Equity and inclusion

WCVB-TV spotlights Captain Wallace Patillo Reed '42, a “meteorologist whose barrier-breaking work allowed pilots to land and dreams to take off.” Reed, who is believed to be the first Black meteorologist in the U.S. armed services, earned a degree in meteorology at MIT before being assigned as the Tuskegee Arm Air Field base weather officer. “You can’t underestimate the importance of a role model,” said Dr. William Ryan, a former professor of climate change at the University of Maryland and Pennsylvania State University, of the significance of Reed’s work.

Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Joshua Angrist, Prof. Parag Pathak and Amanda Schmidt of Blueprint Labs examine the effectiveness of Boston’s school assignment system and transportation policy. “Boston schools have improved greatly since 1974: Dropout rates for all students have declined, and gaps by race, while still present, have narrowed,” they write. “School assignment plans originating in 1974 may therefore be less useful today. It’s time to consider changing transportation policy in light of these changes in the city’s education landscape.” 

Prof. Anna Stansbury speaks with Soumaya Keynes of the Financial Times podcast “The Economics Show” about her recent research on the class ceiling, which finds that an individual’s family circumstances can hold them back, even if they have earned a PhD. “We should care if people have opportunities to fulfill their talents for reasons of equity and justice. But the other is a very kind of banal economic reason, which is efficiency,” says Stansbury. “If you assume that talent for something is equally distributed, then we should care if people that are talented aren’t getting to fulfill that talent because it’s worse for overall productivity and overall outcomes.”

IEEE Spectrum reporter Willie D. Jones spotlights Prof. Wesley Harris, who has “not only advanced the field of aerospace engineering but has also paved the way for future generations to soar.” Jones notes Harris’ commitment to “fostering the next generation of engineers, particularly students of color.” Harris explains: “I’ve always wanted to be like my high school teacher—a physicist who not only had deep knowledge of the scientific fundamentals but also compassion and love for Black folks.” 

Prof. Emerita Mary-Lou Pardue, a cellular and molecular biologist whose work “formed the foundation for key advancements and discoveries in understanding the structure of chromosomes,” has died at age 90, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. Pardue “was a role model of what women in science can be at a time when there weren’t a lot of those, and a trailblazer as a woman,” emphasizes Ky Lowenhaupt, manager of the Biophysical Instrumentation Facility at MIT, “but also a trailblazer as a scientist who didn’t do things along the path that other people took.”

STAT lists “The Exceptions: Sixteen Women, MIT, and the Fight for Equality in Science,” by Kate Zernicke as a “best book on health and science to check out this summer.”  The book focuses on Prof. Nancy Hopkins’ “career, which culminates in not only numerous scientific successes but also a collaborative effort with 15 other women faculty demonstrating evidence of gender discrimination at MIT,” explains STAT. “This work led to studies to address gender equity at nine other universities.” 

Sloan Lecturer Shira Springer’s essay in Sports Business Journal makes the case for “investment in sports tech designed and developed with female athletes in mind.” Springer adds: “with fewer resources across the board in women’s sports, with all the gaps to close, sports tech can do more for women’s sports.”

The Sloan School of Management hosted the “Creating Opportunities for Second Chance Hiring” conference to explore ways to “reduce barriers and increase opportunities for job seekers with a criminal history,” reports Paul Singer for GBH.

Bloomer Tech, a health tech startup founded by Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ‘17, SM ’18, is working to “address the gender gap in health care, which has led to less clinical trial representation and fewer resources to diagnose and treat women with various diseases,” reports Steph Solis for Axios. The startup is prepared “to launch a clinical trial for bras that could help detect heart irregularities and other conditions that can lead to heart disease,” writes Solis.

Mashable reporter Adele Walton spotlights Joy Buolamwini PhD '22 and her work in uncovering racial bias in digital technology. “Buolamwini created what she called the Aspire Mirror, which used face-tracking software to register the movements of the user and overlay them onto an aspirational figure,” explains Walton. “When she realised the facial recognition wouldn’t detect her until she was holding a white mask over her face, she was confronted face on with what she termed the ‘coded gaze.’ She soon founded the Algorithmic Justice League, which exists to prevent AI harms and increase accountability.”

In an article for The Guardian, Angela Saini, an instructor in the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing, details her research studying the origins of the patriarchy. “Anthropologists have documented at least 160 matrilineal societies still in existence today, in which people trace their lineage through the women in their family rather than the men,” explains Saini. “There is an entire ‘matrilineal belt’ that stretches across Africa, and others dotted across Asia and North and South America.”

Boston Globe reporter Adri Pray spotlights the Women Take the Reel Film Festival, an annual celebration of female filmmakers that “features themes of gender, sexuality, race, feminism, and class.”

Prof. Nathaniel Hendren and Prof. Justin Steil speak with New York Times reporter Jason DeParle about the difficulty in building affordable housing in opportunity-rich neighborhoods. “A lot has changed in American life over the past 50 years, but the hostility to affordable housing has remained surprisingly durable,” Steil explains. “Where you grow up matters a great deal for shaping your life outcomes,” Hendren adds.

Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ’17, SM ’18 founded Bloomer Tech, a health tech startup that aims to improve health care diagnostics for women using medical-grade data to develop new therapies and care models, reports Carol Eisenberg for The Washington Post. Rodriguez and her colleagues "developed, patented and tested flexible washable circuits to turn articles of clothing into devices that can relay reams of information to the wearer’s smartphone,” writes Eisenberg.

Prof. Fiona Murray, associate dean for innovation and inclusion at MIT Sloan, speaks with Bloomberg Law reporter Lauren Castle about her recent study that found female PhD students are 17% less likely to become new inventors compared with their male counterparts. “What we can show is relative to the supply into Ph.D. programs, there’s still just this huge difference in the percentage of women on patents coming out of the labs than there are in the university,” says Murray.