s fault.

Laura

Do you not want the recording to catch that? Can you whisper louder?

Raquel

No. I don’t want to get scooped.

Laura

Oh, ok, let me know which parts of the interview are off the record.

Benjamin

Redact. But yeah, anyway, so I’m just like, what was I going to say is that they chose to go back to the ocean. And that is really like meaningful in a lot of ways like the ocean is, covers more of planet Earth than land does.

Raquel

Why am I trapped here?

Benjamin

The ocean is responsible for so much of like the change in the landscape, like the spreading of the ocean and the rifting that like creates new land. And I just feel like we have a lot to learn from animals like whales.

Raquel

I just wanted to say, I was really stressed about stuff like a year ago, and I was just like, doing this thing where I would Google search whatever weird combinations of things I wanted to– that was like, I could do for 30 minutes, and then I had to work because I had to publish a paper or else no one would take me seriously – that’s what everyone was telling me. So anyway, I was like searching things about gay whales, because I think I probably just wanted to make Benjamin laugh. And that’s how I discovered this book. Then I sent him the book and then he devoured it and was like, “Can I tell you everything that happened here,” and I was like, okay, and he’s like… and this is why it’s connected to the Second National Conference and everyone at the conference has to get a copy of it. I was like, “Oh, my God. Yeah. So that’s like, in the grant. Like, it’s like in there that we want to do that.

Laura

So that was built into the proposal.

Raquel

Yeah.

Benjamin

I remember staying at this hotel in Baltimore. And like, us going outside for a walk. And I was like, I have to bring this book. I was like, harassing Raquel. I was like, listen to this passage, listen to this passage. And it’s really resonated with people, a lot of people have said that they are really liking it. I’m excited that we’re getting geoscientists to just like read outside of the canon and like, make a new canon and realize that there’s a lot of different kinds of like scholarship and thinking that can be influential in the way that we want to shape our future.

Laura

Beautiful.

Benjamin

Thanks for this, this was really fun.

Laura

Yeah, thank you. Ummm, making the conference into like a big book club is an enjoyable way to start things off, you know, it’s like a common ground that we can all come to the table with a tone set. With like, a lot of really touching and personal ideas. That are not, that combine science with our sense of being

Benjamin

100%. I think that like the, the fact that we’re putting people in all of these, like small groups to like, do work together. One of the things that can be intimidating about that is like, what if we don’t have anything in common? And it was a very intentional choice to be like, well, we’ll provide one thing that like everyone can just have in common, because you hopefully have like, at least heard of this book that people are reading and a lot of people have started reading it. Or, if you have no other place to start, you can start there.

Raquel

Yeah, you have access to it. And then like, if you don’t want to do anything, or you’re like had a conversation, you feel weird, or you just ehhhhh, go to your hotel and read Undrowned, that’s like doing conference work. It’s all like, it’s also like inter scalar in that it can facilitate all kinds of, all modes of participation. And that’s kind of what we met when we were talking about that. And even like people who are just participating virtually, or even not participating formally in the conference. Like, you can all read Undrowned. Yeah, so that’s cool.

• [17:55]

Laura

That was Dr. Raquel Bryant and Dr. Benjamin Keisling.

The next morning, Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe, a scholar of literary theory and cultural history, gave the opening keynote titled ‘Geology as Genealogy: Race, Stratigraphy, Empire.’ All three keynotes are available online to watch and I encourage you to go watch them as a few words of summary cannot do them justice. After Dr. Goffe’s keynote, I caught up with Dr. Mark Little, the current president of the Geological Society of America, to chat.

• [18:29]

Mark

My name is Mark Gabriel Little, I’m the current president of the Geological Society of America. And I’m also running a center at UNC Chapel Hill that focuses on economic development in economically distressed communities, primarily across the southeast but we do think about geographies outside of that.

Laura

So we’re here at the Second National Conference. Can you maybe tell me about what are your goals with the Geological Society of America? And how do you see those kind of coming together at this conference and how this might spark, you know, action?

Mark

Right. So I guess the way I think about it, the role that I have is there’s—there’s two parts to it. One is, what are my duties? And what are the things I want to get done? Right? So the duties are stewarding the organization forward. And some of the things that I want to get done are things that I sort of personally might have a focus on, above and beyond that. What’s interesting about the conference, I think, is it meets both of those things.

So on the just basic duties, one of those is how do you support the organization, its members, and the growth of the organization. And if GSA wants to be around 100 years from now and be supporting the discovery of new knowledge, being stewards of the Earth, which is part of the mission of the society, then I think that who’s involved in the geosciences, who’s asking questions, who’s funded to do work, who’s listened to, needs to continue to change and grow those voices. And that’s a big part of what this conference is about. How to build a future that is created by and formed by Black, Indigenous, Latino, other peoples who are excluded from that generative process, or at least our voices aren’t listened to. And so I think it’s important for this event, you know, if part of my job is for the organization to survive, then that’s necessary.

For me personally, things that I want to focus on, I’m interested in also align a lot with the conference. There’s lots of things I’m interested in, but you know, two I’m trying to focus on as much as I can. One is related to how GSA engages with geoscientists outside of United States, Australia, and Europe. And what is the value proposition like, how can GSA be of service to and connect with these other geographies? And it’s hopefully had an organization think differently about what could membership mean, and someone who may never stepped foot in the United States or never, may never come to Denver? Right? How can they have a relationship with GSA and be benefited by it? And how can GSA, geosciences knowledge broadly, be benefited by them.

The other area that is a focus of interest is, I don’t know how to say this exactly. But whether it’s GSA or the geosciences, specifically, creating more conversation around the historic relationship between natural resource extraction and Indigenous communities, both in the United States but globally. And, you know, this sort of thing is less operational and more about the sort of philosophical underpinnings of geoscience and GSA, the United States – these bigger, bigger questions. And the difficulty there can be someone saying, well, you know, that’s all interesting, but you know, I do this, right. I’m a seismologist or I, you know, do this. And so where to begin that conversation and how to how to do it is one that I’ve been thinking through. Anyway, there’s a lot there.

But the conference also resonates with that, particularly the speaker this morning, was talking about a lot of a lot of those things. And I guess the part of it I’m interested in is, if you recognize the origin of something, the roots of something that without it wouldn’t have created, you know, the discipline, the work that you do wouldn’t exist, would be quite different. If you recognize that that root is a problem. Then, what is your responsibility to at least engage with that idea? If not, try to walk back yourself in what you do to that point, and say, like, how would things be different? Like even what science means.

One of the things that came up, I don’t remember if it was in the first talk or a conversation I had. Science and scientists like to talk about the work as if it is not connected to human beings, if it sort of exists separate and it’s pure in some kind of way. And yes, you might have had this researcher who, you know, was very abusive, but you know, the knowledge that they created exists, it just, you know, separate from them. Or, as we’re talking about, this whole enterprise of displacing people and stealing bodies and land, yes but, this knowledge exists separate from that, it’s pure. That is very much the way that sciences positions itself, and I think that a broad group of people I perceive it. Even like, I remember the March for Science –I understand the motivations for it, but it was like this, this presupposition that well, you know, science isn’t political, everyone should you know, everyone, if you’re a thinking, thoughtful person, you should just believe the science because it’s pure, it’s clean, it doesn’t have this, there’s just the truth. And it’s there.

Laura

It becomes another dogma.

Mark

Right, and that’s, I don’t believe that that’s true. And if you don’t believe that’s true, then the origins and the context and the history of why, what we’re doing, then becomes really important. And so that’s the other thing, like I said, I would like to try to engage with people on and happy that the conferences firmly rooted in unrooting a lot of those things.

Laura

Yeah, it’s interesting that like, especially as geologists, we focus on process a lot. And so to think that the process of how the science is made is separate from the product of it is an oversight to say the least. It’s an intentional oversight, perhaps.

Mark

Perhaps, and a part of it also is being, I mean, I’m also President of the Geological Society of America. So I also, even in the work that I do, I’m very aware that people are also people. And so the attachments that people have to the way they’ve done things, the things they’ve done, what they’ve achieved is very important for us as humans. And so what while I may, might disagree with someone, I also really want to respect what they’re proud of, and what they are thinking, and so navigating that, like, how do you have those conversations in a way where you can actually engage somebody in a discussion about what you really want to engage them about without, you know, misinterpretation? And similarly, you know, it’s people, people’s lives are invested in the work that they do then. So if you critique the process, for example, you mentioned there are these things, people take it personally, because those things are personal to them.

Laura

So, you talked about, you gave a speech at the opening banquet yesterday, and you talked about power. And I think that’s something that doesn’t come up a lot in, in scientific conversation. So I guess I’m curious, you know, what avenues do you see to, you know, harness power to make those kinds of changes and redirect our field?

Mark

Yeah, so I’ve been, a little bit of a sort of personal revelation, maybe two years ago, again, I’ve been trying to think about the connectivity between the work that I do and the two sides of that. And power has really become clear that like, that’s really what I’m working for. And the easiest one, at least here that people recognize as financial, right? Money, if you have more money, you can do more things. That’s very clear. That’s just you know, it’s very evident.

But there’s other kinds of power. And I think that the first thing is, that that money one is recognizing that it’s there and clarifying it, that that’s really fundamentally underpinning a lot of these power dynamics that currently exist. You know, whether it’s, for example, an advisor and a student. Well, the student is getting paid by the advisor, and they’re bringing in money and so they have control and they have power in that situation. And, you know, just elucidating, like, that’s where this power is coming from. There’s someone who’s paying somebody else.  And then the second piece is identifying other types of power and speaking them and having people exercise and flex that, so to speak. Whether that’s, you know, graduate students unionizing, whether it’s changing rules about what it means to have an advisor.

So, when I was in grad school, there was another friend who had an advisor who like their group was, it was like a, almost like prison, the way that they were controlled. And they had, some of his graduate students spied on the other ones to make sure they were spending a certain number of hours in the lab and this particular advisor liked to bring in students from the Middle East, because their visas were so precarious that they can always use that, again, that power of deportation risk, right. Whereas from other geographies you could stay in the United States if you chance advisors, but with those folks you couldn’t. He he was preying on this, the advisor was preying on people to, to generate the research, they wanted to bring in this research dollars, etcetera, this kind of thing. And so I think there are ways of restructuring that in terms of, you know, how students interact with advisors, and because there’s still programs where you’re brought in and like, you’re brought into work with the person and if that doesn’t work out, you’re just sort of flailing around.

I think there’s also a role for organizations like GSA to support individual people through that journey, if they go into graduate school, or their professional career. So just kind of bring it to that, you know, GSA is just starting something called the—I’m gonna get it wrong, but—Center for Professional Excellence in the Geosciences, and GSA does a lot of different things, mentoring and etc, for folks that are just finishing their education or about to finish their education, through beginnings and middle of their career. But bringing those things together in a cohesive way, that’s something that I think is pretty exciting that the GSA is trying to do. Again, it’s like, how do you identify people, bring resources to them? In those situations where, you know, financially, like they’re trying to get tenure, I mean, the way that’s all structured is a very kind of tenuous thing. And so, yeah, I think there’s lots of different ways that GSA as an organization can build power for people who are disenfranchised.

But also, I think, even more importantly, is for just individuals to recognize that they do have power. And if there’s two or three or five or ten of them, that’s more power. And there’s a lot that can happen.  This conference itself, there’s like three people saying we want to do a thing, and talking to some folks and like, Hey, you wanna help us do this thing? They say, sure, like, what do you need? And, doing it, right? To the point where you have AGU, which is, you know, obviously, financially has tremendous resources compared to Raquel, Rachel and Ben, but AGU recognizes the power that they have. And it’s like, they want some of it. And to some extent, GSA wants some of it too. That’s why we’re sponsoring the conference, because they’re like, oh, these are three individuals that are quite powerful and connected to all of this things, this future that this could be happening, and recognize again, to the first question, 100 years from now, are these organizations relevant? Are they part of something, part of creating things, and if they are, then they need to listen to and follow the people at this conference and other places that have ideas and connectivity and knowledge that the organizations don’t without them.

• [33:24]

Laura

That was Dr. Mark Little, president of the Geological Society of America.

On Tuesday, the day began with a keynote titled ‘Are you ready?’ by Dr. Tiara Moore, founder and CEO of Black in Marine Science. Later that day, I spoke with Dr. Edith Davis, who was hailed as the first Black woman geophysicist in a 1984 article in Ebony Magazine.

• [33:47]

Edith

Hello, my name is Dr. Edith Davis, and I am a science education professor at Florida A&M University. I have a bachelor’s from University of Miami in geology and mathematics with a heavy concentration in physics, chemistry, and biology, and marine science. And I have a master’s in geophysics from Stanford. And upon graduating from Stanford, unbeknownst to me, I was considered one of the first African American female geophysicist in the United States of America. I was featured in Ebony, and you know all that stuff, but anyway. And then I went on to get my MBA from the University of Texas in Austin, because people who have the money decide what I’m going to do. And, and then I eventually said, well, what kind of legacy? You know, what, what am I doing for people who come after me? Right? And so I decided to get my terminal degree at Baylor University in curriculum and instruction, science education and research is my emphasis. That’s it.

Laura

Great. So here we are at the Second National Conference for Justice in Geoscience. Can you, we’re on day two or three, I guess, depending on how you measure it. Can you tell me what the conferences been like for you?

Edith

You know, it’s pretty awesome because I met Bromery, Dr. Bromery—I met him, the first African American geophysicist, right? At the end of his career, he was on the board of Exxon, I think, at the time. And so I got to meet him, and he was so warm, and so kind to me, as you know, trying to help guide me to the beginning of my career and, and I thought about him and what he had done for the generation like myself and others, to make it possible to be here today. And so, the second conference is like, even though it’s 50 years later, I think that this is a tipping point. I think that this is not going to be one of these conferences where we all talk, talk, talk, and then at the end, we all gonna get around the campfire and sing Kumbaya.

I think that this conference is going to produce some phenomenal results. I’m just, I just pick it up, you know, in my spirit, and I’m thinking that the there’s going to be actionable, actionable plans after this conference. So, it’s like everybody here is in sync, in unison with the goal of we need more minorities in the geosciences. And as you already know, gotta look up the latest statistics, but the one I know is 1.8% of minorities make up the geosciences. And that’s not that’s not good. And so, I have cooked up with old friends, and renewed acquaintances and we’re all on the same heart, we want to, wherever our part is, we want to do it wholeheartedly, so that we can help the generations that follow us to be a success, and then they will open doors for the generations after them. I was, I am very much into my latest proposal to NSF, National Science Foundation has been, I want this to be a transformational transcultural transgenerational project, and transgenerational I think is the key is the key for perpetuating anything that you want. You can’t get the generation’s grandmother, the parents, you know, the aunts and uncles to buy in on it, you’re not moving that needle. And that’s, that’s just my thoughts on that.

Laura

So how did you get into geophysics?

Edith

It was interesting. Of course, you know, I was a geologist, right? Well, really, I was supposed to be Jacques Cousteau. I was gonna be a miniature Jacques Cousteau. And I was gonna travel the undersea world of Dr. Edith Davis. Because at that time that he was all over, everybody was watching. So I went off to University of Miami, thinking I was going to be an ocean, marine scientists, oceanographer, and I ran into Cesare Emiliani, who is a world renown paleontologist, and the chair of the geology department. And I was the only, when I first got into the program, that first semester, there were three African Americans in the program. And at the end of the semester, there was only one—me.  And then I matriculated, you know, four years to the University of Miami geology department. And I was really nurtured and you know, cherished by Dr. Cesare Emilian, Dr. JJ Stiff, And Dr. Fred Nagel. So, I was it, but I got a lot of care.

And so I got a United States Geologic Fellowship up in Woods Hole, Cape Cod, a very big culture shock from a little Black girl from the country. And I was introduced to geophysics there, that was my project, I was actually mapping the banks off of Woods Hole with geophysical tools and stuff like that. So yeah, that’s how I got into geophysics. And then I met a professor there. And he said, you got to come to Caltech, and you know, do geophysics at Caltech. And I went back and told Dr. Emiliani, my mentor, and he said, no, you’re going to Stanford. I said, well, no, I got a job offer, from at that time, Amaco oil. And I was, you know, little poor girl never had a lot of money. You know, then of course, I’ve been in school, you think as an undergraduate, you’ve been there forever, right? Because you went on through elementary, middle school, high school, and then you finish up and get your Bachelor’s in geology and mathematics for me. And, so I was ready to have some money.

And so I told Dr. Emiliani, I said Dr.Emiliani I’ll tell what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna apply to one school, Stanford. If I dont get in, I’m going to work. Now, you know, little did I know, I was already in Stanford. Dean Allen Cox, he was the dean at the time I got there. He and Dr. Emiliani were very close friends. So, they helped nurture my application, I guess, whatever you want to say. And once again, I got there and I was the only one. But I was used to that, that’s some used to be the only one, I really enjoyed the talk today. Because it resonated. She hit almost every point, you got a program, but is your program programming? You know, another one that really resonated with me was she said, you know, you want the people to come but are you prepared the workspace for that, you know, that person to come? Yeah, and it’s the whole, you know, and that’s, you know, a lot of wasted resources, these really bright shiny, not, you know, diamonds in the rough are, you know, they get opportunity like the USGS or, or whatever, and fellowships, and they get up there and the people don’t even know how to handle them. They don’t understand their culture.

I was telling them, at the time I was at the USGS in Woods Hole, you know, I’m from the country. But you know, I was, I was from Pensacola, Florida, too. So I spent most of my time Pensacola, Florida, which is not the big city, but it’s a little city. And then my summers I spent at Atmore, Alabama, with my family, we have a family land, and farmland, so. So I wasn’t totally, you know, but I was actually walking through the woods, to my place, the lab that I worked every day, and unbeknownst to me, there was a little fox that was actually tracking me. He knew about what times I was gonna walk through the woods. And he just, I said if you try to take me, you’re gonna see the hood come out of me.

But anyway, it was a little bitty fox, man. But that made me think, man, it’s just like a little red riding hood. But, but the thing about it was is that, you know, I’m an African American female, and I’m all by myself. That’s not good. That’s not and you know, and they, they didn’t think it through. You know, I’m saying when you’re, but I was talking to one of my colleagues, she’s with the Smithsonian. And she says she always brings them in in pairs. And I think that’s one of the smartest things to do, because they at least have someone to bond with. And even if they don’t get along, they’re gonna bond anyway. Because they’re in an environment unknown, and they’re learning together, how to navigate that situation. So yeah, that’s how I got into geophysics. I’m a geologist and a geophysicist.

Laura

So how did you cope with that? How did you deal with being the only one in those situations?

Edith

Well, I’m kind of an extrovert anyway, I like people anyway. And I was prepped. I mean, I guess God had already knew he was gonna do something different with me. Because when I was, okay, I was in the hood, going to Catholic school. Well the Catholic school I went to, this was like best, the wealthiest families and stuff, sent their kids to school because it was very good education. And so I wasn’t, I was the only little girl, African American girl in the fifth grade. And I never forget a little boy named Michael Marshall. He came up to me he was so kind to me. He had just come back from Germany. His father was an architect. I didn’t even know what architect meant, and he had just saw some castles in German. Yeah. So it was wonderful, you know. And so then I had, my teacher was Miss Suggs. And she actually followed us from fifth, sixth, to seventh grade. So that helped out a lot too. And so I was already kind of indoctrinated with other cultures, other than my own at a young age, even though I was in the hood.

And I learned at a very early age, about the haves and have nots. And most children don’t see that until they get older. But going to the Catholic schools, you can see the haves and then go into the project, you  can see the have nots. So it was it was, you know, it made an impression. And then I went off to Pensacola Catholic high school. And my mother, you know, she was a nurse nurse, a LPN. And my father was an orderly. So they have very strong work and educational ethics. And so they sacrificed buying a car, their first car, so that I, my brother, Levi, and my brother, Charles Williams, our last name was Williams at the time, could go to these, you know, expensive schools. And so when I got to Pensacola Catholic High School, which is still one of the number one high schools in Florida, and in Pensacola, Florida, in particular.

I got there, you know, Pensacola Catholic High was about ninety-nine percent white. But when I got to my class, everybody in the room was Black, and the teacher was Black. So it was a very interesting experience. Then this beautiful white lady, she comes into the room long black hair. And she points at me, and she says, she doesn’t belong in here. Well, I didn’t even know about tracking at the time, the educational system had something called tracking, right, where they kind of decide your destiny, right? At a very young age. And so I was taken out of that room, and I was put into another room. And this room, everybody was white, except for one young man, his name was Frank Burrell, and he was African American and Japanese. And come to find out it was the honors track. And so the trajectory of my life was already being shaped, right?

I was already used to being in a predominantly white environment, and I was definitely in a predominantly white environment when I got to the University of Miami, the geology department. So yeah, how did I handle that? I think I handled it, you know, people are people, okay? After a while, at first, of course, you notice all the external stuff, right? But believe it or not, after you hang around with somebody for so long, you don’t even notice, you don’t even know, you’re so you’re so into them as a person. You know, so that’s what I kind of, you know, that’s why I think I have survived and thrived in the environment, because I was really blessed and had people, you know, people cared about me. And I had some people who didn’t care for me. You know, I went through some hard times like everybody else, but fortunately, I had some people that cared about me.

Laura

This might be a tough one, but do you have a favorite moment in your career that stands out? Maybe that’s too tough, you can take a moment and think about it. Or a favorite story, favorite place you’ve been?

Edith

Oh man, that’s a hard one, girl. You’re good. Okay, University of Miami, I’m getting close to my senior year, and they have Upward Bound. The upward bound program is, you know, bringing in minority students, giving them a college experience. And I went up to Anna Price and I said, I would love to take the kids on a marine biology, marine geology, marine science field trip, and I worked it out with the Rosenstiel school. And I took all the little whippersnappers, and it was phenomenal. It was wonderful. I’m walking along the beach, you know, doing a survey of the area, talking about, you know, the interface between the estuaries and the ocean and the land and it was just awesome. That was a bright, I guess it was a kind of gave a sneak preview of my future. And I didn’t even realize it, you know, because I was actually in a teaching mode, you know, but I was teaching what I loved, and I was impacting future generations. So I guess, now you made me dig that up. That was deep. That’s a long time ago.

• [50:42]

Laura

That was Dr. Edith Davis.

On Tuesday evening, there was a reception in the Deep Time hall of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Benjamin Keisling gave a speech.

• [50:58]

Benjamin

*applause*

A few words about tonight many of you are here with you are attending the second national conference on justice and geoscience. Others are joining us for this celebration. Tonight, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of a visionary event organized by Dr. Randolph Bromery, the First National Conference. In 1972, a deeply motivated, expansive group of people articulated a shared vision that the study of this planet should reflect the people that live on it. In addition to being a geoscientist with a commitment to social justice and equity in higher education, Bromery was a musician. Another big part of his legacy was in funding and supporting the arts, in particular, jazz music. As you dance and network tonight, I hope that you are inspired to learn more about Bromery’s legacy and that you in turn will share it with others. What we are all a part of is historic.

50 years from today, people will be talking about this, about tonight. In Bromery’s final address to the First National Conference, he shared one outcome of his many efforts that in 1972, UMass Amherst graduated more Black students in a single year that it had cumulatively since its founding more than a century earlier. We are convinced, Bromery ends that address, that a few people who work together and seriously want to make changes can succeed. When I look around this room tonight, I see a lot of people who have spent the last two days working, building, dreaming together, people who are serious about making a change. Third, to my co-conveners Dr. Raquel Bryant, Dr. Rachel Bernard, we did this.

*applause*

Four years ago, in an excursion into the archive, I unearthed a typewritten stack of paper describing the First National Conference. Opening that report felt less like turning pages and more like the Earth itself opening up in front of me so old, but so new, so bright and so hot, and so full of the possibility for a better future. It also broke me apart and it took the love and the care of the whole community of people, so many of whom are in the room with us tonight, to envision a way forward. I took it straight to Raquel. I was deeply upset, if there had already been so many people, powerful people trying to change geoscience, to change the world, what were we doing as graduate students? What could really matter?

Do you remember you said to me? She said I wouldn’t see it like that. It doesn’t mean we should stop fighting. It just means that we have no choice left but to be brave. And for the last four years, as this conference grew from the rough grain of an idea into this, I’ve lived in the echo of those words. So if you remember anything from tonight, let it be that 50 years ago Randolph Bromery said a few people who work together and seriously want to make changes can succeed. 50 years from tonight, what people will be saying is up to us. We have no choice left but to be brave. Thank you.

*applause*

• [54:51]

Laura

Later that evening, I had a chat with Raquel Bryant about how she had started her research career in this very building. The sound quality of this recording isn’t great because the Deep Time hall is, perhaps fittingly, a very echoey place, and I had forgotten my professional recording equipment and resorted to using my phone. I still think this conversation is worth sharing, so I hope the background noise sets the mood. And if you have trouble understanding, a full transcript is available.

• [55:18]

Laura

So here we are at the Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It’s 9:20 at night, and we’re like drinking wine under, like dinosaur bones, this is really cool, and you made it happen.

Raquel

I did in so many ways. And I’m proud of myself.

Okay, the big thing I want to say is, I get that people are like, “Benjamin! Raquel! Rachel!” and whatever. But it’s really like, who’s next?  That’s what was important to me tonight too.

Laura

Yeah, I’ve heard several people be like, okay, now we’re doing this every year? Is that what’s happening?

Raquel

I think it’s so interesting that that’s the knee jerk reaction. Because from my vantage point, I don’t know, maybe the folks who organized the First National Conference felt this way. I can’t. I’m telling you that I’m ready to organize one in another 50 years, because that’s how much work went into it. And how much of like me went into it. And yeah, no, I can’t. It’s physically not possible.

Laura

Yeah.

Raquel

I want to talk about, I worked here, this like my first science internship.

Laura

In D.C.?

Raquel

Yeah. I got an REU and I came to the Smithsonian. And that’s the first time I’d ever been here. And this is really great tonight to be back in a place where, I remember being at Brown and just not understanding how you do research. And people would just say, like, “Yeah I’m doing research with this professor.” And I’m like, how? They’re like, oh, I just am, I talked to them. How do you talk to them? What are you supposed to say? I want to do research, like, what do you like in the subject line? Do you say like, hi, it’s me. I was so confused, I didn’t get it.

And like, even when people tried to help me, I felt like, professors didn’t take me seriously. They’re like, oh, someone told you to say that in advising meeting, you don’t really mean it. And they like wouldn’t respond and stuff. And so when I got the REU, I was like, oh, okay, I guess, I really thought this, and it kind of made me sad, but at the same time, it’s an opportunity. I was like oh, of course, like, I’m only getting like a real shot to do this not at my school. Because they like aren’t taking me seriously as doing this. So I can do it somewhere else. And it was like, the moment I can name drop somebody that everybody knew, it was “Oh you’re doing this and that. Oh, you’re doing that and that.” But now that I’m telling the story, I realized the one person who did believe in me was like a postdoc who was cool, and I’m still friends with her now and she’s really nice to me, she’s a professor. Anyway, it just feels like everyone has been

Laura

That was a postdoc at Brown?

Raquel

Yeah she was a postdoc at Brown.

Laura

Did she encourage you to apply to the REU or what was her role?

Raquel

Yeah she encouraged me, well I think I had already applied. It was like riding the high of applying. And I applied for something else kind of on campus and contacted her about it, I think she was gonna teach a class I thought was really cool, but it didn’t fit in my schedule, probably because I had rehearsal. And then I did a research project, like got some award at Brown, and did a project. And it was like, she was just a postdoc there, but she she wanted to use the stable isotope lab and I was geology major, so like I knew the professor to ask.

And then like, once I could be in that room and be like, oh, yeah, by the way, in a couple of weeks, I’m going to the Smithsonian for a summer internship to work with this other guy that like matters to you, and then it was like “Oh, what are you doing for a senior thesis?” And I was like– oh, so it’s not you like, email them and they respond back. It’s like, they ask you for some reason, and, that’s, I just remember feeling like, see I knew I needed to do something like that, like, get some other outside credibility, cause no one here sees me and how I’m portraying, being interested geoscience or is recognizing that as like, Oh, she wants to, like, do research, and she wants to publish papers, or she wants to be in the lab. It was like somebody else’s credit or validation or like, I don’t know, just vouching for me, invoking them. And then all of a sudden, I mattered in the science field.

So, it’s cool to be back here and just like completely do something so different and like disruptive in a space that gave me the opportunity to like, kind of almost join the club. And now I’m back here reimagining what that is because a bunch of early career people and students are here making memories that like, have never ever been made before in the Smithsonian, in relationship to the deep time fossil hall, also our relationship to the idea of a museum and some of the like, the colonial histories of it. And the idea of a conference, like getting together and celebrating it, so I don’t know, we talked a lot about like location, geography matters. But even like this human built place for me, like, really matters to be back here doing something so different, like, definitely something I did not ever think about or think it was possible if I was like a 19 year old me here, like in the basement and the paleo department, trying to understand what forams are. If you told me?

Laura

It’s not even that long ago, it’s just been a decade, right?

Raquel

It was 2013.

Laura

How old are you?

Raquel

I just turned 29.

Laura

Okay, so 10 years ago. That’s not that long, like a decade later.

Raquel

Okay, and that’s when the Jonas Brothers broke up. That was a tough year, I saw them. I took like, the Metro from DC all the way out to somewhere in Virginia, and then this like, $70 taxi ride just to see the Jonas Brothers. And they broke up four months after, so thank God. Anyway.

Laura

Good context to have.

Raquel

Um, yeah. Yeah. So I like things that are full circle, because it’s like revolution. Right? Like that word means a lot of things, but also means like, do it again. But it also means you know, f*** s*** up, you know.

Laura

Yes, f*** s*** up. Love it.

Raquel

And there’s one, tomorrow’s like, I hope tomorrow is a continuation of the celebration, I’m excited for the showcase. I hope people really understood what my invitation was like. I don’t know, it’d be really cool. I said this some before, I should say this to you: I don’t do a lot of experiments. Like with the type of geoscience I do. That’s what I said, when I called out that white girl. Oh, my God, I said that. I shared this with her. So you know what, there she goes, she helped me think about this, because I just thought about, I don’t really do a lot of experiments. Like with what I do, like just looking at fossil assemblages, I’m like, integrating, making meaning from s*** that’s already been there. It’s not like I’m trying to like, create new conditions and see what happens after. And I got to do that here. This was like one of my grand big experiment from like, I don’t know, being in high school and being like, why am I the only person from my bus? In my honors class? Like, that’s weird? Why is that what’s happening?

And then going into college and like being an independent study with a bunch of my friends, some of which who’re here tonight, looking at like race and gender in science, because we’re about to get our PhDs and we’re like wait, let’s study it before we go so we like can be kind of ready to deal with how hard it’s going to be on those axes.

And then I got to UMass and met. Okay, there could be a whole other conversation about what being at UMass Amherst did for me in terms of like, there being a union and labor being such a big part of the campus culture because of the scholarship that goes there. But the actions that have gone there, like really changed what I think I’m supposed to do in higher education, like, it’s not just enough for me anymore to be a good educator or a really good scientist and a researcher, but like, I’m a role model on the campus, it doesn’t matter. Like I’m a professor like, that means something to a lot of people if you’re f****** professor, you’re a PhD.

*someone comes over*

Raquel

What? I’m doing an interview, I’m about to be done.

Benjamin

I’m so glad I found you, I was having a heart attack.

*muffled conversation*

Raquel

A lot of people care about me, and they thought I got lost.

Um, also, I feel like I got cut off, but I have another thing I wanna say.

I’m just excited that this is how I’m starting. Like I did this. This is where I am like, finishing my postdoc and about to start what it means for me to be a professor. I think that I’m ready to figure out what that means for what kind of science I’m going to do, and what classes I’m going to teach. But also like what I’m gonna take in academia, or what I’m not, like, I know that like I can do a lot of things and so I’m not, my whole imaginary is not scaffolded. My thinking about the future is not built on being a tenured professor, for example. If that happens, it happens. Whatever. But right now. I’m just trying to like, study the Earth and make everything better for my friends, the people who I’m on my adventure with. Are there any other like, logistical questions?

Laura

No

*someone approaches*

Raquel

We’re doing a little interview, but we’re like literally wrapping up. So kind of good timing if you stick around. Do you have? I don’t know. I’ve rambled a lot.

Laura

You gave me a lot. It’s really great.

Raquel

Okay, I had my own questions for myself I guess.

Laura

Yeah. That’s awesome.

• [1:04:49]

Laura

On Wednesday, the last day of the conference, Nalleli Cobo, a community activist and winner of the 2022 Goldman Environmental prize, delivered the final keynote, ‘Advancing the Climate Movement through Storytelling.’ Afterwards, I spoke with Dr. Rachel Bernard.

• [1:05:04]

Rachel

I’m Rachel Bernard. I’m an assistant professor of geology at Amherst College in Western Massachusetts.

Laura

So, here we are at the Second National Conference for Justice in Geoscience, we’re at the end of it here, and you helped organize it. And from my experience, the paper you wrote in 2018 instigated a lot of conversations about the diversity problem in geoscience, right. So maybe, can you tell me about how you ended up here convening this conference, about your journey to that?

Yeah, so it kind of does start with that paper. That’s kind of how I met Raquel and Benjamin, the other co-conveners. So before I wrote that 2018 paper with Emily Cooperdock, my friend from grad school, I wrote a blog post because I had kind of been, I had this NSF data that I had obtained and was kind of just sitting on my computer. And I decided eventually to like, look at the data. I thought it was really interesting. So I wrote a blog post, just kind of showing the trends that I saw. And that was for the UT Austin grad student blog, “Science, y’all” that me and Emily actually co-founded.

But yeah, so I kind of was, I think I had a presentation either on the paper or about the data in the blog post before the paper came out. And that’s, that was a diversity session at AGU’s fall meeting, where I was presenting at the same session as Raquel and Benjamin, they were presenting on a speaker series they developed at UMass Amherst. And they were PhD students. So that’s how we met, and then kind of just stayed in touch. Coincidentally, I moved to Amherst where they were finishing up their PhDs. So we continued to be in contact. And so when they, Raquel and Benjamin came up with this idea or this vision for this conference, and said that they were going to be writing an NSF proposal to get it funded, they asked me if I wanted to kind of hop on as a third PI, and I said yeah. So it’s been great. I’ve learned so much from Raquel and Benjamin. I think if this conference had been planned just by me, it would be way, it would be so boring. It would just be like a clone of the AGU fall meeting with speakers and Q and A’s. It would be not as dynamic and creative as it’s become. So, I just think it’s been great. But the kind of the vision for the conference is like all them. They’re amazing.

Laura

Agreed, they’re. Although I’m sure, I feel like you’re downplay your role.

Rachel

I mean, I helped. You know, I took on different parts of the conference. But I think what makes, what’s made this conference so special is how different it is from every other conference I’ve ever been to, and like that’s them. And Raquel in particular kind of taking charge of the programming has been amazing.

Laura

Can you tell me about the themes of the conference and how those have come up for you over the last four days?

Rachel

Yeah, I think, so the themes of the conference are archival. So kind of looking at the past, seeing what’s been done. Urgent, what needs to be done now? And how can we get justice for geoscientists of color now, urgently. And imaginary. So how can we imagine a different future? And I think what I’ve been happiest to see at this conference is that, a lot of diversity sessions or kind of spaces where people have talked about diversity in geosciences are very doom and gloom. So like people bringing up my paper, looking at the past or the present and saying, like, look at all these problems we have.

But I think this conference has been so, you know, there have been tense conversations that have been had, but overall, it has felt like a very joyful space where we can celebrate the successes we have had in the past. And also try to like imagine what could be. And I think a big part of that is having so many young people, so many students here, I think like a third of the people that were accepted to the conference, were students, mostly graduate students. So, it’s just been and the fact that it’s so interdisciplinary, it just, I think it’s, I don’t know, it feels very hopeful and it’s just great to eee all these people that are in geology or at least interested in learning about the Earth and thinking about ways that earth science can better serve society.

Laura

It’s interesting that you say that about, you know, there’s a lot of doom and gloom around this conversation. And I see a parallel with the science of like climate science, right? And like, how do we, it can feel immobilizing, but it’s so, I don’t know, catastrophic feeling.

Rachel

Well like, today’s keynote was a really great example. Like, that was a really powerful talk. And it was really sad at points. People were like, crying, some people like wiping their eyes, it’s very sad. But I mean, there’s nothing more hopeful than seeing someone who is 20, and even, you know, that has made actual change in like, not just a small town, but in LA, like, has really led some real change, it makes you, it shows that so much is possible. And that even though the people in the geosciences, people of color and people that are kind of really passionate about DEI, even though that might be a minority, you can have real, crazy, serious change with not that many people.

Laura

And here we’ve been in rooms with, it gives you a chance to see all the people who are on board with that mission.

Rachel

Yeah, I was talking with some people about how they, how much they love this conference and how even at the end of the first day we had covered so much because we didn’t have to waste our time convincing half the people in the room why diversity is important. It’s like we didn’t have to go and say like, there’s this thing called implicit bias. And it’s actually important that the geosciences are diverse, like everyone that’s here already knows that so we can just put that aside and like get down to business. So in that way, it’s been really awesome too and I feel like it’s been really productive two and a half days.

• [1:12:28]

Laura

That was Dr. Rachel Barnard. To finish out the podcast. We’re gonna play a clip from the jam session at the end of the conference, enjoy.

• [1:12:36]

*music plays, ensemble performance of ‘Rolling on the River’*

• [1:16:15]

Laura

Thank you for listening to this very special episode of Lab Talk with Laura. As a reminder, you can watch videos of the three keynote talks from the Second National Conference online @agu.org. You can find a full transcript of this podcast online at soundcloud.com/labtalkwithlaura. The jingle at the beginning of our show was written and produced by Matt Woodland. I’m your host Laura Fattaruso. Thank you for listening.

Raquel

Believe it or not is supposed to be over now.

• [1:16:42]

###