Anti-racist interventions to transform ecology, evolution and conservation biology departments

This article outlines evidence-based interventions for addressing systemic racism in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology departments through changes to teaching, research, and institutional structures.

Introduction

This article argues that ecology, evolution, and conservation biology (EECB) departments must move beyond diversity and inclusion efforts to actively implement antiracist practices. They introduce a framework for departments to combat systemic racism that focuses on teaching, research groups, and departmental structures. Their approach links historical patterns of exclusion with current inequities and offers concrete, evidence-based solutions to help institutions move toward sustainable change.

Persistent racial and ethnic inequities across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields underscore the urgency of this study, and these issues are especially pronounced in EECB. Although many departments express commitments to diversity, few have addressed the historic and structural barriers that continue to marginalize Black, Indigenous, and people of color. This article provides a guide for translating antiracist commitments into academic practices by linking historical context, systemic patterns, and targeted interventions.

The authors include Melissa R. Cronin, Suzanne H. Alonzo, Stephanie K. Adamczak, D. Nevé Baker, Roxanne S. Beltran, Abraham L. Borker, Arina B. Favilla, Remy Gatins, Laura C. Goetz, Nicole Hack, Julia G. Harenčár, Elizabeth A. Howard, Matthew C. Kustra, Rossana Maguiña, Lourdes Martinez-Estevez, Rita S. Mehta, Ingrid M. Parker, Kyle Reid, May B. Roberts, Sabrina B. Shirazi, Theresa-Anne M. Tatom-Naecker, Kelley M. Voss, Ellen Willis-Norton, Bee Vadakan, Ana M. Valenzuela-Toro, and Erika S. Zavaleta. All authors were affiliated with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz at the time of publication.

Methods and Findings

Historical legacies of racism in EECB are described as shaping patterns of exclusion today. The authors explain that early scientific practices helped normalize racial hierarchies and the marginalization of non-Western knowledge. Some examples include human classification systems in taxonomy and extractive fieldwork conducted in colonized regions. These foundations continue to influence the field today through professional norms, including whose expertise is considered credible, what counts as legitimate knowledge, and which communities are included in research and leadership.

To confront these structural inequities, the authors propose antiracist interventions across three academic spaces: classrooms, laboratories, and departments. Each intervention is evidence-based and cites past studies, existing literature, and/or historical analysis.

Effective Interventions in Teaching:

• Including diversity statements on course syllabi;
• Explicitly discussing departmental antiracist values on the first day of class;
• Providing protocols for anonymous reporting of hate or bias;
• Acknowledging the value of diversifying STEM;
• Avoiding lecture-only courses with high-stakes exams, which disproportionately exclude students of color from STEM;
• Embracing ‘cohesive learning communities and active learning’, where students can interact with each other instead of only learning from lecture;
• Including antiracist elements in the curricula, ensuring it reflects the field’s histories of racism, colonialism, and displacement in connection with immediate societal issues today; and
• Highlighting past and present work by scientists of color.

Effective Interventions in Laboratories and Research Groups:

• Focusing on prospective student potential as well as past achievement when recruiting;
• Openly discussing and committing to promote antiracism;
• Establishing a code of conduct outlining community norms;
• Growing a diverse network of mentors for laboratory members at various professional levels; and
• Developing equitable practices for data collection, research, and publication (see original article for specific recommendations).

Effective Interventions in Departments

• Outlining a clear statement on equity, including a community commitment and concrete actions;
• Fostering community growth through, for example, hosting forums, providing trainings on bystander interventions, or creating systems to report bias;
• Ensuring social events are open to professionals of all levels;
• Sparking discussions about race in academia;
• Offering well-designed, evidence-based interactive trainings on professional skills;
• Committing to antiracism in hiring and promotion processes (see original article for specific recommendations);
• Showcasing the work of scientists of color in seminars or reading groups; and
• Creating peer-to-peer mentoring systems.

Sustained change, according to the authors, requires both continuous evaluation and collective commitment. They emphasize that reimagining everyday practices and broader institutional structures is necessary to dismantle the systemic barriers that persist in EECB fields.

See the original article for additional interventions within and beyond the department.

Conclusions

Departments in EECB are encouraged to adopt structural, curriculum, and cultural changes to address systemic racism across classrooms, laboratories, and broader settings.

Isolated diversity initiatives are not sufficient to address inequities. Meaningful change requires acknowledging how historical exclusion shapes present academic practices and reworking the structures that sustain racial disparities.

By offering a detailed set of interventions, the article contributes to the field of antiracist practice. Policy implications include the need for universities to recognize and reward antiracist work across teaching, research, and service, and to provide material support for sustained structural change. Recommendations aim to increase representation while changing the conditions that have historically excluded Black, Indigenous, and other people of color from leadership roles in science.