Much thank you so much the better it
was very kind of you to invite me and

I'm going to be talking today about a
recent report that I'm a co-author of for

the American Physical Society that
is the professional society for

physicists about the status of people in
physics now I should confess that this

is not the colloquium that I normally give
and the colloquium that I normally give

kind of goes something like this I
would tell you a little bit about my

work on connecting shape in order you
know the reason that the better and

I became friends was we both have this
mutual interest in such systems and

many of the same mathematical
techniques are fascinating to us and

it's delightful to see so
better here and so successful and

catalyzing her research group I would tell
you about packings on curved surfaces and

how changing the distribution of
particles like it's all sorts of

different phases I talk about change with
liquid crystals I've always been very

really admired a lot of the liquid crystal
work that's gone on here at Georgia Tech

with Alberto Fernandez needs and.

People like that really stunning stuff

connects to them talk about topology
geometry and kinetics which I think

if you've been to many soft matters
seminars you'll have heard those words

talk about how the dynamics of
the process convince the assembly and I.

Try to connect my work with jamming
which is a fundamental transition

to rigidity in in
condensed matter physics so

these are all things that I would
normally be talking about and

I hope this kind of single slide will give
you an idea of who I am as a scientist and

what sort of questions I'm interested in.

I think that's really important because
you know like my identity in so far

as being a physicist is absolutely focused
around these sorts of scientific questions

so if I tell it showing you this I hope
you convinced you I'm a scientist and.

Maybe and I guess you can the other
thing I should tell you is that I'm

actually going to talk about all of this
stuff tomorrow at four pm I believe so if

you're interested in these things please
feel free to comment ask me them but

I was also co-author along with a whole
bunch of stuff that I've done on education

research I was co-author of this
report I wasn't the only person

there were a whole bunch of other
physicists spanning all sorts of different

institution types Johns Hopkins College of
William and Mary not that far from here

University in Japan the Osaka prefecture
University University of New Hampshire

that's a big public institution in
New Hampshire Michigan State UN C.

and of course some of the people
from the A.P.S. themselves so

a very wide variety of physicists
worked on this report and

mostly because I kind of helped out with
the photography at the last minute we like

a lot of top people are actually on the
cover including me kind of in a pretty.

Sort of I think illustrates
things very amusingly.

OK let me just briefly
define a couple of terms

I want you to feel free to stop me to ask
questions if anything that I talk about.

Seems like you'd like to know more so
as we go along but

I think it's just important to lay
these two well so firstly L G B T plus

is generally what I use but you'll see
many other sort of permutations and

many other acronyms
G L B T L G B T Q L G B T Q Q A and

I guess all of these all of these
acronyms in some sense they're on browser

terms the try to include many
different kinds of sexual and

gender minorities including like
female female male male attraction

attraction no more than one gender and
people for whom their gender identity or

their gender expression may not
match their assigned sex so these

are some of the some of the possibilities
but I think it's important that you know

one of the question I always get asked is
Why are all that why all the acronyms and

why do the acronyms keep getting bigger I
think it's worth saying that all of these

are you know all of these are trying to
capture what are ultimately very complex

human processes into words and
that's not a very effective thing

to do sometimes the acronyms and
their evolution actually kind

of represents in some sense our as our
collective understanding of these things

evolves the acronym is kind of an attempt
to add in kind of new understanding

as well so you know and again all of
these things are like when you look

at them they're much less binary and much
more complex than I'm putting here but

at least this can kind of help people
who are unfamiliar and the second word

in the report that is worth talking about
is the climate so what does a climate

mean I'm going to define it as the
collection of the lived experiences that

we have in a professional environment and
you know like a Climate is the sum of

many people our experiences might differ
that might include things like who we.

Talk to what they're AFAIK to is like
how we feel about you know the things

going on in our professional environment
that's what I mean by climate so

that's kind of what the report
purports to try to describe so

I guess it's worth me like backing up
a sack and say Well actually how did I

how did I even like you know get
started on this and kind of why do I

think it's important because actually you
know what are the things I was reflecting

on this morning I was reflecting
on the time that I met Sabbat or

at a Gordon conference on liquid
crystals in two thousand and seven and.

You know I have to tell you that at
the time had you asked me what did my

orientation have to do with my scientific
identity or my scientific work

I think I would have told you that it
really had nothing to do with that at

all I would have said at the time you know
I think those are entirely separate for

me I don't want my scientific work
to be judged on my identity I still

think that's true but you know I think
I would have said something like

You know I don't see how this relates and

I'm raising that because I think some of
you may have the same thought as well and

I think I'd like to show you how I have
changed my thinking kind of why and

what evidence has caused me to
change my thinking as well so

I guess I want to separate out two
kinds of things I want to separate out

scientific products that is
knowledge that is papers that is I

guess grants all of these sorts of
things that we produce as scientists and

I claim and I still claim
that I don't want any of that

have to do with my identity
shouldn't it probably does

because of course there's a lot of
processes by which things are judged and

the like but ideally our scientific
products should have nothing to do with

who we are the scientists but I think.

Do you realize that scientific products
are not actually the only part of

science that in fact
there is a process and

that process is many people
working together collectively.

Sometimes across great distances
there are mentoring and

mentee interactions there are all sorts
of human pieces to the way that we

produce science I think then it becomes
a little clearer how these sorts of

identity and
cultural issues can actually affect and so

that sort of I think the first
sort of distinction.

And then like you know.

When I was like you know when I
was sort of I started teaching for

the first time when I was
a visiting assistant professor and

I started I taught for a couple of years
that case when I was doing that and

then like you know I hadn't said a word
to anyone either in the department or

actually you know in my class I certainly
hadn't said a thing in my class I didn't

think it was relevant at all to
say anything about my identity and

I thought that's the way it's going to
be and then at the end of the semester

was the quantum to class and I don't
know about all of the faculty here but

if you've ever taught quantum mechanics
is just a sheer joy to teach right it's

a beautiful subject we had
a great time Imagine my surprise

that at the end of the semester I got
this email this was the email I got

it said Professor Atherton I want to thank
you for an enjoyable quantum to class

this semester that's a good start I
really look up to the kind of want to.

I'm not making this up both in my personal
life your support of gay rights help me

find the strength to start living in
silence thank you for being the professor

was a pleasure to talk to those
professors are coming by Thank you for

the incredible semester right now I
am fairly certain that all of you who

have been teaching long enough have had
this kind of positive feedback on your.

Teaching I sincerely hope so
if you it's it's really

I think you'll agree this is a really
life changing email actually it was life

changing to me mostly because I was like
well how did the how the hell did he know.

I didn't realize I was out I hadn't
raised it it didn't seem relevant but

nonetheless this student had told
me the me being at least I guess

visibly visibly gay like actually
been a significant source of

strength to him so that's great right so
my second thought and

I think this is the key one is that every
student deserves to have the sort of

experience every student deserves to
have a good experience in my classes and

I think it was this email me off thinking
well how can I do the best job that I can

as a teacher but also how can I
try to kind of help you know like

sort of keep this conversation going and
even do a better and more intentional job.

OK So that was what what did that for me
and some of that what I started doing is

when I was at conferences I would try
to meet other queer physicists and

various kinds of people and I met a whole
bunch of other people who had had fairly

similar experiences to me so here are a
bunch of them Michael fork Johns Hopkins.

Long as you are nature is a bunch
of a bunch of people who have.

You know some of whom are straight their
allies but nonetheless a whole bunch

of people who for various reasons
became concerned about these issues.

And they were similarly motivated but as
we all know from science and we know from

education research that like just
an anecdotal data point like the email

that I got really is not very useful
we need actually kind of a systematic

understanding of the issues in order
to actually do anything meaningful or.

About it and so.

The kind of the pre
the sort of started off

we thought it would be helpful to kind
of make a grassroots organization so

a bunch of us got together that was
very much catalyzed by Al's long.

To just figure out you know provide
a bit of a networking space for

for businesses and we you know
that's still going it still exists.

And we started.

Like one of the first things we did is we
sort of collaboratively wrote guide for

best practices trying to share some of the
things we thought people other physicists

ought to know about you can still download
that today and we've just updated it I'll

talk about the second edition in a bit so
we got a bunch of people together and

then we you know like we
organized a meeting at the.

A.P.I. We had meetings at the A.P.S.

like a bunch of meet ups we work together
to host a special session in March meeting

we had the first ever invited
session we talk to the A.P.'s and

we sort of got them to write the report
and we've started issuing awards for

educators who are doing
excellent work in this field and

now we've got a new best practices guide
so it's actually been going now for

about a decade and you know I
think we're making some progress

so you can read more a bit about
the early work I guess I don't want to.

Sort of grow on it too much but you know
we got together speakers on this issue and

we surveyed the participants and the
participants actually told us that they

were really two crucial things that we
needed the first is we needed large scale

data collection and the second thing was
we needed this best practices guide so

we went and did the best practices
guide the data collection.

Took a little longer in fact
it wasn't until the executive

office of the chief executive
officer of the A.P.'s Kate Kirby who

many of you may have met
because she runs the A.P.S..

Or certainly did at the time.

She that was really her vision that this
was a necessary expert necessary exercise

and so she convened this committee
gave a substantial funding to me and

kind of do the research necessary and

asking us to advise the A.P.'s on the
current status provide recommendations and

engage in laying the foundation for
a more inclusive physics community I guess

that's one of the reasons I'm here
today to address this latter part OK So

we gathered data in the following ways we
did focus groups several A.P.'s meetings

and we did a climate survey of three
hundred twenty four individuals

we used a method called
snowball sampling so

what this means is like I didn't make this
I make a survey I send it to a bunch of

people that I know like maybe I'll send it
to like you know your people in the first

row you'll send it to your friends and
this way we kind of hope to get some sort

of representation of the community
of course it is not a very

we can't really make any comparisons we
can't do population comparison because

it's not going to give us necessarily
a statistically relevant sample but

nonetheless since the goal
of this case the.

Really just to kind of understand what
the issues are I think that's OK for

the first step snowball sampling and

then we did like follow up interviews
with a few participants as well

we also did we also use the A.P.'s
membership survey many of you

any of you who are A.P.'s members
receive that that got about two and

a half thousand responses we got like some

information two point five
percent identified as all G B T

and that was you know so again this
is not really necessarily telling

us how many businesses there are but it's
kind of at least a relevant data point

what was really interesting is that if
you broke this down by age actually quite

interestingly a much higher fraction
of the eighteen to twenty five.

Age range seem to identify as that way I
was very big error bars on that number but

nonetheless it's sort of quite
an interesting observation so

this is the this is the sources
of data that we've had so

let me tell you what we found OK So
firstly.

You know.

Physicists are facing very
Why the differences in

like the amount of support they feel
they're getting from legislation and

policies so I want to mention these are
these are campus or workplace policies so

we're not talking about
the sort of wider society and.

You know so some people indeed are seeing
a highly supportive environment.

There's another fraction
are kind of uneven to lacking.

One of the things that we've done and we
will do this on some other questions as we

look specifically at Trans
individuals because we had reason to

suspect that experience may look very
different and so we broke out the.

And you can see that there's a bit of a
shift it seems that they're sort of seeing

their perception a slightly more negative
than the rest of the population so

that's kind of sort of somber what.

You see people protesting.

I guess what I want to say is that because
this was in two thousand and fifteen and

this is continually kind of an evolving
like story I think it will be really

interesting to see how this number tracks
with time when we read through the survey

you know we sort of soar in two
thousand and sixteen sort of various

stories that suggested that it might
be a more negative perception and

you know we aim to gather the status so
we can again so we can make a comparison.

So the second one and I think this is sort
of really speaking to what climate is

is that a lot of is that the person is
the experience is actually very variable

right like so fifteen percent of men.

Found the felt that they were
uncomfortable I mean as a just want to say

fifteen percent seems like quite a small
number right but that's not the less

a lot of people who feel uncomfortable in
their workplace I think most of us would

agree that as professionals Nobody should
feel uncomfortable in the workplace right

that should be zero should be the number
but nonetheless the fifteen percent.

And that is what is very interesting is
that there is a very significant gendered

effect to this feeling of comfort so
twenty five percent of.

Women felt uncomfortable and for

gender nonconforming people
which includes trans people but

it's like the slightly slightly broader
group that's actually thirty percent so

we're saying like a gender effect
which I think it's quite interesting.

We're also seeing that of people
who've observed harassment

will sort of return to this issue.

Again you are seeing thirty one percent
of the team and have seen have observed

harassment this is increasing the forty
four and sixty seven for women and

gender not conforming so there's a I
think these are very troubling statistics

actually because I think you know these
are very high numbers they suggest

that the amount of harassment that's
going on actually might be quite high.

Of course zero is the acceptable level.

A lot of physicists are closeted
there is a sort of a fairly

reasonable fraction who feel
like they need to stay closeted.

And.

One of the things that I think was very
interesting is the sort of correlation

between outness and comfort and

so if you were outs you were
more likely to feel comfortable

the people who were not the people who
were not if you were not out you were more

likely to feel uncomfortable now I have to
say because there's just a correlation we

don't really know which way the causal
arrow is pointing but nonetheless like it

seems like a relevant observation that
these two correlates some of that

I mean like the some of the anecdotes
are kind of quite helpful sort of the.

Spoken information and
the written information.

Like we're sort of showed that these
experiences can look quite different

Someone said that they were in
the closet about their identity and

because they passed they were
actually quite comfortable so

that was sort of interesting.

Another said that they were very afraid to
mention the other people they felt that

they were surrounded by very traditional
people a very common sort of refrain and

this was certainly true of myself when I
was a grad student said I don't know of

any other out physics grad students I know
that a lot of them are very conservative

I feel like they respect me right now.

I don't know that they would
respect me if I came out to them so

you know this is the sort of thing
that people who are not out to

kind of wrestling with the thinking
about their decision to be.

Isolation was a very common theme so
people were saying things like you know I

don't feel comfortable outing myself there
are no other L G B T plus individuals.

And this was quite interesting.

Like it's a hard time networking
because mostly male colleagues find it

uncomfortable to invite a gay couple for
things.

Like.

I guess I have a fun anecdote here like
it my only institution like Quite often I

get like my Some of my colleagues
get asked like how are your wife and

kids by administrators and they never
asked me that it was actually became so

common that some of my straight colleagues
actually kind of pointed it hope so

and said that they found it funny that I
would always be there would always be kind

of break silence when when when
similar things were going so fine.

And then coming back to like in
the in the in the sort of the public

thing we say we use this term exclusionary
behavior which is kind of short

of harassment it's kind of like it's
kind of like a sort of umbrella term

that sociologists use to kind of describe
sort of like you know hostile behavior but

short of short of harassment and
again we're seeing

we're seeing a strong gendered
effect whereby women and

gender nonconforming
individuals are increasingly

more likely to see either observe or
experience the cynic and

trans individuals are more likely
to in fact the most likely.

Observer Experion.

Exclusionary behavior.

Another thing that I think and

we're sort of coming to the end
of the findings is that.

You know we often think of diversity and

certainly the way it's talked about in
universities it's to do with things like.

Race and of course BT issues tends to
be seen as a compartmentalized version

people tend to talk about these issues
separately we notice that actually for

people who have more than one of these
identities actually it can be really

hard to know where the discrimination is
coming from like so this one was really

there were some really interesting
quote I guess I'll come to it here.

I don't know if it was
based on my gender or

my orientation so I think that's
really interesting that the like

additional marginalized
identities can really create a.

Very different experience.

Yup so maybe go back to that
sexual harassment sexist jokes

Sextus assumptions tokenization in my
orientation and my impression that faculty

are silent bystanders hearing comments
made by faculty I know there are negative

attitudes and stereotypes towards BT
people and people of color so I think

we can all agree that these are not things
that should be happening in our workplace.

OK And then finally just to kind of
underscore some of the things that I sort

of touched upon earlier we found this very
strong effect the trans transgender and

gender nonconforming physicists

are often encounter in
the most hostile environments.

You know some of the ways that this plays
out is like not having their pronoun

respected by colleagues and these these
affect them on an emotional level and

affect their ability to work
I thought that was a really

really kind of interesting thing
if you're putting up with that.

And that's really going to impact
your scientific productivity.

One unfortunately so they were harassed by
a professor while going into the bathroom

the first week they were on campus
which is obviously unacceptable.

And as a result of these hostile
climate the hostile climate

some people are facing not all people but
some you know about thirty six

percent considered leaving physics
you know which is which seems likely

I don't think we actually know what the
comparison is amongst non algae people so

it does require a bit of you don't have to
be a little careful interpret in this but

it seems like a fairly
high fraction to me.

So you know I apologize for this nonsense
on the back blackboard behind me it

just realize that probably is
very accurate but never mind.

OK.

And indeed like Iran this was the case for
me as well trying

to identify people to help mitigate these
feelings of isolation is very tough.

So for example finding professors who are
OK working with queer people it was pretty

hard for them to find and they found them
because they had a little rainbow sticker

on its window so I'd like to see some
of these and that was kind of a cue for

me to be a little more comfortable around
them so it seems that where people show

even kind of a fairly small signature that
people at least open to working with.

People that actually it can really
lead to quite a big benefit and

terms of their well being so I think
that's kind of a nice thing to know that

maybe we don't have to do that much to
shift some of these feelings this was

a program that I'll talk about a little
bit and kind of put in context for you.

Now I realize that that last little
bit seem very very negative and so.

I think one of the good things that we
found is that very many people feel

felt that the climate was improving and
so I think that's latch on to that and

think about what can we do because
you know I personally feel and

I think physicists generally
feel that we would want anybody

who feels they want to study physics and
has the aptitude to do so

we would want our discipline to be
welcoming we want to welcome them and

in fact you know I think we are all
united by the realisation that physics

is a very challenging subject and
if we're not drawing upon the full poll or

put the full pool of talent in society if
people are like I don't see a place for

me we may be missing out on wonderful
talent than can help advance

the scientific endeavor as well so I think
this is something that should concern

all of us OK So one thing was to worst.

Abolition welcoming a virus that A.P.S.

meanings and now we've done that we
have a code of conduct for A.P.'s.

We have now got a change we're
sort of this is something that I

think a lot of public publishing houses
are kind of working towards that like for

transgender people like if they change
their name it can immediately out them

as transgender on their C.V. and
that that means that they may have to miss

like publications off their C.V. which
could really reduce their job prospects

there are many other good reasons
to change your name as well and so

actually in this era of like
digital digital manuscripts I

mean I don't read paper copies myself very
often it seems like it should be pretty

easy to retroactively change your name for
perfectly good reasons you know and

this is something that most publishing
houses realize that they are going to try

to address it is quite complicated
because it also links to databases and we

know that data but it's the publications
are not always that accurate so this

is quite a challenging issue but it's one
that I think the community is working on.

Developing advocacy effect so the A.P.'s
now has a statement on inclusion we should

update A.P.'s policy is A.P.I. should
advocate in the international community

for L G B T physicists you know and indeed
like where where possible like the A.P.I.

should or should lobby federal
funding agencies to include L.G.

BT demographics in STEM
education where where where

possible and this was actually a topic
that cake Kirby really pushed for

us to include she felt this was
something that they could actually do.

We can publicize disseminate use
the best practices guide all talk

about that in a moment develop training
for physicists helps people in.

Recruit allies and the Opera should
help physics departments like

actually change their climate because
when they do they can do a site visit and

help people look at their climate that L G
B T issues kind of need to be part of that

I think this is actually there's
a broader point to make here and

that is that you know having
seen this kind of very important

piece of Lake multiple overlapping
identities whenever we make

diversity programs whenever we try to do
a diversity intervention we should really

take care to think about Do other people
with overlapping identities like how

will that play out because it seems
if we don't address the needs

of all identities that some person carries
our program probably won't work for

them you know so for example if we do
a program intended to help representation

of women in physics if that neglects
that neglects whether the race or

possibly their orientation and those sorts
of climate things are not addressed in

intervention that intervention is
unlikely to work for all of the people so

it's kind of a really crucial thing that
diversity efforts kind of pay attention to

the sort of evidence OK.

We should build L.G.B. to see inclusive
mentoring mechanisms to kind of

address the lack of mentors and
invisibility so

I could include best practices for
mentoring disseminating those

to program leaders and we should create
a professional network of mentors and

mentees I have to say we haven't
the A.P.'s has not done this yet but

it's like something that I think is
very worthwhile doing and the A.P.I.

should continue to sponsor networking
events so next time you go to March or

April meeting you know feel
free to drop by and say hi to

the community there are those have been
every year for the past eight years at.

March both meetings so
they're well worth dropping by to say hi.

Everyone has told us they've been
very very useful over the years.

I've been finally like kind of again
thinking about the fact that different

under-represented groups or different
marginalized groups you know have

different needs but nonetheless there
are issues that affect them all like there

was this idea the there should be a forum
on diversity inclusion that would kind of

in some sense help join together
the efforts of the various the various

structures within A.P.S. So someone
came up with this animation I'm not

sure how well it worked but nonetheless
we have all of these different groups and

all of them would continue
to exist as normal but

there would be an umbrella to kind
of help facilitate interactions OK.

I get it I want to focus on that
really great finding from the survey.

Sorry about this animation
my goodness I want to focus

on the good thing ninety percent of people
think that the climate is improving and

I think we can we can
continue the improvement

because since the report which was
released a couple of years ago.

We now have gender neutral bathrooms that
A.P.S. meetings we now have this code of

conduct and the forum and diversity is
now at its organizational stages so

it looks like that's going
to be happening very soon.

So the A.P.'s.

The A.P.S. board accepted our reports and
is working on implementing it.

And I think the A.P.S. and sort of started
this trajectory the question is what

will the community do I guess so I want
to kind of take a step back again and

I want to say well OK physics
has actually dealt with.

Changes in the face of evidence before and

on multiple occasions so
this is a very famous paper

there are plenty of other papers that make
a similar point but I just picked this one

because it was a fairly early review
everyone recognized these graphs.

Good Excellent OK Well let me tell you the
so how many of you have heard of physics

education research loads of The Right well
this is kind of why it's affective or

how we know it's effect right so
this is a whole bunch of this is a matter

analysis of courses the high
schools colleges and

universities that were taught either with
interactive engagement or they were taught

in a traditional lecture based manner and
they're all plotted on the same graph

I have to tell you this graph is not the
easiest to read but it's kind of helpful

this is the pretest score they did like
there's a test that you take before and

after the whole point is you look
at the difference between the two

that gives you the gain and of course you
hope that you have gained something from

the course you can see from this
graph that the traditional lecture

course gave fairly modest increases and

the interactive engagement
gave much higher increases so

this is kind of the thing mapped out
to a slightly easier to read graph

here are the interactive engagement
courses here are the lecture

based courses it's very clear that
interactive engagement which is

quite a wide umbrella term you know click
that you may have seen click is prepare

instruction many of the faculty here
probably use these techniques Georgia Tech

has a very admirable reputation in
physics education research itself and

so you know some of these were
developed to Georgia Tech but

the point is is this graph is
the reason why many physics faculty

have chosen to not let and
instead use interactive techniques and

we've done so in the face of very
supportive evidence again this is an old

paper that's much more recent There's
much better didn't so they lable But

nonetheless I think it's kind of nice
to kind of show the basic skills.

Unity has actually responded to
these sorts of things before and

I think the response to P.R. is a very
helpful kind of model for what might be

needed here so what can we do OK Well
as I was wandering around talking

science to people all day which was so
much fun I sort of quite a few of these.

This is a program run by your center
there are actually plenty of dates coming

up where you could go take this which
is supposed to kind of help people who

are unfamiliar with issues kind of learn
a little bit of the vocabulary and

kind of think about how they might try
to make their office kind of them like

an inclusive place but it's basically
like you know the way I had a we had

a similar program at Tufts and a very good
friend of mine who's a math professor.

Like took this course I kind of made him.

And I said to him as we were driving up
to Vermont to go skiing they gather I was

like well what did you get out of that and
he said that he said he said you know

he said I think what I got out was very
simple I'm not going to know everything

but I'm going to try not to judge
everyone who comes in my room office and

I'm going to try and be open to learning
new things about that I know it's a pretty

good description of what the sort of
thing means that doesn't mean that you're

an expert in L G B T issues I have to
tell you that I myself I'm not but

I'm continuing to learn nobody is

it seems like a really admirable thing
to do if you want your students to know

that you're going to create you know
an underage mental space this seems like

a really cool program many universities
have a similar one one of the things

I really like about the Georgia Tech one
actually is that it has a really explicit

statement saying what it actually means
because quite often safes own program

they're often called safe so that other
universities often they just say save and

it's not clear what it's supposed to be so
this one actually has completed safe.

It's training and it's committed to
practicing ality ship to the L G B T Q I

community Georgia Tech so that's kind
of a really explicit statement and for

those of you the already put out there
is stickers and that thank you so

much I think that was really great to
see as I walked around the Smalling.

The second thing is there is
a wonderful national organization

called stem which is out in science
technology technology engineering and

mathematics this is a organization for
undergraduates and

graduate students to kind of network and
gain community gain access to mentors and

all of these other things I was talking
about that were kind of seem to be lacking

for L G B T People this is like
a really helpful organization and

I know that your university has a chapter
it seems a very active chapter so

it seems like a good thing to do if you.

Encounter an elegy BT student
who is looking for resources

this might be another great resource
to point them in the direction of.

We have just written a new
best practices guide we

updated a lot of the advice kind of based
on the thing I didn't make the art but

the art of the cover is really beautiful
and kind of mixes all sorts of stuff.

In the background I guess.

But it has a lot of advice and I'm not
going to try and summarize that but

I'll give you a couple of brief sort
of snapshots so you can get advice on

creating a welcoming Department classroom
practice mentoring advising hiring and

promotions travel and advising and
creating a welcoming institution I'm

happy to field questions on any of these
and in the questions section of course.

To kind of highlight or give a sense of
some of the advice I'll actually talk

about the chapter that I helped co-write
and that is the classroom practice so

let me just mention a few things.

It's for
those of you who will be teaching So

one thing that you can immediately do is
just include some welcoming language in

your syllabus kind of it's the sort of
recommended language in our guide but

just it's a simple sort of syllabus
statement like you encourage people to

welcome people of all different sort
of backgrounds many colleges encourage

you to put this sort of
information in another thing and

this is sort of this really depends how
your interactive learning system be it

black four door or
whatever is set up sometimes these

can actually get allow students to put in
there how they wish to be identified so

their name and pro Dowd's that's
actually really helpful information for

many different groups there
are many students that have

names in the official record that
are not actually the names they use for

all sorts of reasons and I always sort
of know it was used to get very tripped

up on it because like I would try to learn
a few people's names before the class and

then I would discover that person is not
cold they're called something different so

kind of actually that's really helpful but

if you don't if you're if
your version of blackboard or

whatever you use doesn't support that

a pretty coarse they can be a really
good way to do it I often stand around.

To ask people what their background is for
the class and

get a sense of what the classes looks
like before it's a helpful thing

using inclusive examples and
analogies so for instance there

was a beautiful sequence of papers a few
years ago kind of showing how many like

you know in a very well known test called
the force concept inventory there were

an awful lot of men in the questions and
in fact like all too many you

know lots of the questions had like two
guys and maybe they thought it might be.

Nice if we didn't have all
guys in the examples you know

like maybe we could have a mixture
of people seem like a good idea.

The GO thing and this is actually really
hard to do and I'll tell you a bit of

a moment it's like if you see something
problematic happening in your classroom

try to do something about it this happened
to me that had a student in my class who.

You know Blake I saw another student
calling them with the wrong pronoun and

I have to tell you that the first time it
happened I didn't do anything because I

did I kind of processed it slowly you know
I was like well that just happened and

then afterwards I was like OK what
do I do so I emailed the student and

I said Look I'm really sorry I notice
this happening and I apologize and

I'll make sure that it's done differently
next time and in fact I did that but

actually the thing that was interesting
is even though my intervention was

very imperfect nonetheless it had
a happy result because the student

reach back to me and say you know like
I was really upset at the time but

thank you for kind of knowledge
ing that that was the problem and

kind of trying to do something about it so
one of the things I want to say is that

like our ability to intervene
in problematic scenarios is

often very imperfect because they happen
rarely but trying to do something

is better than trying to do nothing so
it's quite a useful thing and

some campuses provide training on
how to do that like I had a student

a few years ago say something that was
really sexist in my class and kind of it

was quite helpful to know how to kind of
have a productive conversation after that.

You know it's very challenging because
fortunately these things don't happen too

often but they can be very hurtful
to other students in the classroom.

Another thing I do and
I think is a good practice is when you

know it's always a good idea
to give a mid-semester.

Survey figure out how your class is doing
you can always include a climate question

on that survey something like How
comfortable is this classroom

we have model language in the report you
can just cut and paste you don't have to

make up your own question I finally as
I said there's loads of other things

you can do in the best practices guide but
I hope that this kind of gives you

a little bit of a flavor of the sorts
of advice that we now have in there OK.

So as I said you know from my own

experience like you know I am an ally
of some identities because I haven't

lived the experience of you know quite a
whole of a whole variety of identities and

you know what I try to be to those
people as an ally but nonetheless

it's a process not a destination we have
to keep trying to do a better job and

hopefully that will collectively improve
the community and our sort of sense of

this OK so this is where I think I
want to finish I want to thank all

of my co-authors of the report I certainly
want to thank all of you guys for

inviting me or all of you all for
inviting me and

I'm very happy to field questions and sort
of think about these things as well so

thank you for
your attention I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

OK So there's the next survey is

currently at the planning stages I
suspect that it will be done with and

it will be done within the next couple of
years we would like to do a comparison.

I think there I would also
draw your attention and

I didn't cite it that there's actually
quite a lot of fairly recent sociological

research on the scientific community
as well so we're getting more data from

other disciplines how we're getting better
kind we're getting like interview date

I should say the community not Not
me specifically but I think this

is sort of the current plan is to try to
do it again in the next couple of years.

There was a cost of the back and
then and then so

yeah.

This is a very good question so

the question is like Has there been
research on the interaction of national

your national origin and
how that might impact with your.

Various other kinds of identity so
it probably doesn't surprise you I am also

from a different country and in fact
like I don't want to the reason I say

that is I actually like one of
the things that is really that will.

Ought not to be shocking but is absolutely
true is that although Britain and

the United States have a common
language who are extremely different

societies like I in fact like
the very sort of the values.

Like you know how the society
is structured how like

you know various kinds of thing a really
really different between the two so

some look very similar you know and

then like you know if Britain in the US
which have quite a close relationship

are really different than how different
we are all sorts of other things so

I think this is a fascinating question
we don't have dates around that but my

my my having sort of heard a lot of people
from other countries are immediately.

Sort of there in the kind of descriptions
of their stories I think that tends to

problematize assumptions and so
like when you come if you're a.

Person from another culture.

Because you're currently figuring
out how the culture works it's even

harder to figure out who's like
a good person to talk to or

not or who might be supportive or
not it sort of tends to make.

This seems to be what I've heard
from a bunch of people is that

it tends to sort of make things even
more complicated so I think it's a good

research topic we don't we don't have any
data on it unfortunately but you're right.

You know.

Well I

think there is a lot of methodological
deficiencies in our first iteration

actually and you're certainly right that
that kind of like that that snowball

approach is somewhat limited The second
thing is that I don't know if you've

noticed this but all of the authors of
the report other thing Arlene are why and

this is a huge limitation I think
we're really understand pulling

those experiences that now we know
are probably very important to look at

so so so
I think I think this is something that

we're collectively working on I don't
think we have a simple answer but

part of the story is we've been building
a lot of relationships with other affinity

groups and so have a much broader
range of starting points and

we're also thinking much more
intentionally about our interviews like we

kind of pick people at the intersections
of various identities because we

thought it was interesting now we actually
can really try to probe around that so

I think that I think that your question is
an excellent one because it's a genuinely

very hard problem this is by far
not the end of the story it's

just the first step so
I agree with you and of course

also gestures are welcomed because
this is coming out of the community

you know one of the wonderful things is
that I think people with better ideas and

expertise come in and start helping out
with the research effort we may actually

be able to solve some of those challenges
Sorry if that's not a great answer yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yup yup.

Right.

Well it's certainly true but I certainly
agree with you so the point is that it's

a good idea to look at subfields and
I would completely support that

I think that's something we should
definitely try to do but then on the other

hand something that I found something
that I think is quite interesting is that

a lot of our preconceptions about
safe good good environments and

not good environments are actually
kind of based on on much larger length

scales that I think actually matter right
and I think there's one thing I can try So

for example you would assume the Boston
is a great place to be an out.

Person sure in some places but

absolutely you know some real horrors
I've heard some real horror stories from.

The grad students in Boston for
example and so

I think the key thing is climate is
very much a micro level phenomena and

it really is firstly like what your lab
like then what your department like and

what your institution like and then what's
the sort of broader context you know and

so I think that subfield could be a really
crucial thing and particularly for

you know but nonetheless I think the main
story is right now is that we have to

start by creating our individual you know
for for professors we actually really have

to start by creating supportive research
groups and and supportive departments and

then our field is there hopefully we
can carry some of those along but

again agreed it's worth
collecting the data.

Any other questions.

Yeah cheers.

Yeah.

So this is yeah this is any
A.P.'s concert event so

like it would be it would include
like a division meeting or

if there's like I presume that
like like a southeast A.P.S.

group or something like that so anything
any A.P.'s sponsored event any event

that has the A.P.'s logo on it really
is covered by this code of conduct

Yes You know I don't

actually wish I could look to that I don't
think that the measures are quite so.

So so I think there is a sort of there's
a process so I think it would only be for

for a very clear and says so

I can would have to look at that I don't
actually remember the exact wording but

it was quite important that we got that
I'm happy to do you and then you go for.

I think it's a great question the question

is could we compare with data
from the A.P.S. groups and

I think I think again we are trying to be
very conservative in our interpretation.

I think that it's it's fair to say

that it's not clear that people
are underrepresented in physics but

they still may be and this is
definitely it's very odd because again

we're talking about in some sense about
statistics of small numbers it's not so

clear that we have the resolving power
in order to kind of answer questions

like that but again one of the other
things I would say is rather than

using the language of under-representation
we tend to prefer the word marginalized

because it's very clear that these you
know some of these activities that I think

we all agree are not don't belong
in a professional environment or

some of these behaviors that don't
belong in a professional environment

those are those are very clear
those are clearly extant and

that's what we should try to
change that makes sense yes.

We don't have good data on that but
the current sort of

you know these these figures
are not commensurate with

the reporting levels that we
generally see in higher education so

I think the analysis suggests that these
things are being quite dramatically under

reported So again like I think every
institution legally has to have reporting

mechanisms but it's very clear I think
that they're not always very effective.

And there are all kinds of reasons for
that is not a subject that I'm an expert

on but it certainly is recent
is certainly a an object that

should be looked at much further
much more closely yup yup

yeah get the up

Correct yeah the air.

Right.

So I think so my understanding is
that asking people how they want to

be identified as that is how do you want
to be introduced you know I mean that's

what my understanding is that's a totally
legitimate question to ask people I don't

think that would words to my knowledge
I don't know if anyone has a contrary

opinion I think that would what one of
the one of the best ways to kind of handle

this is this was how like you know when
I was applied I went through the faculty

job search fairly obviously and and
it became very clear to be which were good

institutions to work out of which were
not good institutions to work at actually

I refused an offer because they weren't
they weren't very old G.B.T. friendly.

So you know like it definitely you know

I guess they lost I hope
they feel they lost but.

You know.

One thing that was very helpful to me
is that some institutions actually kind

of provided the same
resources to everyone and

like and here's a bunch of resources
that you might be interested in so

I'll allow the candidate to kind of reach
out and get the info for themselves so

in my case like I contacted the L G B T
center for all of the schools that I

was interviewed that I said Tell me
about the climate institution X.

and I got some very frank and revealing
answers from some institutions so

I think that kind of thing is
a good way to kind of do that but

to be perfectly honest I tell you
what the freakiest experience I

had as an interviewee that is that
a university that I won't name and

one of the things that amazed me is like
like you know like a lot of faculty have

pictures of their spouses and kids in
their office that's a good thing it shows

that the faculty are human right that's
a good thing right like you know like

it's a better institution if
the faculty have their spouses and or.

Maybe kids if they have kids or the like
and or maybe if the you know the straight

ones don't have kids that's equally great
you know like it's good to see anything

that gives you evidence that the faculty
are human beings it was one institution I

interviewed at where there was no evidence
whatsoever that the faculty had any life

whatsoever and I was like This is just
weird these people are robots and

I didn't I didn't I declined their offer
so because I was like just to we were so

so so I think that kind of I think small
you know people notice small things so

like just the fact as I was going round
today like the fact that a few people had

these safe space stickers to me that kind
of was like actually the climate can be

you know it's hard to know but

that was like a good sign kind of being
given if you give all candidates like

the same information that seems like a
reasonable thing to do if you ask you know

how would you like to be introduced that
seems like again a reasonable thing to do

it's most about signalling you're like
intent on very small things kind of

matter does it does that answer
your question Good thank you for

the question I see two people here
can I have you first and then you.

Well OK.

You're actually.

Right.

Yeah.

Indeed.

Right.

There.

Right.

Now.

I think Paul thank you for sharing
that that's absolutely wonderful and

I think often this sort of illustrates
that none of us have the all the answers

so let me try to just summarize what you
said if I got it wrong forgive me and

maybe we can discuss that but basically
the point is just asking people pronouns

kind of forces them to actually
out themselves or make a decision

to out themselves so maybe saying what
pronouns to use is a bad practice but

choosing to say something like
I use he you know he serious

pronouns could be like a good way of
saying I'm open to this conversation one

thing that a lot of people do is put that
on their e-mail in their e-mail footer and

that's kind of a helpful kind of
signal to people for the person

sort of actually understood like what
like I think you know generically

it sort of becomes clear who might the
supportive people be it does that sort of

summarize your contribution it was
a very good contribution thank you for

sharing that one more I guess we're
running out of time OK great thank you for

that OK I think we're
probably out of time.

We thank you so much about it thank you.