How to Actually Promote Diversity in STEM
In the coming decades, millions of aging Americans will find themselves needing medical services more than ever before—right in the midst of a projected massive physician shortage. The seas will rise, as will the need for scientists to further develop carbon-free energy and engineers to build the infrastructure to protect people and ecosystems from extreme weather events. And as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and data science advance and become more enmeshed in everyday life, the expertise to harness them in an ethical and effective manner will depend on those with advanced training in these fields.
And yet America is nowhere near drawing on all of the American people’s talents to solve these problems. Our future depends on a robust scientific workforce. But racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in these fields, and millions of people who should be making important breakthroughs are instead—whether because of inadequate public education where they live, a lack of resources and support for college and graduate school, discrimination as
