Roundtable Past and Futures: Current Challenges in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

     I decided to attend the UCLA event titled "Roundtable Past and Futures: Current Challenges in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine" on February 22nd. I read the description of the event that stated Dr. Terence Keel, a professor at UCLA,  would be discussing the legacy of racism within the history of science, and I was immediately interested. With no prior knowledge of who Dr. Keel was, I discovered that some of his research explores the connection between science, racist ideologies, and religion. Dr. Keel's research is why I chose to attend the event because I hoped to explore some interests that I have not had access to before. The other speaker for the event was Dr. Cathy Gere from UCSD, who would be speaking about the climate crisis and what historians of science can do in relation to traveling. Overall, the event was created to allow Dr. Keel and Dr. Gere to speak about challenges they noticed in their academic fields.

    For the first 30 minutes, Dr. Keel spoke about "The Demographic Future of the History of Science." He began by discussing Isis, which is the flagship peer-reviewed journal for the history of science. Because journals like Isis determine whose work gets published and whose does not, Keel wondered if Isis should study demographic data about its published scholarship. For me, this is an essential topic that should be brought up and discussed in every academic publishing space. We should reevaluate what we consider praiseworthy scholarship. If only certain types of people are being published, what does this say about the broader academic community and its current scholarship? Whose voices are visible and whose are being left out? The publishers have the power to act as gatekeepers of literary scholarship. As a result, the people who get published create the narrative of what the history of science looks like. Similar to our discussion in the plenary session this week, Keel mentioned how we should de-center the Eurocentric focus and instead focus on scholarships from BIPOC communities. Diversity and inclusion should be implemented at every level and serve as the foundation of the history of science. When asked if the field should be anti-racist, Keel believed that there should be a progression of commitments and values directed towards anti-racism. By not proactively being anti-racist, the field of the history of science and its resulting publications will continuously overlook types of materials that pose risks to its larger culture.

In the latter part of the talk, Dr. Gere presented a PowerPoint that focused on "The Climate Crisis and Professional Equity in History of Science." The first slide showed increasing global temperature anomalies from 1870 to 2020. Because air travel is responsible for a sizable portion of carbon emissions, Dr. Gere and some of her colleagues have been advocating for people to fly less for academic conferences and instead use trains or buses as their modes of transportation. It was interesting to see the contrast between her pre-pandemic proposal for decreasing air travel and our current state when people cannot travel readily and are left with the options to attend virtual conferences. The discussion turned towards whether virtual conferences should still be held post-COVID. Virtual conferences are more environmentally friendly with near-zero carbon emissions. However, one objection is that some academics prefer in-person conferences for stronger connections. Dr. Gere listed other objections such as "Travel opportunities are why I am an academic"; "Our work is too important to be sacrificed to environmental concerns"; and "We are not the problem: the 1% is the problem; this is counter-revolutionary." These objections were very striking to me due to the nature of the global climate crisis. They seem to prioritize their personal interests over the environment, which is in more than one way similar to the actions of corporations and the 1%.