Unlearning Racism in Geoscience

EAS is participating in URGE 2021

Global awareness of systemic racism in our society reached the forefront of social activism following the death of George Floyd and the international movement that followed. The need for social reform and education about racism has particularly impacted the geoscience community where, not only is geoscience the least diverse of the STEM fields, but our discipline has shown no relative growth in diversity over the last 40 years (Bernard and Cooperdock, 2018. No progress on diversity in 40 years, Nature Geoscience, 11, 292-295). Hence, in 2020 the international geoscience community has been discussing and learning about racism through numerous platforms. The Earth and Atmospheric Science department at the University of Alberta is proud to be joining this movement to become actively anti-racist and spur a change towards diversifying the geosciences. As such, we are participating in URGE (Unlearning Racism in Geoscience) a structured biweekly reading and discussion group that is taking place on the international stage. More info can be found on the URGE website: https://urgeoscience.org/