astroDJC Mission Statement

What is Diversity Journal Club?

Diversity Journal Club (DJC) is a series of presentations by students, faculty and staff at academic institutions on inclusion and diversity in astronomy (or physics or other STEM fields). As scientists, our expertise in searching research literature rarely gets applied outside of our fields, but there is a broad body of literature on the strengths and faults of the community of scientists which we should learn from. DJC is an effort to investigate, discuss and understand the state and evolution of the experiences of underrepresented minorities in our community.

What is astroDJC?

We want to lower the barrier to finding and interpreting resources that might help astronomers to be more educated and effective allies to their underrepresented minority colleagues. Each astroDJC post will be a small attempt to close the loop – to inform ourselves about the shortcomings of our community's culture so that we may engage in positive change.

astroDJC is a collection of educational resources on inclusion and diversity for astronomers to use as the seeds of Diversity Journal Club presentations.

Each post to astroDJC will contain at least one link to a resource on matters of inclusion and diversity in STEM, including but not limited to journal articles, primary-source accounts by underrepresented minorities, or other blog posts and print articles. The link will be accompanied by a very brief (one paragraph) summary on the key points of the resource to whet the appetite of potential DJC presenters. Each link will also be accompanied by few complementary discussion questions that will challenge DJC audiences to confront their own biases and prejudices, and to provoke frank and critical discussion of the topic.