Transcript
Jennifer Berglund 00:04
Welcome to HMSC Connects!, where we go behind the scenes of four Harvard museums to explore the connections between us, our big, beautiful world, and even what lies beyond. My name is Jennifer Berglund, part of the exhibits team here at the Harvard museums of science and culture, and I’ll be your host. Today, I’m speaking with Professor Scott Edwards, the Curator of Ornithology for the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and the Department Chair of Harvard’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Scott is a longtime champion of promoting diversity in the sciences, and since this month is Black History Month, I wanted to speak with him about how those issues have come into focus in recent years, and the ways in which we can strive to make Nature and Science accessible to everyone. Here he is. Scott Edwards, welcome to the show.
Scott Edwards 01:11
Great, Jennifer, great to be here.
Jennifer Berglund 01:17
So you grew up in the Bronx, New York, but began bird watching early on. How did that begin for you? And what kind of experiences did you have bird watching in the big city when you were a kid?
Scott Edwards 01:30
Growing up in Riverdale in the Bronx was a real experience. Back in the 70s, it was actually a very green corner of the city. It probably still is. It was really a great place to grow up. My brother and I and sister just had a lot of free time. This was before cell phones, and we just spent a lot of time kind of wandering around and inventing games, which I worry sometimes kids these days don’t have enough free time basically to just to be bored and be forced to invent stuff. Some point, a neighbor took the birdwatching, and it was just a real eye opener for me. I enjoyed exploring my environs, and I became very dedicated. I would take the A line, the subway. I’d have to walk like, you know, 45 minutes to the A line near Van Cortlandt Park, and then I’d hop on there, and then I would take that about two hours to get to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, and so, in Queens, and so that was, you know, quite a journey. And, you know, I enjoyed just being outside and this sort of process of discovery. For me, the bird that really locked it in for me was what we call then the Yellow-shafted Flicker, the Northern Flicker, which of course, if you know that bird, it’s kind of a comically gaudy woodpecker. It’s got spots and stripes. And that, just to be able to connect that image of that bird with the image in the field guide was really transformative for me, and it was one of those species that I kind of saw in the field guide and just said, “Well, I’m never gonna see this bird. It’s too easy looking.” But then, hey, there it was right in my backyard and it was just super exciting for me. And so I feel fortunate to have been exposed to nature so early and so routinely. I have no doubt that ultimately led to my wanting to become a scientist, especially one that studies birds.
Jennifer Berglund 03:32
People don’t think of New York City as having a ton of wildlife. There’s Central Park and all that, but I just think it’s remarkable that you were able to find and connect with wildlife and nature growing up in the city like that.
Scott Edwards 03:49
Well, no, I hear you, and you know, at first blush, you might not think New York City has much nature. But of course, you know, you’ve got places like Central Park, which are certainly not wilderness, but a lot of people find solace and rejuvenation in places like that. In my case, there was an Environmental Center just a few blocks from my house really called Wave Hill, which was really a grand setting. It was right on the Hudson River. You can just look across and see the Palisades of New Jersey over there. That was really exciting for me. I graduated from high school a semester early just, I don’t know, I think I just wanted out. It was in some ways my first job and I know, actually getting paid to do research on the local birds and to see…
Jennifer Berglund 04:37
…as a high school student!
Scott Edwards 04:38
… as high school student. Turns out there is an ornithologist from the 19th century named Eugene Bicknell. That’s the Bicknell that went into Bicknell’s thrush, which of course, is a high elevation thrush species up in New England. So there was so much just nearby. You know, I have some lifelong friends from Wave Hill. I remember reading this book by a guy named John Kieran. I think it was published in the late 50s, The Nature of New York, New York City, and you know, he was describing bald eagles floating down on ice floes down the Hudson River.
Jennifer Berglund 05:15
Wow.
Scott Edwards 05:16
Of course, peregrine falcons nesting in the states in New Jersey. So I think there’s quite a lot of wildlife in the New York City area. It takes a little bit more effort to find it, but it’s — the diversity is pretty impressive, actually.
Jennifer Berglund 05:35
Did you develop an interest in any other kind of anima, or was it just all birds all the way all the time?
Scott Edwards 05:43
I was kind of the classic kid bringing home some insect in a jar kind of thing. I was fascinated by these spit bugs where they make this nest… …out of what looks like fiddler saliva, and, you know, it was fascinating to me that this was part of their home really. And I remember once, something I brought in, and I put it in this jar, and then the next morning, there was like a bazillion little gnats inside the jar somehow appeared there. I must have brought some eggs in or something. My weekends were pretty free. It wasn’t like they were jam packed with activities like many kids are these days. And I just think that extra time to just wonder about stuff, and to have to kind of advance stuff. I spent a lot of time making models, those little plastic models of ships and planes, and perhaps it was just sort of a solitary time that kind of got me excited to think about how the world works, scientifically and biologically.
Jennifer Berglund 05:55
Oh, yeah. And then you went to Harvard as an undergrad, and at first you were kind of following in your dad’s footsteps. Your dad was a doctor, and you were in the Pre-Med program. But you ended up taking a gap year after Organic Chemistry, which is understandable, between your sophomore and junior year and got to experience fieldwork. So tell me about that experience and how it helped you rethink your path and decide to pursue becoming a scientist.
Scott Edwards 07:10
What I did at Harvard, I was actually a History of Science major. I was fascinated by Darwin and I had Medical School very much in the corner of my eye, but it wasn’t a super enthusiastic dedication. And I actually spent a lot of time writing desperate aimless letters to like, graduate programs in like forestry in places like Colorado. I had no idea what I was doing but I was really excited to sort of connect my interest in nature with sort of a profession. And yeah, as you mentioned, Organic Chemistry was kind of the death knell to my excitement in school. It is sort of funny on the one hand, but on the other hand, it’s actually a real concern, because Organic Chemistry almost universally is a rough experience for students. Still, I worry it turns a lot of young talent away from science, which is not the kind of thing you want to be doing.
Jennifer Berglund 08:04
No.
Scott Edwards 08:06
As you say, that year off was just really transformative. I went down to the Smithsonian. I stayed with some relatives and I sort of worked in Georgetown Bagelry to pay the bills. During the day, I would be numbering bones and I worked on an exhibit on a U.S. exploring expedition when I was down there, which actually, they collected a lot of the stuff that went into the original Smithsonian. This was a big excavation in the 1830s and early 40s. And so it was just a really fun time to explore and to frankly, see what biologists and ornithologist did for a living. You know, taking classes, I had no idea, and it was a super fun experience. I was able to do some fieldwork. I wanted to go back to Hawaii, because that’s where I was born. And I was just curious to see what that looked like. And I ended up going to the Big Island, just having some really great experiences looking for rare and endangered species and trying to work on eradication of things like pigs and stuff, which were still a challenge on the Big Island and other islands. It was just a really, really wonderful experience. And I came back to college with much more direction and confidence. I immediately switched into majoring in Biology. I didn’t want to talk about science. I wanted to do it. I ended up doing some research with a mentor, and it was really a critical turning point for me. I recommend so called “gap years” for everyone. I just think it’s a good time to slow down and frankly, to save some of that precious undergraduate time. It goes so quickly. Students often don’t have really time to think about what they actually want to end up doing.
Jennifer Berglund 09:43
It’s interesting that it took that field experience, being in nature, doing science, learning how science is done in the field, how it took that to really solidify your trajectory. And I liked what you said about wishing the students did gap years to kind of figure themselves out. It’s just kind of interesting how a lot of colleges are getting rid of a lot of their study abroad programs, and opportunities for students to experience working in the field. How do you feel about that as someone who really benefited from being in the field, working in the field?
Scott Edwards 10:20
It is unfortunate. I don’t know the finances of these year abroad programs or travel programs, but I do know that, as you say, a lot of universities are cutting back in some of the basic coursework in things like biodiversity. And so what about the diversity of birds of insects of reptiles? You know, these are fields like ornithology and entomology and herpetology. I don’t know how many universities are maintaining courses like that. Fortunately, Harvard has been very vigorously maintaining those sorts of courses, and they’re hugely popular with students. It’s a really integrative way to learn about a particular group of organisms. Not just their size and shape and morphology, but where they live, their physiology, their anatomy, their behavior. It’s very, very integrative and requires a lot of cross cutting of fields. And so it’s not like these courses are just memorization. They’re challenging, I think, but they’re also just a lot of fun. I think that that was, you know, I would say also in high school, in high schools, generally and certainly in grade schools, there’s not that much exposure to Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. My original conception of someone that worked in the field was the National Park Ranger. That’s actually still something I aspire to be. I think National Parks, national wildlife refuges are just great places to work.
Jennifer Berglund 11:44
Absolutely.
Scott Edwards 11:45
But you know, many students don’t appreciate that that is a viable career, and that you can get paid to do that. Many students don’t know that to go to graduate school in ecology, they pay you to do that you don’t have to pay. It’s not like, it’s not like law school or medical school, you get paid. And so understandably, a lot of students might be, you know, turning away to more lucrative careers, perhaps, but hopefully, we can bust through some of these myths that make a career in the biological sciences a little more exciting, and achievable.
Jennifer Berglund 12:21
I hope that happens. I hope that’s the case. I certainly benefited tremendously from having field experiences during my undergraduate years and definitely influenced my life in positive ways. And I know I’m not alone there. Following college, you went on to pursue your PhD and you did your dissertation on genetic variation in babblers across the Pacific. So tell me about that and how it informs your work today.
Scott Edwards 12:57
I remember I was applying for sort of these fellowships like mad as a senior to travel and I particularly wanted to go to New Guinea, because New Guinea was just the epicenter for ornithology and bird diversity. I mean, people like Jared Diamond had gone there, and I was super intrigued. It turns out, I didn’t end up getting any fellowships to do that. But I did end up getting an opportunity to work there with a scientist studying Birds of Paradise, and I actually ended up spending most of my first year of graduate school doing that, and…
Jennifer Berglund 13:29
We have to describe what Birds of Paradise are. They’re just some of the most beautiful birds in the world. So I mean, how lucky you got to study them.
Scott Edwards 13:39
Yeah, they’re really extraordinary. They kind of defy what we would normally call a bird or a kind of a beautiful organism. They sort of break all the rules in terms of their godliness and their behavior. It’s a very special opportunity. And I think I was really able to exercise the sort of explorer in myself. I spent a few weeks afterwards just sort of traveling around New Guinea, and that was a lot of fun, because, you know, I – as an African American – I actually could sometimes kind of melt into the background in New Guinea, because I sort of superficially looked like a lot of native New Guineans. Of course, as soon as I put my backpack on, suddenly, people knew I wasn’t local because most local New Guineans at the time didn’t have the knapsacks like that. And people would come up to me and say, “Oh, you’re so tall, you must be from the Markham Valley down by Lae, because that’s where all the tall people live.” I didn’t want to lead them down that path too long, but yeah, it was a really interesting experience to kind of be in a place that was 100% people of color and that was just really interesting. And that’s actually one of the really fun things I enjoy about my job is interacting with locals. The locals inevitably know more about their biodiversity than I would. It’s just fun to learn from them and I just had some great experiences just seeing the birds in their parts of the country. And it was just really priceless. I ended up as I was doing the work in New Guinea, actually writing for permits and stuff to work in Australia, which probably couldn’t be done these days. Everything is so much more complicated, but I ended up doing my dissertation, as you mentioned, on a group of birds called babblers in Australia, and they’re another fascinating group. It was just a great combination of using my grad career was a really great opportunity to use sort of cutting edge genomics techniques on a system that had a lot of interesting layers to it. These birds were social, they traveled around in groups, and they had really interesting patterns of geographic variation across the entire continent of Australia. Some of that work was one of the first real large scale analyses in a field that we now call phylogeography. It’s sort of a combination of genetic variation and geographic sampling to figure out how species came to inhabit the areas that they do. It was a lot of fun. Really, throughout my career, I’ve had some connection to Australia, and it’s super exciting to see how my students returning to Australia to carry on that tradition. That’s a lot of fun.
Jennifer Berglund 16:20
We worked on an exhibit together a few years back on islands, and we talked about your work with ratites, which correct me if I’m wrong, it’s kind of similar to the babbler work in that you were looking at the distribution of ratites, these large flightless birds like ostriches and cassowaries and emus and things like that. And you were looking at the phylogeography?
Scott Edwards 16:46
You’re absolutely right. We were looking at flightless birds. Not so much the context of phylogeography, but we were interested broadly in their evolution, particularly how they became flightless. And that certainly is a different end of the continuum of evolutionary biology, so it’s all connected, I think. The Palaeognathae birds as they’re called, that means they have this ancient jaw, which is sort of a configuration of the bones and their upper jaw. Yeah, they’re really interesting, the fact that most of them are flightless, and so the only member of the group that actually can fly are this really little known group called the Tinamous, which live in the New World. And so you’ve got lots of things in the Southern Hemisphere, like ostriches in Africa, emus and cassowaries in Australia. You’ve got rheas in South America, and kiwis in New Zealand. And then you’ve got these tinamous, which can fly in the New World. And, you know, the old idea was that these flightless birds all descended from a flightless ancestor, and that kind of makes sense. How else would they get to these far flung areas? The idea was that continental drift, and the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, which you have probably heard of, allow that it to assume the distributions that they have today. And so in many ways, they’re a perfect Gondwanan and example on the surface, because you got representatives in all this other continents, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America. So it seemed almost too good to be true. Our work has helped to kind of turn that story on its head. And basically, we were, among other things, trying to understand the phylogeny of the species. So that means sort of the family tree of that species that you might expect the tinamous, which are again, they can fly. They’re the only members of the group that could fly. You might expect them to branched off early in this radiation, because that would then require all the remaining species to have evolved lost flight just once in their common ancestor. But it turns out that the tinamous are actually nested right in the middle of this flightless radiation, and that means now that either flight has been lost multiple times independently, in the ostriches, emus, that sort of thing, or less likely, that flight re-evolved in tinamous from the flightless ancestor. Now that re-evolution is exciting, but it seems extremely unlikely not just to us but to lots of biologists because it’s, it’s actually very, very difficult to evolve flight. It’s much easier to lose flight. I think that project did allow me to kind of think about the Southern Hemisphere, which of course I did in my dissertation as well. The diversity of birds in the Southern Hemisphere is just so different from here in the North, and it’s really kind of a different world. It’s fascinating just think about all the interesting twists and turns that birds in the Southern Hemisphere have undertaken. For example, you might be aware, there’s a pretty well known book called “Where Song Began,” and that was about some of the birds in Australia in the Southern Hemisphere, where songbirds are thought to have originated. Yeah, it’s a fascinating area.
Jennifer Berglund 20:25
So where do you do most of your work these days? Are you still focusing on Southern Hemisphere birds, or are you looking in the Northern Hemisphere, or everywhere?
Scott Edwards 20:33
You work a lot of different places. You know, the permitting, and the logistics have, in many cases, become so complicated that where we work is sort of limited to by where we can relatively easily work or where we’re allowed to work. And of course, by work, you know, I often mean, we’re collecting specimens for the museum and this requires a lot of permitting and getting permission, etc. And so we are very fortunate to have some funds from the National Science Foundation to conduct a big project in Brazil. This is in collaboration with a bunch of Brazilian scientists, and there we’re comparing adaptations of lineages that not just birds, but many different taxa that have adapted to dry habitats such as what we call the Dry Diagonal, which is sort of the area of Brazil and Argentina, that sort of sandwiched between the wet forests on the east of the Atlantic Forest, and then the Amazon Rainforest. And so that’s one project, and then we have, of course, we’re always doing work around Massachusetts, and other parts of the United States. And we’ve been fortunate through the Museum of Comparative Zoology, to do expeditions to places like Mongolia, which is really interesting and exciting. And some of my students have done amazing work in South American countries like Peru, Colombia, places like that. So we’re very fortunate. We can have a very sort of global view of bird diversity, and the challenge is to kind of rein it all in and make sure that students remain productive.
Jennifer Berglund 22:20
Over the pandemic, while most of us were kind of cooped up inside, you decided to embark on this amazing grand cycling adventure across the US. But once you began, a few tragic things happened: George Floyd was killed, and a protest erupted across the country; a white woman threatened and called the police on a black man who was peacefully birdwatching in Central Park; and all of this made you decide that you needed to make your solo adventure about something more. Tell me the story about that, and about the adventure that unfolded.
Scott Edwards 22:58
You said it’s something completely different. In many ways it’s connected, I would say, because, you know, the whole idea of undertaking the bicycle trip across the country, I think, requires, you know, a bit of sort of confidence, I guess, or a bit of being comfortable in places where you’re not local, especially in the outdoors. So I do believe in some ways that even just the the idea of entertaining the idea of cycling across the country was connected with my love of nature and birds. You know, originally, the idea was just a lark. I had done a little cycling in college. You know, I had done a little bit of Europe. It’s a great way to see a place and really get to know it at a slow pace. You know, even your own country, and as you mentioned, you know, COVID. This is the spring of 2020. I had been thinking about “one day, wouldn’t it be fun to write across country,” and when COVID hit and I finished up teaching ornithology that spring, I just said, maybe this is the time. Within a span of about six weeks, I went from saying “yes, I’m going to do this” to actually doing it. And you know, it involves buying a new bicycle, getting a bunch of equipment, trying to figure out my route, not entirely, of course. I think it was June 6, 2020 when I pushed off from Plum Island, Massachusetts, heading west. My wife and daughter were there with me. All of my colleagues, many of whom hadn’t actually done this were saying, “Oh, no, you have to go west to east. This the only way you can do it.” And I just said, “Well, I’m doing it east to west.” You’re absolutely right. The timing happened to coincide with the horrible killing of George Floyd and with this terrible incident with Christian Cooper, the black birdwatcher in Central Park. As I said, originally the trip was just a lark. But within a few days, I was still seeing all the evidence of protests, people protesting and joining on the Black Lives Matter movement. And I said to myself, “well, I have to do something, I can’t just be on a lark for the next few months, I really have to contribute in some small way.” And so that’s when I figured out how to put Black Lives Matter signs on my bicycle, and just, and do a lot of tweeting, and just to kind of try to participate in this effort while I was moving across the country on two wheels. I got a lot of help in doing that, not only in getting those signs together. A very generous lady in Schenectady, New York, put them together for me, basically, but also just across the country. I was just so pleased that basically the over arching mood of my trip and the sentiment of people that I bumped into was one of generosity and kindness and real friendship. Of course, I was cycling through a lot of very rural areas. At least in the northern route I was taking, were very white; there weren’t many people of color in these regions. And you know, that, for me, you know, admit that I was not going to do much kind of shadow camping, for example. I didn’t want to just camp on the side of the road in places that I didn’t know, because that might be somebody’s land, it might be… there are a lot of reasons why I wouldn’t want to do that, and probably a lot of reasons why a lot of white folks might not want to do that either. But I felt it was particularly uncertain, and perhaps even dangerous if I did that. And so I ended up you know, camping as much as I could and would stay in the odd hotel when there weren’t many campgrounds near. And occasionally I just find a store or a back of a gas station in tiny towns that didn’t have a campground or hotel. In the end, I made it across to Sunset Beach, Oregon, about 76 days later. Lots of stories packed in there, just a really amazing way to see the country. Most of my interactions were extremely positive. I did have some rough spots. I had decided one morning in Illinois to basically just find a place to stay on the fly to camp someplace after asking permission, because I didn’t have a hotel or a campground that I could easily reach. And so towards the end of the day, I was cycling through and I kept asking folks that had sort of very generous lawns and whatnot, if I could camp on their lawn for the night, and most of them, you know, they say, “Oh, is it a really nice place farther down the road. Why don’t you check that out?” And, you know, that was interesting in the sense that I was like, but I’d rather just camp right here, you know, this place down the road, really that exceptional? It was a Christian camp that ultimately did not allow me to stay on their property, despite the fact that I was the only one there. It wasn’t because I was Black or anything. They just basically said,”We have a bunch of school kids coming in the morning.” And I said, “Well, I could be off your property by 5 in the morning.” And they were basically like, no, so as the sun was heading down, I actually saw an older couple sitting on their porch with cornfields in the background. As I was approaching, you know, I had this Black Lives Matter sign on my bicycle. And I was like, oh, goodness, I hope they don’t see this because that could ruin my chances. Anyway, I said, “Is there any way I can camp on your property?” And they basically said, “you know, not with that sign on your bicycle, you’re not camping.”
Jennifer Berglund 28:42
Oh, my God.
Scott Edwards 28:43
And that was really disheartening. I tried to kind of salvage the situation but it was pretty clear that it was just a non-starter. And it was just, course most of what they had associated with the Black Lives Matter movement they had learned from conservative news outlets and learned to associate with, you know, violence and mayhem. So that’s just what it meant to them. Those were unfortunate kinds of situations, but they certainly were less common than the more joyful, generous interactions I had on the trip.
Jennifer Berglund 29:13
Well, I’m sorry you had those experiences. I’m certainly heartened to hear that that was the exception, rather than the rule. It’s been a strange time in our country, and that is certainly a symptom of that.
Scott Edwards 29:26
That’s right. Absolutely. I would love the chance to just connect more with folks from rural communities, because my guess is that there’s a lot of common ground. And we just need the time to kind of work out our differences. But you know, I think in the end, it was just a really nice affirmation of how generous our country can be. And I think really what its potential can be in terms of just getting along and trying to understand each other. You know, many of the communities that I was passing through were very conservative, not very diverse, and yet I was able to connect with and learn a lot about people had very different backgrounds from me. That’s something that I think we all need to take more time to do.
Jennifer Berglund 30:21
Any interesting bird watching experiences along the way?
Scott Edwards 30:25
Birds were always there. It wasn’t the kind of thing where I could easily stop and get off my bike and bird watch them. You know, it just wasn’t enough time to chase down every interesting lead on a bird.
Jennifer Berglund 30:39
You weren’t wearing your binoculars around your neck or anything like that?
Scott Edwards 30:43
Well, I wasn’t wearing them on my neck but I did have them in my front bag right in front of me.
Jennifer Berglund 30:46
Okay, well, that’s good. That’s handy.
Scott Edwards 30:48
Oh, yeah, I definitely I took a small pair of Nikon’s. And they were right there at the reach in case something interesting flew by. But I did see a ton of really amazing birds, things like blue grosbeaks in Illinois, dickcissels all through the Midwest, that’s a bird I didn’t really have much experience with. Things like upland sandpipers, which again, was a very foreign bird for me. And you know, over the course of several weeks, I really got to know these birds, about their behavior, I learned their songs. And after a while, I could sort of pinpoint them, having just heard them, this is really exciting. And of course, I did most of my quote “birdwatching,” just by listening, and just by hearing stuff, because I was cycling past. And that was just fascinating to hear how the soundscape was changing with every day. A lot of species that I just hadn’t heard in a long time, things like whip-poor-wills, for example. Bobwhites, these were just really great to reconnect with a lot of species that I just hadn’t seen in a long time.
Jennifer Berglund 31:54
Did the scientist in you come away inspired?
Scott Edwards 31:58
I mean, there’s a ton of interesting projects out there. I was fascinated, for example, how do birds persist in these monocultures of agriculture that are all through the Midwest? I’m not an ecologist, so I probably wouldn’t be able to do a study like that but it was interesting to me that there are some species that managed to make a living in these killdeers, it turns out are like super common all through the course of the Midwest. And then, you know, interesting observations like, well, as you had in the western US, you know, the ecological gradients that you pass through are often very, very abrupt. And so coming out of the Rocky Mountains, heading west, into the upland plateaus of Washington State, for example, is just fascinating. And the whole vibrant community just changes within a few kilometers. Lifetimes and stuff we could look at.
Jennifer Berglund 32:52
That’s amazing. What a grand adventure.
Scott Edwards 32:56
I feel fortunate to have been able to do it. I mean, how easy is it for your average American worker, just say, I’m just going to ride my bike for two and a half months. And “oh, by the way, I’m not going to tell my boss or anything without even knowing.” That’s pretty lucky. But that is, I suppose one of the perks of academics and you know, in truth, because we’re scholars, our goal is to learn stuff all the time. And I was definitely learning stuff every day of that trip.
Jennifer Berglund 33:28
I also want to talk about an honor you received recently. You were featured in a University of Bristol display celebrating Success in Science by Africans and African Americans. So tell me about that, and what message do you hope it sends to a wider public?
Scott Edwards 33:46
Well, thank you, that was a really fun exhibit to be featured in, and actually it was really exciting to see other colleagues around the country that I knew that were also in that exhibit. For example, our own Cassandra Extavour was also featured there. And in some ways, it’s perhaps a testament that the African American and People of Color communities in Evolutionary Biology is still pretty small. I think a lot of us know each other, and it’s a great support group. But this was a very nice exhibit by folks at the University of Bristol and I just thought it did a great job of acknowledging the contributions of Africans, African Americans, People of Color to Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and different aspects of Biological Sciences. First of all, you know, People of Color have made a late entry to biology. We do have very inspiring examples of African Americans in biology, you know, going way back in the United States, but the numbers have been, you know, very small. I think today, the numbers are still disproportionately small. And I think it’s one of the themes of my career has been to try to increase the number of People of Color in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. You know, there’s a lot of reasons I think for those small numbers. You know, some of which are certainly being systematically left out, essentially, from the system. I mean, I think structural racism has definitely played a part in how evolutionary biology has been populated these days. You know, it’s funny, because as Chair of the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, I mean, I can tell it, departments around the country are eager and sort of bending over backwards to attract faculty of color to their ranks. And so it’s an interesting time, in many ways, the lead predictor now is the number of students that elect to go into academics or into a particular field of biology. My message to folks of color and folks of all stripes, women, etc, there’s a lot of opportunity out there. And I think we’re in this transition where the climate is I think improving, it might still not be as welcoming and diverse as many people would like. But we’ve got to kind of get over this numerical threshold so that we are a diverse community, and that’s sort of a challenge right now. Most of us in the field now can know a time when we were the only in a certain context, the only African American or the only woman or the only person of different sexual orientation. We need to get to a point where those onlies aren’t happening anymore, and I think we’re getting there slowly. But it takes a long time. And folks have to be okay with some discomfort, or being perhaps on the lonely side, for at least part of their career, because we’re just not there yet. And I think hopefully, the examples in that Bristol exhibit will inspire young students to think about biology as a career, because there’s a lot of opportunities ,and scientifically, it’s just amazing. There’s just so much cool stuff going on. It’s just a fascinating time to be a scientist.
Jennifer Berglund 37:23
We’re now in the midst of Black History Month. Reflecting on your experience and your bike trip, your being featured in this wonderful exhibit, what change would you like to see in your field to create more opportunities for People of Color?
Scott Edwards 37:43
Wow, that’s a great question. I mean, I would love to see more communities of color, embracing the outdoors, because I think, at least for me, that’s where it all started — my interest in science and my kind of courage to cycle across the country. And so I would love to see more communities of color being exposed to the outdoors and to frankly, take the outdoors as a normal, not as something exotic, something to be visited on a school field trip, but as a normal and central part of everyday life. And so I’m doing a little bit of work these days with the Adventure Cycling Association, which is really great organization based in Montana, and they’re trying to expose more diverse communities, urban communities, for example, to the joy of cycling. I think that’s what I would love to see is, students being comfortable in the outdoors, being comfortable with careers, perhaps that won’t land them on Wall Street, for example. I think, understandably, there’s a lot of eagerness by lots of different young populations to strike the American Dream rich, and that’s completely understandable. Becoming a scientist, or some sort of steward of nature is going to be less lucrative for certain, but it’s gonna definitely, hopefully be even more fulfilling. And that’s, I think, that choice, you know, to head in a direction which might make you score big financially is, it’s a really important choice. And I’m just going to be really interested to see how different communities embrace that choice in the future. I think we can already see lots of students saying “no, you know, I don’t really care how much I make. I want to do this.” And that I think, is exciting. Hopefully, it’s an opportunity that every student has, it’s a choice that every student has. My guess is that there are many students that feel they don’t have that choice. And that’s unfortunate, and that’s partly I think what a liberal arts education is supposed to do is to free students from having to head in one direction or another depending on their circumstances
Jennifer Berglund 40:09
Scott Edwards, thank you so much for being here. This has been wonderful.
Scott Edwards 40:12
Thank you so much, Jennie. It’s been really fun.
Jennifer Berglund 40:19
Today’s HMSC Connects! Podcast was edited by Eden Piacitelli and produced by me, Jennifer Berglund, and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Special thanks to the Museum of Comparative Zoology and to Scott Edwards for his wisdom and expertise. And thank you so much for listening. If you liked today’s podcast, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts. See you in a couple of weeks.