Statements from Science Studies 

UC San Diego Science Studies in Solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives The UC San Diego Science Studies Program (SSP) stands in solidarity with those demanding justice for the recent brutal murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Steven Taylor, George Floyd, and so many other Black Americans murdered by police and white supremacist violence—violence that is part of centuries of racist oppression. We recognize that white supremacy exceeds these horrific acts and pervades cultural life in more banal but no less brutal forms, and we condemn the ongoing systemic, structural, physical, and epistemological forms of anti-Blackness in our institutions. We also note that statements are not enough, and that movements against white supremacy and anti-Blackness, such as the Movement for Black Lives, are calling for immediate action and for commitments to redress these forms of violence wherever they are found.

As science studies scholars, we are well aware that science, technology and medicine flourished through, and depended on, legitimated and facilitated the disenfranchisement of Black, Indigenous and colonized communities globally. Despite familiarity with these histories and critiques, the field of science studies/STS has failed to substantively address its own role in upholding and enshrining racism. We take a first step in redressing this failure by making an ongoing effort to recognize and rectify any forms of anti-Blackness and white supremacy that exist in the field of Science and Technology Studies broadly, and UCSD’s Science Studies Program in particular. Over the coming years, we pledge as a program to promote and prioritize anti-racist scholarship and pedagogy in the governance and daily life of UCSD’s Science Studies Program and to develop a robust critique of our own field’s complicity in perpetuating antiBlackness and white supremacy. We make this pledge with the understanding that the work of decolonization and anti-racism requires not simply implementing a new policy but ongoing commitment to structural change.

As first steps, we make the following commitments:

• We recognize that SSP’s past and present have been dominated by white scholars and white, Eurocentric perspectives. While we, as individual faculty and graduate students, value academic freedom in our research and teaching, as a community we also recognize a responsibility to respond to the urgent political call to commit ourselves to decolonial and antiracist praxis in our research and teaching. Moving forward, we will work to foreground the work of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) scholars in order to facilitate anti-racist knowledge production and scientific practices.

• So that the labor of doing anti-racist and decolonial work does not solely fall on students and faculty of color, in Fall 2020, we will offer pedagogy training in decolonial and antiracist methods to all SSP faculty and students. • In order to centralize concerns of race and racism as the collective responsibility of all faculty and students in the program, one of the key themes of the 2021 SSP colloquium will be on race and racism as it pertains to the study of genetics, climate change, public health, and a number of adjacent subjects. Future colloquium series will place greater emphasis on related topics in addition to pursuing the recruitment of more BIPOC speakers.

• We will reassess our core curricula and work to include scholarship that identifies and analyzes structural racism and racial discrimination in science, technology and medicine. This exercise entails reassessing and expanding the canon in ways advocated by scholars working in postcolonial, feminist, and decolonial STS.

• Furthermore, we recognize that diversification of our field and canon alone does not alter power structures in knowledge creation and recognition, and that this work should not be the domain of those who are most secure within it. We value our SSP community, and therefore we acknowledge that transparency and true collaboration between graduate students and faculty are necessary to affirm and build that community.

• Finally, a joint committee of faculty and graduate students will conduct a thorough review of all facets of the SSP during the 2020-21 academic year in order to address issues of diversity, representation and anti-Blackness in the program’s composition, curricula, colloquia, graduate and faculty relations, and any other relevant areas.

The SSP is committed to the politically and intellectually urgent work of anti-racism and creating structures of accountability to which we will hold ourselves. This statement is a first step.