IDEA!

April 2025

• Militarization of Campus Police Departments
• Uncovering the Truth: Violence and Abuse Against Black Migrants in Immigration Detention
• Tracked & Trapped: Experiences from ICE Digital Prisons

January 2025

• ‘You end up doing the document rather than doing the doing’: Diversity, race equality and the politics of documentation
• When White Women Cry: How White Women's Tears Oppress Women of Color

March 2024

• Living with bi-polar disorder in academia
• Living with ADHD in academia
• Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education

February 2024

• Creating Positive College Campus Racial Climates for Students of Color

March, 2020

• Inferior by Angela Saini
• 'Visibly Invisibly' by Deidre M. Bowen (Presumed Incompetent Chapter 8)

February, 2020

• Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley.

November, 2019

• Book recommendations from the IDEA Social Justice Library.
• Billionaires & astronomy.
• Presumed Incompetent - The intersections of race and class for women in academia (Chapters 1 & 2).
• Inclusive astronomy 2.

October, 2019

• Graduate school and parents.
• The 'optics' of diversity work.
• Indigenous peoples and astronomy around the world
  • Maunea Kea and modern astronomy.
  • A tale of two observatories.
  • Astronomical observatories and indigenous communities in Chile.

May, 2019

• GRE fails to identify successful PhD students.
• Gender parity in engineering leadership.
• Let's talk EDI in Science: Notes from Dr. Christina Richey's talk.

April, 2019

• Smears and fury in telescope lobbying: A story from New Zealand regarding the Square Kilometre Array.
• Decolonizing the university: Chapter 1.

March, 2019

• Imposter syndrome among female faculty.
• Department mentoring & self-assessment.
• University of Chicago survey lab.
• Department self-assessment rubrics.
• AAS report on diversity & inclusion in graduate education.

February, 2019

• University of Michigan handbook on highlights and best practices for faculty candidates.
• For a Black mathematicisian, what it's like to the be 'Only One'.
• Universal child care.
• CSWA Survey: The secret history of women in coding.
• Reimbursement policies make academia less inclusive.

January, 2019

• AAS task force on diversity and inclusion in graduate education.
• Summary of the Know Your Power Project workshop.
• AAS climate site visits.
• The importance of names in astronomy.
• AI solves gender bias, puts overlooked women scientists in spotlight.
• Racist James Watson.
• Women who win prizes get less money and prestige.
• How to find a mentor at work.

December, 2018

• Three years later: gender differences in the advisor's impact on career choices in astronomy and astrophysics (Ivie, White, & Chu, 2018).
• Graduate school can have terrible effects on people's mental health (TW: anxiety & suicidal ideation).
• $20M lawsuit: University of Arizona underpays women science professors.
• One tenure-track candidate's attempts at negotiations resulted in her loss of the offer entirely.

November, 2018

• Mental health discussion in astronomy & astrophysics: a living document.
• University of Chicago: The Second Assailant (TW: sexual assault & suicide attempts).
• AAS endorsement for removing the Physics GRE from the graduate admissions process.
• Physics GRE requirements for US/Canadian Astronomy & Physics programs.

October, 2018

• Particles for Justice.
• Leaky postdoc pipeline.
• Astropy Code of Conduct.
• Gendering of inanimate objects.
• Letter of solidarity with LGBTQIA+ folks in physics and astronomy.

May, 2018

• Harassment in astronomy and the role of the AAS.
• Bully and harassment in astronomy.
• Redefining impact to help society directly.
• Science and colonialism.
• AAS-CSMA letter against policing of students.
• AAS graduate edcuation task force.
• TMT-GMT joint program initiative.
• Canadian TACs: On gender biases
  • Sex-Disaggregated Systematics in Canadian Time Allocation Committee Telescope Proposal Reviews.
  • Fighting the Gender Gap in Telescope Proposal Success.

April, 2018

• Graduate students and mental health.
• University of Chicago emergency management training.

March, 2018

• Lauren Krauss (TW: sexual harassment).
• Ethnic Diversity Increases Scientific Impact.
• Mental Health and Graduate Students.
• Ghost advising.
• Gender Parity in Low Income Country astronomers.
• NSF New Harassment Reporting policy.
• LGBTQ+ scientists and STEM retention.

February, 2018

• An overview of Black Light.
• NSF Grand conditions update (TW: sexual harassment).
• Steve Bannon speaks at the University of Chicago.

January, 2018

• A Tufts University report and set of guidelines for the classroom.
• Commentary on the Ouch!Oops! method.
• A University of Arizona report on Diversity and Inclusiveness in the classroom.

Members of UChicago IDEA can request access to previous meeting minutes here.

ICE is currently kidnapping Chicago residents, including in Hyde Park. We are pushing for signs in A&A/KICP stating what constitutes a private space. We push for contacting Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) instead of UCPD.