LGBTQ+ in STEM: Fostering Inclusion and Resolving Disparities Using Demographic Data

everything to all of us it is important to know that these efforts do not necessarily address the invisible and intersectional struggles that lgbts to keep us individuals experience and sound which have been challenging to quantify and to address research shows that lgbtq plus stem professionals are more likely to experience career limitations harassment and more negative experiences in the workplace than those working on other fields and in many fields are more likely to leave Academia yet the lack of sexual orientation and gender identity data limits our ability to understand the unique experiences of our lgbtq plus Scholars and problems and can contribute to a sense of invisibility among lgbtq Plus creating a climate of inclusiveness is fundamental to the University's value and Mission in order to create an institution where all stars can Thrive we need better data to understand what is working and what's not and where we can do better to ensure people have the tools and resources to succeed so this is why we're here today John Freeman has made this issue a part of his research and has emerged as a leader in the academy and we're very very proud of it I would like to introduce today's speakers Jed Marsh Vice Provost for institutional research at Princeton Elena Redfield federal policy director at the Williams Institute and UCLA law Travis York director of inclusive 7 ecosystems for equity and diversity known as ice at the American Association for the advancement of Science and of course our moderators John Friedman associate professor of psychology here at Columbia welcome everyone we will also have some pre-recorded comments by Santiago Korea assistant professor of biomedical engineering please scan a QR code on the screen behind me in front of you for the digital program following the event we will post some key takeaways on our site as well I'm excited for this conversation and we'll turn it over to John so that we can begin thank

[Applause] um well thank you so much Dennis and really excited to um to be here and finally have the um the day where this panelist is getting off the ground finally um you know we I've been spending um as Dennis mentioned the past couple years focusing on federal data collection and sort of moving um the US government towards collecting sector education and gender identity which is really just one part of the puzzle and we're going to talk about that I think now there's a variety of you know federal and state policy changes in terms of mandates requirements about section of gender identity really about gender identity I mean kind of an ex-gender category we're going to talk a little bit about that so while those policies the kind of policy landscape is changing there's also of course cultural changes going on and an increasing documentation of a variety of disparities and challenges that LGBT plus people are facing in the stem and in some cases in higher education more generally and so it's sort of at this moment you know all the you know efforts to move the US government towards collecting surging data segmentation and gender identity data is underway and unfortunately making some progress after five years or so now we're in the sort of confusing um state where U.S universities are interested or other kind of Institutions are interested in collecting educated to primary lgbtq plus disparities and often don't know where to begin they don't know you know their sort of knee-jerk reactions that we couldn't possibly ask the sort of invasive information or how could you know there's not even a preordained way or set categories to use so how would you do this and so I think this panel is really crucial for addressing some of those issues and really thinking in a concrete way how could a particular here U.S universities move towards comprehensive section and gender identity data collection to remedy lgbtq plus disparities understand the educational and career trajectories um plus people in stem in higher education and really move towards more inclusive Excellence on academic institutions in the US so really excited about this thank you for coming I'm going to kick it off with Santiago's remarks unfortunately I couldn't be here I guess I just hit the next button for that um

my name is

Colombia and I work on a new modulatory biomaterials surgery a collaboration cancer in our community

so when I actually went to graduate school that was the first time that I had to decide to come out openly um which utility in terms of social studies but something that I haven't uh decided whether or not I was going to do was whether or not I was going to be out in my other house at work and for me one of the things that made this uh for dealing with confidence is about me I'd say about the second to be you know my authentic cells in the workplace was I have to be in my first meeting with my faculty advisor she had a very prominently displayed a nightclub on her desk and that small sign of ownership was supposed to really feel safe and comfortable you know being opening out or [Music]

metrics of productivity from here to Great office URL and so you know for me it was this moment of a really dry anything that I've ever provide me welcome and and basically at work but when I said

in particular uh

is a answer for your faculty they're getting also um this is where I've just been attracting some of my colle agues I just met people who are clear and you know this is I have to say that normally I don't just come across other people who work by the community

you know I think that there's always this question about whether or not you feel safe in a particular environment and so this is something that comes into play every time that you considerable kind of different career opportunities I'm not a warrior choose to go to graduate school where you're choosing to do a post-op where you're choosing to apply the Practical positions this is how those

and there's a number of International conferences and

is in the set um our leadership I want to do

this question of data collection becomes even more importantly you know as a individual who's private Community it's hard to even know who else is part of this community will help you know or some of these events which are shower and Spotlight too I worked in the community and you know that's simple and then if you think about how we're trying to drive systematic change and you know emailing you know who's making up our communities how do you think that we're not knowing if our efforts are actually being changed in terms of representation of practice so in satisfaction [Music] and it's really something that should should be happening always

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uh on down the Grove I think

um so I I'm gonna kick it off with just uh to sort of Layton around for the evidence that does exist on LGBT plus disparities in the stem I'm just as we're all on the same you know um playing field in terms of understanding um what these disparities are and then we're going to move on to our speakers who are going to headline in different ways in terms of at Princeton University in particular and then from the American Association for the attention of Science and them as a leader in change in stem and then also from the UCLA Williams Institute in terms of the sort of legal Frameworks and background on how on how U.S universities in particular we try to revenue

so I'm just going to really quickly give some um some what evidence does exist so some researchers have used um in the absence of actual comprehensive segmentation and gender identity data collection which is the National Science foundation's responsibility which I'll talk about in a moment um researchers have looked at federal employees and scan related and non-stem related agencies which isn't a great way to get the you know stem Workforce in general but if you want to handle on it and when you look at stimulated agencies which would be NASA for example versus non-sterrelated agencies what you see in terms of federal employees because there is there are data from the federal employee Viewpoint survey Anonymous you can estimate that roughly lgbtq plus people are 20 less represented in STEM related agencies and non-stimulated agencies of course that's not really the stem Workforce in terms of non-federal employees and so some Studies have looked at the undergraduate period looking from freshman to senior year so this was done across 70 um 70 or so U.S universities with the higher education Research Institute at UCLA and what they found was that for individuals who declare a stem major and freshman year looking at what happens to them by senior year and and

um I'm talking sorry the wrong finding so let me go into this one so if you look at the rather than that survey that the American Community survey which is sort of the um you know the second best U.S census right the American Community survey you don't have sex orientation or gender identity in that survey but you do have people identifying the same sex or other sex couples so the a lot of caveats you need to right you're only looking at couples but many things that couples were 12 of us selected a complete an undergraduate stem degree um occupation relative to men and other sex couples and the gap size is ambassador's degree was sort of in between the gap size for gender and the gap size for race in terms of black individuals earning fewer centuries and white individuals and women earning first centuries than so it looks like a large Federal population service that you do see um a disparated use deception minority men with sexual minority women this was not observing I'll talk about that in a moment the study I was just mentioning a second ago looking at about 70 or so at U.S universities compared to straight men um so this these this survey did have natural sex rotation measure so it's not just looking at couples and compared to straight men and such minority men were 13 less likely to to stay in a step major from freshman to senior year so basically they switched into a non-seminator and critically though these such minority men ensure greater signs of Engagement and interest in stem in terms of research and lab participation which is a characteristic pattern often seen with racial and ethnic minorities or with women in stem where essentially they're getting more involved in stem getting more involved in lab research they're certainly not uninterested they seem to be quite interested and yet there gets backfiring and they're leaving stuff which suggests that it might be that there's something about the same environment at these institutions that is signaling that it's a place that they don't belong or that they're not being sufficiently engaged and this is not observed for Section I'm already women and I'll talk about that that said um you know a variety of community surveys um and more recently some large um uh larger uh surveys have found that there's all sorts of issues very much as um Santiago was uh mentioning in terms of reporting more negative workplace experiences um you know facing more career barriers harassment professional devaluation not being counted to their colleagues in U.S physics 21 of LGBT plus people reported being excluded intimidated their grass don't work due to being lgbtq plus and these effects are worse some of the surveys that did have the statistical power to divvy this up by race ethnicity or other characteristics that are marginalized in stem and they were worse for lgbtq plus people of color and trans and other gender minority individuals as you might expect because these these things usually are the worst for those who are multiple marginalized

as I mentioned earlier I've been spending a lot of time unfortunately even though you said A Williams Institute how to kick this off with me in 2018 and Triple S has been a major partner who has been crucial but um the National Science Foundation regularly collects um through a variety of surveys information on the stem Workforce I'm looking at college graduates and doctoral recipients but there's probably the most known survey is a surveying around doctorates every year every PhD student across the country in every field not to stem is required by their doctoral institution to take the survey of our doctorates the data go to the National Science Foundation used for these reports that are congressionally mandated that are sent to Congress every two years and then the data from those reports go to NIH Congress and policy makers universities I imagine offices like jeds researchers and scientific organizations so this is the only way that we know you know how many black women are in U.S physics right in terms of PhD students and also um potentially identifiable data are sent back to the doctoral institutions so every Columbia PhD student is going to be taking the survey and then also the data the roster goes back to Colombia unfortunately I'll just end with after a long process but after five years the national Foundation is making progress and currently for the survey of our doctorates they are for the next starting in July they will be asking 20 different kinds of social questions on the full 57 000 or so PhD class right of 2023 or 2024 and then presumably we'll use the information from that to make a final decision on what questions to have but that's just one piece of the puzzle as you're seeing universities play a major role in this and so what we're talking about today is given those disparities you know say a year from now or two years from now we're starting to get Nationwide data on this universities now what can they do to resolve these disparities and so that I'll give it over to Jeff who will focus particularly on what's happening at conference

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so uh good afternoon I'm delighted to be here so wonderful opportunity to come and be on a panel of top-notch colleagues and have a wonderful audience here as well you know conversations like these are really really important we need to talk about the larger picture here and how things work on together today I'm going to try to give the Institute my institutional perspective but I think in general it to institutions of higher ed in general I mean everybody's in a slightly different place and I'll show a better data there as well at the end of the day folks like me we're the folks of children and I the NSF surveys how the applied heads all that stuff that's sort of the bread and butter of the IR field um and and quite quite honestly uh they're getting to be more of a challenge to the data of the collector of the corner of a challenge I mean I think overall you know we're in an interflection Point here the way people talk about themselves and describe themselves as far more nuanced than it ever has been in the past um in terms new terms are emerging seemingly every day I mean three years ago I'd never heard of social I mean that just popped up out of the blue and black box another one um how people in the community interpret these terms and how they identify with those terms is a real challenge I mean it's a I'm working in my campus we passed the students to identify as bodyblock and and or even underrepresented minority and it's the there's not a one-on-one correlation people we call routine whatever represented minority don't see themselves

minorities and why that's important is people need to see themselves in the in the tables and charts that we present you know um Native American indigenous peoples and other popular Christians that are generally invisible and federally there are two or more races Or Hispanic of course and a handful of international type folks that as well um so all this uh and I'm I'll add here you know uh you know stem itself is getting to be a different category altogether I mean I typed out Columbia offers a PhD in economics and even though it's a quantity of the kind of metrics because that's a stem field as far as the homeland security that was an optional practical training classification so this demo umbrella is even evolving as well um

so like I said you know uh institutions are oh you know the question was you know are we shouldn't collect this data it's already coming in coming out one way or the other I mean I think that it's flowing in in huge buckets every year in the common application uh in slate formats we have data on sexual orientation and gender identity racial subcategories and all sorts of stuff that comes into the common half and slate that stays in common habits and enslaved um our our team of the Factor's office has a appointment a voluntary appointment for as general identity there but it stays in the deal so trying to get that institutional perspective it's really you know the the starting days then we want a big data like it's it's like Minnesota out there 10 000 appointments all over so um in in Princeton's not alone here on this as well so uh this is a poll that the College of Miami across community research universities so what I point out here these are new uh sort of personal identity categories that people are putting into their administrative Data Systems or HR systems and student record systems and things like that that list keeps getting longer and longer you can see the Lesser faculty and staff over there as well gender identity non-blenary sex and sexual orientation on both lists um race ethnicity with subcategories is just yeah on this whole the Road Runner 65 different racial and ethnic categories being used across these funding institutions so there's the challenge here is when you're trying to get to those National data sets nobody's asking any questions so we need to come together and have some consolidation and of our understanding we'll ask those questions to meet local needs but to to get the big picture as well so let me switch to Princeton here a little bit um in 2017 we were based on uh this is definitely a student's Grassroots Grassroots effort to say you know we really need to be able to have gender identity on on be able to identify so after a lot of pushing and shelving uh with the big pushes from our graduating School in particular we added this a version of this question into our student Corps so this is where students go sign up for courses or they can check their grades or they can change their home address since 2017 they've been able to go in and update that information and and like I have access to this information students do manage their driver again cases of students who came to campus and they were a man and then they were questioning and then what ultimately became a trans man or gender career and in their Foods background as well so these are Dynamic data which is another important you know this is not a one and done this is something we need to keep working on over time and the most important thing is right here and this is this is this is selfish thing in mind so the more people that fill that out the longer it's going to take Lucy and I to code that you know and go step by step and say how many non-lifeary folks are there so um you end up with something like here so this is actually student data self-reported self-serve they filled it out um so if you see every very non-binary there it's easier to put it back I actually put it in the platform itself

the other thing that ends up happening is that these are older data um

you know not not your business those over time those sorts of nonsense responses have gone and the people there's a certain maturation in people getting comfortable with it identifying with that so on those data I've gotten better so so this here's here's the fruition of this work so this is our our Dei annual report uh this public reports on our website you can go download it all together um so this teal bar here this the point here is it takes time people so you put the question up in front of in front of floats if you if you put quite he put the question in front of people it time for them to be comfortable answering that question and God forbid you ever put a question like that in front of the faculty a lot of our a lot of the demographic octagonist folks have never never seen the the two question raise that Misty question as they were hired before 2010. so the faculty data are notoriously stale in the states so having a self-served interface is uh um is is important there as well it's got to be voluntary it's got to be and selster expecting somebody going to Bridge cards off and stay on genderqueer or faculty member calling it to deal with the fact they say you know I'm not actually tour more races I understand that's not going to happen nobody's going to think of it but if you put it in the same same place where they can get to it on their own when they're recommended to make that disclosure it's a good way to do that so these are just some survey data here and um you know this is from my recent families survey so two points that you know that's 11 that's a lot of different than any kind of piled up there together but what we're trying to do is to actually spell things out so if you're genderqueer you're here and you're not these two logins um you know if we're doing the same thing with race no more urm category it's black Hispanic and Native American Pacific Islander close to the categories you use it's really really important so people can see themselves in the data you can see there are differences within our stem divisions and within the groups of each stem division but it's not a stem issue alone it's a the humanists are in the same old as everybody else so that's a The Intercept provides a really good starting point there but they don't count everybody I mean every year we we only have to report some of our postdocs and the press to survey because they're not stud Fields survey or a doctorate in the survey of doctoral recipients if you have the words they're tracking just the sound

and so the other thing that we're learning here these are undergraduate data is that um you know the larger larger population you have you can actually break these data out um separately um and so that you can you start uncovering uh differences as well within the groups here um the other point on this slide is that since we have gender editing in our student record system I can say with confidence that these data are represented I mean I these these two categories here make up actually over the transgender genderqueer populations over represented by a lot of percentages four percent spot it's three percent of my population overall so it's a I can say that the challenge is though it was section orientation which we don't yet ask in our system is are these data representative I can't tell you they look they look pretty good but I can't tell you and again you can see how how the gay lesbian Community looks different than the past role in the queer questioning and so on there are differences there that we when you wrap and roll out all of it the lgbtqia plus you lose all that resolution so when you've got when you have enough numbers for people to do this one it's really important to take a look at that um one case another case it was at our recent sexual misconduct sir we saw Market differences in the the the presence of section has calmed up amongst our in particular bisexual students they had a higher rate than than bisexual and questioning students where they had a higher weight than the game again you know you show that to the president to you know have to report to the state in New Jersey um you know someday somebody is going to say what about that sexual misconduct survey do we know whether that's representative or not I can't tell you and that that's talking to me the same with that with that certainly the data are representative and we're getting a true picture and I don't wrong but I just can't say that any certainly that the data was and I won't read through this whole Slide the only one I would say that I'll draw your attention to here is you need to start thinking about this now this is hard to do particularly in institutions like ours it takes you know it takes you know limitations it takes it takes a university um once you get come up with getting the the questions figured out how you want to ask them how you want to frame them who's going to have access to the data how they're going to be used then you've got to get it built into your into your systems which resources people that are being the most Progressive here are really a doctor's birthday and who've done Diana recently because they had to figure it out so it just takes time to do that in in the same thing goes federal law I mean it's a the analog for this right now is the statistical protocol of protocol 15 on a race that the 1997. protocol so bone B's looking at that so in 1997 they came up with a two questions format Department of Education implemented that in 2010. so it's time for the federal government so we can all poke them along and not we and play honestly not a week for them to figure it out um that's probably the way we get what we needed us and I'll stop there

[Applause] thank you I'm next I don't have slides so you can give your your visual brain a little bit of a break before our next presenter um I want to I want to thank um uh our our colleagues that are that have hosted us uh thank you to Dennis and uh Dr Mitchell's team who have organized this um event thank you to John and my fellow presenters uh for for really allowing us the chance to talk about some really exciting and important topics and thank you all for being here as well um as Chad said so I also want to just take a moment as the son of a very proud half Choctaw Porter Cherokee father my father I guess I am the son of him I just want to take a moment and give a brief land acknowledgment um to the Muncie and Lenape lands that we are currently gathered on and just pay homage or inspect to the elders which many of us do currently live and work on these on these ancestrals and currently so um I share that because I do think that representation matters and I know I look very white um and uh and move through the world as a as a white man um but it's important for me to acknowledge that I'm almost half native um and um and also that ties into a lot of what we're talking about today around representation um and and why that matters and we've just heard some really great data test cases um for where we do have some um information about um soji data and soji data in stem right sexual orientation and gender identity but also where we don't and um and also the ways in which that data is currently presented or available and what we can and can't do with that so I'd like to kind of expound on that a little bit from from my vantage point um at aaas so Triple A S is the American Association for the advancement of science we're the world's largest multi-disciplinary stem Association and um in my unit I see inclusive stem ecosystems for Equity University which is quite a mouthful we do a lot of work with institutions of higher education across K-12 informal and formal education all the way through industry kind of the entire Continuum of stem education and Workforce Development and in that work oftentimes we're trying to build the capacity of individuals to access and thrive in stem Pathways so doing that through professional development through Awards through fellowships through all sorts of we help we help scientists with disabilities get summer internships which lead to corporate jobs and research jobs but the other way that we do that is we really work with institutions of higher education and Industry leaders and and even government organizations to help them think about how they build their capacity to operate in Equitable and inclusive manners to really build their capacity to change their systems their structures their processes and this is really really for us about barrier removal we within aaas and I seed we're not trying oftentimes to advance a programmatic initiatives that are just built on top of a broken system but actually trying to help all of us look at the systems in which we operate and think about whether those systems are doing what we really want and need them to do and this is one of those spaces where I would argue that the stem Enterprise is woefully inadequate for the work that America needs it to do the talent development and kind of actualization of the of American citizenry in our society isn't optimally performing and so this gives us an opportunity to really think about how we fix that and having data that really shows us how individuals and subgroups are operating or moving or persisting through these pathways are essential to understanding whether that system is working or in many cases where is not working right and there's a few reasons for this so oftentimes I'm sure you all are probably if you think for a moment like why does why does equity and inclusion matter uh to me why does it matter to the organization that I'm at why does it matter to stem you all probably are going to have one maybe even a few kind of arguments that immediately jump to your mind right you might argue it's the moral imperative this is the right thing to do there's a social justice or uh you know kind of um uh Equity argument for why we should be making these systems better you also might think about the um the immense amount of research that we thankfully had come out over the last decade that shows that when we are having not just diverse but diverse and inclusive stem teams Labs classrooms that the science that is not I'm using science here very broadly even as a social scientist myself the science that is done is marketably better we innovate at higher rates we problem solved in more comprehensive and more applicable ways we also uh you know for for those of us that work in higher education are concerned about kind of Grant dollars uh diverse and Innovative research teams Garner grant funding at higher rates they produce more disseminatable and uh more impactful work right so there's an Excellence piece here and I think for us we have to keep in mind that equity and Excellence are inextricably linked and so if we're concerned about having a scientific Enterprise that is as excellent as uh as we need it to be uh that that this argument is broadly applicable not just within soji but broadly around inclusion and equity and that leads to that third argument that I would posit here I think there are more than just these three but that third argument around impact at the end of the day we have a host of critical issues that are facing the world climate change housing and food insecurity systems that do and do not operate and fail constantly endangering the lives of many many people or just making the lives of people less of less high quality and if we are to meet those challenges we have to have a stem ecosystem that provides more and all voices to those challenges what we know right now is that if we can decrease the the yield Gap in the stem Enterprise just by 25 across historically underrepresented groups we would quadruple the stem Enterprises Workforce 25 decrease in achieve you know kind of achievement Gap quadrupling the amount of our stem Workforce and talent the amount of innovation and the amount of impact that that vision of a stem Enterprise uh could could achieve is staggering just staggering so um I I want to kind of ground this thought here around why soji data is so important because of these broader issues which we could apply across the stem Enterprise but I do want to double click which is a tech term I've recently learned I was in a tech meeting two days ago and they kept saying I want to double click on that I was like we're in a room there's no computer I mean I'm sure there's a computer in everybody's pocket but like we're just talking um but if I could double click on this we just had this really great Judd thank you so much for this wonderful case study of your institution and also thank you for being an institution that is actually doing things with your soji data because unfortunately the vast majority of post-secondary Institutions don't do anything with soji data if they even collect it um and there may be ways that they have access to soji data and choose not to even incorporate into their administrative Data Systems that is actually far more than Norm than the opposite um and taboo your institution is taking proactive steps to say let's actually look at this and see what can we know about our students with this data our Scholars with this data how can we see if we're serving them well and that gets to the crucial issue of soji data in this broader context the way that we currently have data we cannot understand the way individuals or even subgroups of individuals move through stem Pathways much less the rest of the institution right so currently there's an executive order that mandates that all institutions of Education must provide equal educational benefit including around sexual minorities and and various genders most institutions of Education in the United States have zero way of knowing whether or not they meet that executive order because they do not have data that allows them to understand longitudinal movement through their systems right and this becomes the really really important issue and we can't wait for federal data sets because right now the Department of Education cannot legally collect student unit record systems thanks to a 2008 ban on student unit record systems by Virginia Fox continuing and major chair in in in Congress right who's leading education committee right so this is a major issue around whether or not we can even live up to the promise of Americans higher of America's higher education system if we don't know who's coming in whether they're getting access whether they're succeeding at equal rates whether they're leaving where in the system they're leaving we have no hope in understanding whether or not we're serving a group equitably or not this is not about promoting above and beyond this is about to Simply understanding do these students fare or do these Scholars fair in our institutions in similar ways and where do they not where can we then introduce resources or interventions to provide equity to remove barriers that may be there that we don't even know right where can we remove barriers that are unknown and unseen to the institution to support access of all people so this is you know I think one of the central questions in front of us I will Echo what Jed said I don't think that we can you know John and I spend a lot of time Elena as well um working around how we can do this federally we spend a lot of time talking to colleagues at census at Department of Education at NSF NIH at Major you know at ostp really trying to advocate for a national solution that can help us do this work much better but we cannot wait for that and right now institutions have a unique opportunity to make tons of Headway in this space and to help them do that I'm happy to share that at AAA yes we have launched um a new study funded by Tiger Global impact Ventures um specifically looking at building the capacity of soji data collection and use in ethical ethical and law attentive ways across post-secondary institutions we'll be putting into the field in literally a month and I think it's now seven days a mixed methods study the first of its kind looking at how institutions collect and use soji data and moreover looking at how institutional leaders perceive their ability to use or collect Social data where do they understand or have concerns about risk to their institutions to their students to their faculty where are they concerned about the safety of collecting this data for the individuals you know we've had a lot of colleagues in you know a whole swath of States Indiana Florida Texas Alabama Georgia right with concerns wanting to make sure that they're serving their students and Scholars um as best they can but concerns about how they do that while keeping those individuals safe in states that that might be more difficult so in this study we're kind of looking at how that is currently done where we can do that and then also partnering with the Williams Institute to do a national and state legal landscape analysis to really understand the the policy and legal ramifications to that work and then we're really excited that at the end of that work not only will we make all of that publicly available and give recommendations but we'll be able to fund the implementation of those recommendations at five institutions across the state so that our goal is before any sort of Eo Change might occur that we actually have institutions doing this work showing proof cases of how this can be done in private ethical safe ways for the benefit of their students and Scholars I'm going to pass it to my colleague Elena thank you foreign

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empirical evidence of self-discrimination and disparities that can be used to change policy so I'm super happy to be here today thank you Regina thank you to uh to Dennis thank you to John especially who's done so much great work in the area to play The Sciences and thank you to the rest of the panel so I'm going to try to breathe through like I don't know like you're the scorup of law

but let me just uh sort of pose a few questions that and we as are sort of entering into this conversation as Travis mentioned the questions that we're asking are there's a lot there's a lot from many questions go to data what does the law say about using so many data and what are some other legal factors and considerations and that is where this gets very interesting right in the moment event so uh so putting aside some of uh some of the considerations that may

data like Travis mentioned um some of the education policy generally cut a lot of some prohibited questions and we're always out there saying do it do it do it so everyone's Channel let's talk a little bit about federal agencies and we're always trying to get them to to increase their collection of civil media um and federal law also does mandate compliance with the certain educational reporting data so for example the educated post-secondary Education data system which is that anything they know has fields for for race um and for gender which is blind characteristics male and female uh and so there are some requirements that's that schools and states have to track these data but not associated specifically um and then there are some States including California I work Williamson space where the state has encouraged collection of the subject data in a higher education so California Education Code 6677 requests that higher education institutions collected so it's not mandatory it's a gentleman's request from the legislature to do so um but then once you have the data and this kind of gets into the weeds again about one of some of my colleagues have been talking about how do you use it and I feel like the bottom line here affirmative action is one that I think we really could spend all day talking about particularly in lineup the pending system core decisions but I'll try to go through some of the other relevant statutory considerations first uh so is

I felt like it was the regular prefer so yeah the federal education does govern how data reflected and used by educational institutions and for people who are over a team uh then uh have some consent to the use of the data and the data can also be used in some ways but out there in the set so de-identified an aggregated data can be shared so private parties can actually request data that would include any demographic categories that reflected by school so if a school we're collecting so you did it could be obtained but it would be de-identified um and the other thing I know about FERPA and this is where I really look forward to digging in some more are there some exceptions to these protections and those exceptions include emergency situations health or safety efficiencies and those are one might think well what in the world would be a health or safety emergency that would require me to disclose the sexual orientation or gender of students but then you just open the news and read what's happening in Florida or if ever in sandus is asking about health related information of prejudice a side note that is not uh really targeting the students themselves as targeting uh the institutions of students would Access Healthcare Act so but it's an important consideration there are obvious exceptions to FERPA that might be worth looking at um and then Title IX of course uh skipping down from Nirvana Title IX is one of the most important protections against sex discrimination in education and Title IX uh was clarified by an Administration uh posted the Bostock positions really big street board case that essentially said uh internal seven employment discrimination cases pedal 7 does cover sexual orientation and gender identity but the reasoning of last time was really simple it's in Camp discriminate based on the sexual organization or gender identity without discriminating against sex and so one might logically think well then anywhere sex discrimination protected so is sexual orientation and general discrimination so the buy Administration issued an executive order I said everyone's going to interpret their rules this way and it seems like very straightforward and yet of course we're seeing tremendous pushback on that and some of that comes in the form of lawsuits including one against Department of Education challenging interpretation of 109 to protect any sexual rotation and gender identification and so it comes bizarlier you may have seen yesterday come at the House of Representatives passed a law that would have changed the definition of federal mind to exclude transgender people uh from Pennsylvania from from China I want to digital Sports and I actually see that as a concession where they're conceiving the Title IX does protect against people now some of them I don't think there

but we also have some other important rules around that data that I thought we just mentioned including um that institutions that receive federal funding are subject to uh various restrictions against race discrimination and um and uh and also gender discrimination so title six person the first discrimination um and uh Title VII of course it's worth mentioning two because employees are also part of the conversation so people who are LGBT employees also have protections and of course there's a lot we could say about the interplay of title I feel seven in terms of employment law but we'll say that for later um so last thing I want to say and I've sort of try to wrap up soon is that uh affirmative action right which historically has come out around initiatives to address historical racism um has been under Target for years and years and years and has been gradually narrow so there's one particular category where um the court has said you can use race as a consideration which is in the category increasing diversity of a student body and employment as well but so in the category of educational institutions this is what been longstanding and has been reaffirmed in 2003 it was reaffirmed in 2014 and has an ends now currently have been a case where uh any data your decision to get a decision from them which we expect will end into consideration of phrases as a as a constitutional considerations they don't say you can build versus Airways I think it'll be narrative not ended but that's me being probably very optimistic let's go for optimism

so

um I'll just say that LGBT issues actually raise a sort of different question first of all because although um one more thing because addressing and racism is so deeply rooted in American society that you know there is such a strong compelling need to address racism and traditional institutions um and in student bodies particularly and that is true but the court has said basically if we are going to look with with skepticism at a category or a class we're going to do it both ways so if we are trying to help you or if we're trying to harm you with the same treatment and that is the problem right is that it kind of creates a really difficult it's what's called Sir scrutiny for uh for race-based classifications LGBT discrimination is actually subject to a lower standard so while on the one hand it means that it permits more discrimination in general it also means that it might be treated with less scrutiny in an attempt to support a referral to be key students for example so we can get into all of that later if we have time but I want to make one last point which is that we can't ignore the world we're living in where there are as of um this morning 400 commissioning 467 anti-elig deals in state legislatures so many of those bills do relate to the students do you relate to educational institutions and so when we're going to you know we have to keep in mind how that's how that data will be used or whether someone who discloses it has those Protections in place on a state level in addition to the federal level so again I hope we get a chance of doing more of these things in detail that I will see to my monitor

what a master class in law yeah it was amazing um well thank you to these Stellar speakers who dished it a tour de force on all aspects of this issue extremely uh you know educational and and so valuable so thank you again for being here um there's so much we could talk about but um you know I think one um is is I mean it seems that legally it is you know as we think about U.S universities and we put you know federal agencies aside for a moment um there's a common message I'm hearing which obviously you know resonates with me of let's you know let's not wait for federal agencies because they're they're they're interesting and sort of what how they move towards this and um let's get moving with us universities and it seems that legally um that shouldn't necessarily be a problem per se Princeton is already collecting expanded gender you know gender identity information I think it's interesting that you know Princeton is um well it sounds like you know with gender identity in in more of the kind of data Collections and sex orientation with sort of more the anonymous ones it sounds like they're the more kind of community-based ones if I'm understanding it right um and this certainly follows with the National Science Foundation the National Science Foundation has been much more comfortable and made much more Headway on gender identity they're currently including it in the 2023 National survey of college graduates um they are much more reluctant to collect sat orientation data and part of that I think has to do with a knee-jerk response about privacy and confidentiality and I think that's shared by the general public or of course those who would be collecting data from students employees and you know in terms of the common refrain of how could you possibly ask sex orientation that's invasive that's personal information but with the federal government which is what I've used Advocate this to the federal government there's very clear laws in terms of the Privacy Act of 1974 the 2018 reauthorization of the confidential information protection and statistical efficiency act which right so it's safeguards and requires federal agencies to make sure that this the data are not identifiable they go through Great Links to make sure that now with U.S University is I'm much less familiar with the privacy and confidentiality requirements right it's it's intuitive that okay if Colombia or Princeton were to collect you know in HR records so it's able to be you know tabulated in that way sex orientation and gender identity there's an obvious concern of who as you mentioned who who has access to the data who could the data be disclosed in an unintentional way what would what what what's the ramifications of that you know legally or obviously ethically so I think one question is um you know how what are the sort of um you know perceived challenges in in or the actual challenges in moving U.S universities staff or individuals who would violate the confidentiality of census data and they're very rigorous protocols for protecting those data which is one big piece of that you know and then that messaging was also um some some of that messaging is important to thinking about the citizenship questions even if they added it it would still be a violation and they'd have to at least one more step of of policy they have to take if they wanted to be that directly sinister yeah so I'll just say a couple things that for my institution first just against University policy to take in retaliatory actions and so you know all the sanctions that go with that but the thing is you know who has access to the data is pretty restricted I mean so if it's going to be faculty facing or whatnot we don't ask pronouns yet but pronouns make sense their gender identity doesn't there's gender identities for folks like me that are trying to do statistical analysis and we spend a lot of time um trying to reach it so we I do a lot of work with Department climate surveys and it's you know we have these huge demographic things and and I end up coming up with you know two categories just because I you can add categories together in these column headings that are like the three paragraphs long so people can see themselves but you try to get the numbers you know the numbers so that people aren't going to be out and so that's that kind of work and trust is critical

um I'll also add the it's interesting at least with um federal agencies and the federal government because you know part the this Federal statistical system you know the agencies uh I mean census is its own thing but you know the agencies like National Science Foundation has a federal statistical agency inside of it that actually administers the surveys and they're all supposed to coordinate with the U.S Office of Management a budget and be independent and that's one of the benefits of that is during the Trump Administration when they're sort of okay we want you to get the citizenship question it's sort of there's this political um you know it's it's um protected from political interference but one of the that Independence can also there are some costs to that have sort of they're kind of on their own and the own you know idiosyncratic decision making that happens at all these Federal statistical agencies can sort of impede the progress of some of the movement right so um when there's clear disparities evidence and you know soji would like to be collected but they're sort of protected but sort of it's an interesting protection though there you know that um at least with the federal government but with U.S universities that's not really um there's not that kind of you know independent but it all depends on what's happening at the institution of course

um any other questions one more question [Music]

all right I guess

you're like um

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there is a um a bit of a more critical Consciousness that we just have to have like if you we have I don't know implicitly happens that's being broke many very different journals and I guess I just want to ask to you all like to understand um in your personal and professional experience what do you think it's the value of um like fighting for like people representation specifically for this group and then

uh I'll start um and then let my colleagues answer if they wish um so I'm actually going to point to a recent Nobel Prize winner Carolyn bertozzi who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry just this last year and in her acceptance speech she talked about how every member of her lab are queer uh including herself um like work uh and uh she went on to talk about how the science that she was getting a Nobel Prize for would not have been possible except for the queer identities of her lab members and their abilities to see the world in different spaces and to bring their authentic perspectives in to bear on the science and that that was um you know not as so many like to proclaim a bias but in fact that it was a methodological lens that allowed them to approach problems in different ways and make Headway where there hadn't been before um and she said all of that way more eloquently than me um and so I just point to this incredible rock star who I also appreciate that in the probably you know what I would say the greatest achievement one can have as a scientist is also directly giving gratitude and a shining a spotlight on all of the full research team that she works with which is also an example of mentorship which is why Triple S gave her the lifetime mentorship award before she had the novel face the Nobel Prize like literally months beforehand that was amazing so I'll just point to that incredible pillar within our community

um yeah I can add that um I mean I I think because I'm used to this advocacy working now I've shifted from the sort of equity arguments to the sort of Max American Workforce that are just incredibly poorly understood so I think that that really has you know I in terms of the personal journey I mean I publish a piece in nature in 2018 that kind of you know unleashes some of the the challenges I faced and even as read as CIS white gay man where I'm relatively privileged right in terms of I have my you know gay identity but um you know other things and even with you know that there's all sorts of challenges and I heard once I got tenure from you know Junior faculty members and from graduate students and it's really a graduate student on who I met who's in sort of animal Neuroscience who um who posted something on Twitter about an experience that sort of and I was just about to get tenure and that is what catapulted me into I was so fed up with sort of the the challenges that people are facing but it's I think it's a combination of both you know it's a it's these challenges and then when I looked at the data it's okay there's clear disparities but not really the kind it's not part of the stem um stem diversity sort of ecosystem machine however you want to think about that in terms of the kind of you know Dei Dei conversations and often lgbtq plus is left out not only you know only for the there's not really data institutions don't know how to deal with it and it's that sort of um you know that Duality I think that there's all these issues but then institutions who are wanting to do better right don't know where to begin and not really makes me passionate I think about the issue it's sort of that something really needs to change right so that's sort of my personal background I guess online yeah go ahead please well what I was going to say is very related um so hopefully I'll be really quick but we did a study called the access to higher education survey and we uh did a it was all of people who had completed or participated in College Community College four-year College Community College and graduate programs and we published a bunch of survey a bunch of studies from the survey uh that had really striking findings and one of those findings was around covering or the idea like you don't tell people that you're lgbtq and they were those real disparities that a lot of people had um not didn't want to talk about being lgbtq in their educational environment um but we also found that a third of trans people experience bullying and reported unfair treatment more than half of trans people said their mental health was not good um and so fewer lgbtq people of color are completed both post-secondary degrees uh than the white counterparts and twice as many lgbtq people of color said that unfair treatment was a barrier to success in higher education and so the the findings for that survey really I think emphasize also kind of ties back to what the Santiago said in the beginning of this conversation is about the kinds of day-to-day experiences or the kinds of things that can be illuminated when we have more of this information and and so having collecting these data really does help give us tools to address those kind of day-to-day experiences and you know the frame of this for us in many regards has come out of the the student experience you know it's basically well we look at anxiety depression thriving all those really critical measures looking at mental health and you'll have the population of students who are in greater risk and so the follow-up question is who are they so you have to have these data to really dig in there to see is it uh you know is are the the genderqueer students more likely to be there what about the intersectionalities so you have to have that complete data set to really unpack what's going on there and and you know following up what you said you know the the size of the the lgbtqia population my campus it's 20 25 of my graduate students 20 of my undergrads and 10 of my faculty ten year check tenure track faculty or lgbtqia clause self-identified I mean it's it's not a small group of folks on campus I know for me too I'll just kind of say personally I didn't come out until I was 25 and moving into my PhD program I worked in higher education prior to that and at the institution I worked at prior when I had come to grips with being gay I knew that if I came out while I was working at the college that I was working at prior to Penn State I would have been fired as a religious uh religious institution and I would have been fired I'd seen it happen to other folks and so uh and and also had to struggle through a narrative where I couldn't be a religious person and be queer which was completely counter-cultural to an indigenous frame of mind which in fact holds those two things as sacred together so um uh I think the darkest times in my personal life thus far were in my Master's and working as an early career professional and not not under not having World deals around me or not knowing how I could Traverse the world and support other students while having this huge crisis of Consciousness myself and having really feeling like I was completely isolated I I now know there were actually a whole bunch of queer people around me that I just had no idea of um and so that's you know why these stories of representation and understanding are so crucial and life in depth for so many students which talked to anybody who works in student affairs and you will hear those stories

um well thank you again panelists for being here um so um valuable and I learned a lot and I hope you all can join us in the lobby for a reception now do you want to talk yes

leadership and putting his hands together

joining us today I'm a special thanks again

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