The 91探花 today announced an initiative to further the UW鈥檚 goals for diversity, equity and inclusion, including $5 million in funding for faculty hiring in the next two years. The initiative builds upon and supports efforts University wide and aims to accelerate and benchmark progress on an annual basis.

Efforts to recruit, welcome and retain a diverse faculty are central to the UW鈥檚 public mission to build a more equitable and just society for everyone, administrators said.

Students benefit from a university with faculty members whose knowledge and understanding represent the diversity of Washington state, as do the people and communities that benefit from the UW鈥檚 research and scholarship. Additionally, this signals to historically-marginalized students, especially underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities, that teaching and research careers are accessible, achievable and encouraged.

鈥淲e know that the 91探花must better reflect the communities we serve, which requires short- and long-term changes to make our University a place where faculty from diverse backgrounds feel they belong,鈥� said 91探花Provost Mark Richards. 鈥淭he University鈥檚 academic leadership, including the Board of Deans and Chancellors, are determined to change this status quo for this generation of students, and for those to come.鈥�

Since 2015, the UW鈥檚 Race and Equity Initiative has focused on transforming institutional policies and practices, and accelerating systemic change. A significant focus of this work 鈥� and one of the goals of the Diversity Blueprint developed in 2010 鈥� has been recruiting faculty who will advance diversity, equity and inclusion through their teaching, research and service.

鈥淢any academic units have made some progress, but we have a long way to go, including ensuring that the structural conditions that contribute to racial inequities are addressed at the unit and university-wide level so that BIPOC faculty can thrive and be successful,鈥� Richards said.

Based on an examination of best practices across the nation, in consultation with the members of the Race & Equity Steering Committee and Faculty Senate leadership, as well as deans and administrators, and consistent with Regent Policy 33, the 91探花will over the next two years:

• Designate $3 million in bridge funding in this fiscal year 2021, and another $2 million in fiscal year 2022, to support recruitment of faculty to the Seattle campus whose research, teaching, mentoring, service and outreach will enhance the UW鈥檚 diversity mission and goals for equity and inclusion.
• Redirect existing central funds for the recruitment and retention of faculty to focus specifically upon faculty who will advance the campus鈥� goals for diversity, equity and inclusion.
• Require that all faculty searches include statements from candidates describing their past and planned contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion.
• Request聽that deans of all schools and colleges examine whether聽hiring, reappointment and promotion criteria for faculty can be enhanced to support diversity, equity and inclusion within their units.
• Host a new national program, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the Washington Research Foundation, to identify outstanding Ph.D. students and post-doctoral fellows from underrepresented groups, and support them as they develop their ambitions and qualifications to become STEM faculty at research universities, including the UW.

鈥淩esearch is at its most creative and robust when researchers with diverse backgrounds and perspectives interact,鈥� said Mary Lidstrom, vice provost for research. 鈥淭his initiative will continue efforts to support diversity, equity and inclusion in research, enhancing the research enterprise for all.鈥�

Similar initiatives are in progress at 91探花Bothell and 91探花Tacoma. 91探花Tacoma will focus on hiring and supporting clusters of faculty who have expertise and focus on diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice issues. 91探花Bothell leadership has designated bridge funding for the next two years to help departments recruit faculty who advance diversity.

鈥淔aculty Senate leadership prioritizes issues of racial justice and understands the importance of making a concerted effort to recruit and support faculty who advance diversity,鈥� said Robin Angotti, chair of the Faculty Senate and a professor of mathematics at 91探花Bothell. 鈥淲e look forward to working closely with administration to make measurable advances in these areas.鈥�

Additionally, the provost has tasked Ed Taylor, vice provost of Undergraduate Academic Affairs, to convene a sub-group of the Race & Equity Steering Committee, to take this work to the next level over the coming year. This group鈥檚 work will include, but will not be limited to, addressing several long-term goals:

• Improve the on-boarding process for new faculty, including welcoming, orientation, community building and mentoring that meets the needs of faculty from under-represented backgrounds.
• Enhance the depth and availability of and familiarity with data regarding faculty demographics.
• Develop a systematic faculty exit interview process to identify and address climate issues that have prompted some faculty to leave the UW.
• Increase fundraising efforts that support the University,聽schools and colleges聽as they聽create聽endowments to recruit and retain faculty who contribute to the UW鈥檚 diversity, equity and inclusion goals; recruit聽early career scholars who may be developed and聽retained聽to tenure-track faculty positions; and聽fund research and scholarship in support of campus diversity, equity and inclusion goals, among other efforts.

The UW鈥檚 Race & Equity Steering Committee will update President Ana Mari Cauce and Provost Richards in November on the collective successes and failures of these initial efforts and address the following questions: How significantly have we moved the needle in 2021? How can we do better? And what more needs to be done?

鈥淚 have been impressed, during these most difficult pandemic times, with the determination and actions of our faculty and campus leaders to attract faculty who advance our diversity, equity and inclusion goals,鈥� Richards said. 鈥淭he pandemic itself has made the urgency of this mission all the more clear by exposing the stark inequities that continue to divide our nation and cause so much pain to so many in our communities.鈥�

Children鈥檚 knowledge and use of race and gender labels have been well-explored by researchers, but how kids think about their own identities in those contexts, especially before adolescence, is less clear.

A new from the 91探花 provides a rare glimpse into how children perceive their social identities in middle childhood. The research found that children age 7 to 12 rate gender as more important than race 鈥� and that their perceptions of both are woven together with personal and societal influences.

“Kids are thinking about race and gender, and not just in terms of being able to identify with these social categories, but also what they mean and why they matter,” said lead author , a former postdoctoral fellow at the UW鈥檚 (I-LABS) who is now an assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University.

, co-director of I-LABS and co-author on the paper, said, “Children are bombarded by messages about race, gender and social stereotypes. These implicit and explicit messages rapidly influence their self-concepts and aspirations.

“We were able to catch a glimpse of how culture influences children at a tender time in their lives. Kids talk about race and gender in different ways as early as age 7.”

Published online last month in the journal , the research involved interviews with 222 children in grades two through six at three racially diverse public schools in Tacoma, Washington. None of the schools had more than 50 percent of one racial group, and more than 75 percent of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

The children were first shown cards with different identity labels 鈥� boy, girl, son, daughter, student, Asian, Hispanic, Black, White and athlete 鈥� and asked to place each card in a “me” pile if the card described them or in a “not me” pile if it did not.

Children were then asked to rank the “me” cards by importance, and then to separately rate how important racial and gender identities were to them on a three-point scale 鈥� either “not much,” “a little bit” or “a lot.” The rankings were done separately so children could rate race and gender as equally important.

The children were then asked two open-ended questions 鈥� “what does it mean to be a (boy/girl)”? and “what does it mean to be (Black/White/Mixed)”? All 222 responses to each question were then sorted into five broad categories that reflect the wider meaning behind these responses, including physical appearance, inequality and group difference, equality or sameness, family, and pride and positive traits. The codes were not mutually exclusive, so a single response might reference multiple topics.

The responses, which Rogers collected over the course of a year spent in the schools, found that:

• Of the five social identities represented in the “me/not me” test (gender, race, family, student and athlete), family 鈥� being a son or daughter 鈥� was on average the most important to children
• Being a student was ranked second, followed by gender, then athlete
• Race was most consistently selected last, as the least important identity
• Black and Mixed-Race children ranked race as more important than White children
• In response to the open-ended questions, Black and Mixed-Race children mentioned racial pride much more often than White children did
• Family identity was more important to girls than boys
• Boys ranked being an athlete higher than girls did, and Black boys ranked it significantly higher than did all other children
• The meanings children ascribed to gender identity tended to emphasize inequality and group differences, while meanings of race emphasized physical appearance and equality
• There was no difference between boys and girls about how important gender was, but girls mentioned physical appearance as part of their gender identity much more often than boys
• Girls made up 77 percent of the references to physical appearance when defining what gender means (for example, 鈥淚 think [being a girl] means glam. Like looking glamorous and pretty for everyone.鈥�)

About half of Black and Mixed-Race children ranked race as “a lot” or a “little” important, while 89 percent of White children considered race a “not important” part of their identity. That gap is telling, Rogers said, particularly given that the schools involved are highly diverse.

“In some ways, it suggests that White kids and kids of color are navigating very different worlds when it comes to race and they鈥檙e thinking about race in very different terms,” said Rogers. “Most White kids would say [race] is not important, it doesn鈥檛 matter, but kids of color would say, 鈥榊es, race does matter to me.鈥�”

In the open-ended question about racial identity, 42 percent of responses that defined the meaning of race through values of equality or humanism came from White children (for example, “I believe race doesn鈥檛 matter at all. It just matters about who you are.”). By contrast, just one-quarter of Black and Mixed-Race children mentioned equality when talking about race.

While the emphasis on equity among White children may seem encouraging, Rogers said some White children interviewed were reluctant to broach the subject of race. When asked what it meant to be White, she recalled, one White third-grader refused to talk about it.

“The idea that talking about race is taboo was prevalent,” she said. “Surprisingly, that is not uncommon in diverse schools. The narrative of multiculturalism is really stressed in such a way that everybody鈥檚 the same and differences are minimized.”

“That typically derives from the good motivation of encouraging kids to treat each other respect and not allowing discrimination to occur,” Rogers said. “But it might also communicate racial silence, that race is something that鈥檚 not OK to talk about.”

By contrast, she said, it makes sense that children view gender as more important than race, since gender differences are openly discussed, accepted and celebrated in the broader society, for better or worse.

“Kids are sorted by girls and boys all the time,” she said. “It would be egregious to do such a thing based on race today. There is a way we premeditate gender divisions and accept them as fact. Some kids push back on that, but it means there is a space to talk about it, that it鈥檚 not a taboo conversation.”

The research dovetails with two online developed by Rogers and the I-LABS team focused on how children learn about race and how parents and teachers can talk with them about race in a helpful way. The modules are free and come with discussion guides intended to facilitate personal reflections and group conversations.

“As parents, we teach values through the conversations we have with our children,” Meltzoff said. “We鈥檙e hoping that these modules can help enrich parent-child talk about socially sensitive issues.”

Overall, Rogers said, the study reinforces the need to better understand how multiple factors, from school culture to societal stereotypes, influence the formation of children鈥檚 social identities.

“The issue is not that we鈥檙e different. It鈥檚 in the hierarchy and the value that鈥檚 placed on those differences,” Rogers said. “We really need more data and understanding of which messages promote social justice and equity, and which promote blindness, avoidance and silence.”

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (SMA-1303753) and the Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education.

For more information, contact Rogers at onnie.rogers@northwestern.edu or 847-467-1331.

is the Pollock Professor of English, now emeritus, at the 91探花. He is the author of 21 books over a 50-year career and the recipient of numerous other awards and honorary degrees.

Johnson has three new books out: “,” “” and “.”

“The Words and Wisdom of Charles Johnson” reflects a year of questions posed to you by poet and teacher and ranges across more than 600 pages. How did this unusual collaboration come about?

CJ: At the beginning of 2011, Ethelbert approached me with a proposal to ask me questions covering a wide range of topics for an entire year. He asked me 400, and of those I answered 218, often at length in the form of mini-essays on virtually every subject under the sun 鈥� writing craft; literature black and white; Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism; Western philosophy; cartooning and the visual arts; the martial arts; the film work I did for 20 years for PBS and Hollywood studios; the practice of meditation; the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr.; my personal life and habits 鈥� you name it.

For me, it was a real brain dump. There’s no book like this anywhere in world literature 鈥� a very candid, detailed look into a writer’s mind and heart and journey through this life. It was a fascinating challenge for both of us. Ethelbert had to read all my novels, stories, essays, book prefaces and introductions, and because he is an arts advocate and chairs a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., the Institute for Policy Studies, many of his questions have a political flavor. Really, the 672-page “Words and Wisdom” is as much his book as it is mine.

You started as a cartoonist. Now you have returned to cartoon illustration for the “Adventures of Emery Jones, Boy Wonder” series that you co-write with your daughter, artist . The second of these books, “The Hard Problem” is now available. What was it like to draw professionally again?

CJ: Being able to draw professionally again for publication has been a blessing for me. Between 1965 (when I was 17) and 1972, I worked intensely as a professional illustrator and cartoonist, publishing thousands of drawings as a college undergraduate, everything from comic strips to panel cartoons and editorial cartoons. My work appeared in the black press (Black World, Jet, Ebony), The Chicago Tribune, a newspaper in southern Illinois, and really everywhere I could find.

I also published two books, “” (1970) and “Half-Past Nation-Time” (1972), and I did one of the early how-to-draw TV shows, “Charlie’s Pad” (1970), which ran on PBS stations all over the country. But when I transitioned into working on my Ph.D. in philosophy in the early ’70s, then teaching in an English department for 33 years, those fields and the book world never gave me an opportunity to draw, which was my first love since childhood.

When my daughter and I began “” in 2012, I hadn’t drawn for publication in three years. But our illustrator bailed on us at the last minute so I had exactly 18 days and nights to . But that got me back into the swing of things. I did 20 for “The Hard Problem” and spent an entire year 鈥� at Elisheba’s suggestion 鈥� drawing a weekly, science-based “” cartoon to promote our series on social media. It’s been wonderful, like a homecoming, or returning to my creative roots.

Another blessing 鈥� and every artist-father’s dream 鈥� is the experience of creating a series of children’s books (though they’re certainly for adults, too) with my artist-daughter. We’ve been told that the Emery Jones series is the first black, father-daughter fiction collaboration. The main character is named after her son, my grandson, Emery, who is now 3 years old.

You’ve said that the old adage, “90 percent of writing is rewriting” pertains to your work as well. But is the process different when you and your daughter co-write the Emery Jones books? How does that collaboration work?

CJ: When we co-author the Emery Jones books, I ruthlessly revise the prose passages I compose, as I do with anything I write. But I don’t touch the prose or poems Elisheba contributes (she has two poems in “The Hard Problem”), though she will revise my lines if she doesn’t like something.

With these children’s or young adult books, I trust her language and thoughts because she’s closer to the way young people and kids think and feel than I am.

Your 1990 novel “Middle Passage” won the National Book Award for fiction. The New York Times called it “fiction that hooks into the mind.” Did the success of that book change your life or work?

CJ: My publisher is releasing this year a “Scribner Classic” edition of that novel to celebrate its 25th anniversary, with an introduction by cultural critic Stanley Crouch (who was my guest the night of the National Book Award ceremony in 1990), a new cover and new quotes about it from other writers.

Receiving that national fiction prize 鈥� only the second time a black male writer had gotten it after for “Invisible Man” in 1953 鈥� catapulted my “career” (a word I dislike because I don’t like to think of myself as “careerist,” but simply as someone who loves to create). But my family has always been more important to me than anything in the art, literary or academic worlds. So my life, work and reasons for creating have remained the same since I began publishing stories and drawings 50 years ago.

In “Taming the Ox” you discussed Barack Obama in 2008 when his presidential campaign was gaining momentum. You described the “Obama phenomenon” as “not so much revolutionary as it is potentially evolutionary,” from a Buddhist perspective. Now, late in the president’s second term, how do you think that evolution has gone?

CJ: Well, as we know, evolution moves slowly, ponderously, and often at a glacial pace. But we can finally take off the table a discussion that dates back to the founding of this republic: namely, the issue of whether a black person could ever become president or leader of his or her nation. (That still hasn’t happened in Europe or the other western democracies.)

As his second term draws toward an end, there are certainly paleo-racists out there, real Neanderthals, who are still fixed on this bi-racial president’s “race,” but generally I think most people have been more concerned with his daily performance as the president and his policies rather than how much melanin he has. I see that as incremental progress.

But does that mean we’ve entered what some people call a “post-racial” period in American history? I think not. “Race” is still a lived-illusion for far too many people.

Finally, scholars pronounce the concept of The Novel dead every decade or so, yet readers continue to enjoy fiction. What do you think is fiction’s current state of health?

CJ: If we judge the health of fiction by the amount of novels being produced today, which is enormous, with so many authors self-publishing or using nontraditional ways to get their work directly to readers, then I think we would have to conclude that this is a robust period for literary creation of works good, bad, and ugly.

Readers will always enjoy good, imaginative storytelling, which is as old as humanity itself. And the English (and American) novel is just one form of storytelling, albeit one that is capacious and capable of assuming many forms of narrative art since Samuel Richardson’s “” in 1739, Daniel Defoe’s “” in 1719, “ in 1722, and “proto-novels” such as Malory’s “” (1485) and Cervantes’s “” (1605-15).

Really, what we call the novel is too much of a shape-shifter to ever die.

Growing evidence has suggested that low blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin are associated with higher risk of developing coronary heart disease among whites. Few of these studies included substantial numbers of people from other races.

Vitamin D levels tend to be lower among people from other racial and ethnic minority groups, and some of these populations have higher rates of heart disease. However, after correcting for other risk factors for heart disease in their large, multi-ethnic study group, the researchers did not find an association between low vitamin D and cardiovascular events in their black and Hispanic study participants.

鈥淥ur study suggests that the results of ongoing vitamin D clinical trials conducted in white populations should be applied cautiously to people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds,鈥� said Cassianne Robinson-Cohen, the lead author for the JAMA paper. The senior author is Ian deBoer, 91探花 assistant professor of medicine, Division of Nephrology.

Robinson-Cohen is an affiliate instructor in epidemiology at the 91探花School of Public Health and a researcher at the Kidney Research Institute, where her team explores the genetic, metabolic and epidemiological factors related to heart and kidney disease.

She noted that the findings in their recent JAMA paper came from an observational study, not a randomized clinical trial, and could not guarantee cause and effect.

鈥淥ur future studies will examine the genetics affecting the levels and use of vitamin D in the body to try to figure out why the link between low vitamin D blood levels and heart disease varies by race and ethnicity,鈥� she said.聽 鈥淲e don鈥檛 know for sure, but perhaps genes affecting the need for and use of vitamin D could have evolved to adapt to different levels of sun exposure in places where various ethnic subgroups of people originated.鈥�

Her team plans to聽look for variations in genes known to mediate vitamin D activation and metabolism. She said these genes have been identified, but at present scientists haven鈥檛 determined how gene variation influences susceptibility to the adverse effects of low vitamin D.

The report published this week was from one of the projects within the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. MESA is a major, long-term medical research effort supported by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. More than 6,800 men and women from six regions across the United States are participating in MESA. The diverse study group that was 38 percent white, 28 percent black, 22 percent Hispanic, and 12 percent Chinese. Robinson-Cohen and her team studied 6,436 MESA participants who enrolled between July 2000 and September 2002.

All participants were free of any known cardiovascular diseases at the time they enrolled, and had their blood levels of V25-hydroxyvitamin D measured. The mean age of participants at the start of the study was 62 (range 45 to 84 years) and slightly more than half were women.

The mean blood concentrations for whites was 30.1 ng/ml, Chinese 26.7, Hispanic 24.6, and blacks 19.2, The researchers tested the association of Vitamin D levels with the first incidence of coronary heart disease events 鈥� myocardial infarction, angina, cardiac arrest, or death from coronary heart disease 鈥� occurring from the start of the study until May 2012. During the eight-and-a-half year study, 361 participants had such an event. The researchers used several statistical risk analyses to check to see if links between blood vitamin D levels and coronary heart disease differed among white, black, Chinese and Hispanic populations.
鈥淭his report underscores the value of conducting studies that include participants from diverse backgrounds,鈥� said Dr. Michael Lauer, director of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’ Division of Cardiovascular Sciences. 鈥淭he MESA investigators have presented a finding that could serve as a foundation for future research on the possible link between vitamin D blood levels and heart disease.鈥�

鈥淭he differences in associations across race-ethnicity groups were consistent for both a broad and restricted definition of coronary heart disease and persisted after adjustment for known risk factors for coronary heart disease,鈥� the researchers noted in their paper.

Robinson-Cohen believes the strengths of the study are its size, duration,聽 the use of several statistical analyses, the rigorous definition of heart disease events, and the efforts made to control for many confounding risk factors, such as age, gender, smoking, diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, physical activity, kidney disease,C-reactive protein concentrations, educational attainment, income聽 and so on.聽 A main weakness of the study, she said, is that it is observational, and therefore can鈥檛 be ascertain cause and effect.

鈥淭o determine cause and effect, a large, multiethnic, randomized control clinical trial would need to be conducted,鈥� she said.

Robinson-Cohen pointed out, that beyond these specific results, the nature of the findings show the importance of designing medical research that includes a diverse ethnic and racial makeup of participants. Such multi-ethnic studies would help prevent cases where findings from one group are incorrectly applied to other groups.

鈥淲e need to make a bigger effort to design and fund medical studies with large enough representation of various racial and ethnic backgrounds that we don鈥檛 draw ungrounded conclusions based on one group,鈥� Robinson-Cohen said.

The study, 鈥淩acial Differences in the Association of Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D Concentration with Coronary Heart Disease Events鈥� was supported with grants and contracts N01-HC-95159聽 and N01-HC-95169 from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute and聽 R01DK088762 from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

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