Graduate Student Seminar

October 04, 2024

12:45 p.m. ET

Wean Hall 7500

Deconstructing Meritocracy: Unpacking Attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts occupy a more prominent place than ever before, in society at large and in higher education. This is especially true in the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), whose makeup continues to be vastly out-of-proportion with the American population. The past few years have also witnessed a sharp rise in ideological attacks on DEI programs, originating from state legislatures and courts in some cases but also from within the STEM disciplines themselves. This talk will analyze the idea that academic STEM disciplines are truly meritocratic, along with the related notion that “treating everyone the same” is a solution to diversity problems in STEM education. Although my positions are ultimately ideological, they are carefully informed by data.

John M. Herbert, Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry, The Ohio State University

Herbert received a B.Sc. degree summa cum laude from Kansas State University in 1998 and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 2003. He was a NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and has been at Ohio State since 2006, rising to the rank of Professor in 2014. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, in 2009), the American Chemical Society (ACS) Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in Computational Chemistry (2010), the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2011), the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry A Lectureship Award (2014), and the Edward W. Morley Medal from the ACS Cleveland Section (2020). He is also a past recipient of fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2010) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2016).

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