Fear, fuel, and fire!: Black STEM doctoral students’ career decisions during the Trump presidency

Abstract

President Trump’s education policies continue to marginalize Black STEM students at the highest levels of education. Responding to a survey on their racialized educational experiences and future career trajectories, an ethnically diverse group of Black STEM doctoral students expressed anxiety about trying to pursue a STEM career during the Trump presidency. Their responses reflected their heightened sense of urgency to be change agents for racial justice in both the STEM arena and the wider society. These survey findings demonstrate that the Trump administration has created anxiety among minoritized people about pursuing STEM careers and triggered an activist spirit in this group of future STEM PhDs. In this paper, I discuss the ways the racist ideologies, practices, and policies of the Trump administration are impairing scientific innovation and increasing activism among Black STEMers. The findings reveal a vital need to continue discussing the consequences of the Trump administration’s assault on Blacks in the STEM disciplines.

Keywords:

• Trump administration
• Black doctoral students
• STEM education
• career trajectories
• Black STEM Intellectual Thought

Acknowledgment

I express my sincere gratitude to Philip J. Pettis, LMSW, MA, and a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, for his feedback on multiple iterations of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 But beyond such academics lies a whole world of active critical Black scholars, fondly called organic intellectuals, who were not formally trained in traditional institutions of higher education but who had a critical understanding of their world and led Black liberation efforts in their communities (e.g., Sadie Roberts-Joseph, founder of the Baton Rouge Odell S. Williams Now & Then Museum of African-American History and Community Against Drugs and Violence; activist Tamar Manasseh, founder of Mothers Against Senseless Killings; Manning, 2000).

2 Fields in which no Black students were awarded a doctoral degree in 2017 include soil sciences, agricultural sciences, planet genetics, wildlife biology, medical physics, radiological sciences, atmospheric physics, meteorology, oceanography, chemical and physical sciences, astronomy and astrophysics, plasma high-temperature physics, geometry, geometric analysis, logic, topology/foundations, number theory, robotics, and structural engineering.

3 American Society for Engineering Education had a different sample size for graduate enrollment and faculty for engineering schools.

4 See https://climate.law.columbia.edu/Silencing-Science-Tracker.

5 The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as one that has “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2020).” Those characteristics include race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

6 These comments are reminiscent of W. E. B. Du Bois’s self-identified racial awakening, which occurred in 1899, and his need to connect his research to racial justice. When Du Bois learned that Sam Hose, a Black man who had killed his employer in self-defense, had been burned alive by a lynch mob, he was shaken by the realization that “one could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered and starved” (Mullen, 2007, p.85). The death of Mr. Hose forced Du Bois to admit that the type of scientific work he was engaged in would need to be complemented with social struggle and the liberation of Black people (Du Bois, 1935).

7 These included the National Society of Black Engineers, American Education Research Association, American Society of Engineering Education, Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity, Critical Race Studies in Education, Tapia, Grace Hopper Celebration, and the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ebony McGee

EbonyMcGee is a professor of diversity and STEM education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, she investigate what it means to be racially marginalized while minoritized in the context of learning and achieving in STEM higher education and in the STEM professions. Her book is Black, Brown, Bruised: How Racialized STEM Education Stifles Innovation: https://www.hepg.org/hep-home/books/black,-brown,-bruised#