Compassion

Compassion is the root for my activism. I think people of all backgrounds should be treated equally and have the same opportunities to whatever they want to achieve. I empathize with those who face microaggressions in their daily life and those who face rejections when they clearly deserve to succeed. I want to help them succeed.

I don’t come from a particularly disadvantaged background. Asian males are represented well in academia and I am rarely doubted for my fit for the job, at least not when my math ability is concerned.

Where I can relate the most is the struggle of being a non-native speaker. All my undergraduate education was entirely in Mandarin and I did not even know the word viscosity, embarrassing for somebody who specialized in fluid mechanics. I still feel extra stress when I speak in public. I feel incompetent and unconfident. More so than I should be.

Different marginalized groups face different struggles and microaggressions in their life. But perhaps what is common is that at times, these episodes make us feel incompetent, making us want to give up. But the reality is that we are competent. We work as hard as, if not harder, than anybody else. I want to create a space where everybody can shine.

My activism

The first thing that I try to do is to identify the hidden gems in academia. Often from marginalized groups, their excellence is under-appreciated. For my mentees, complementing and encouraging them goes a long way. Micro-validations are a great antidote to microaggressions. For peers and more senior researchers, I nominate them for awards, invite them for talks, and cite their papers.

Disseminating knowledge is also important. At Princeton Robotics, I rallied support from the School of Engineering to start a diversity and inclusion bookshelf. The bookshelf is an open reading space that has a growing collection of books on racism, classism, technology ethics, etc. I organize a biweekly spontaneous book club where attendees gather to read during the session and discuss what we’ve learned. It is a small initiative, but we have made a positive impact on the community. A few campus authors had reach out and donated signed copies to our bookshelf! Recently, a similar bookshelf was created by Dr. Hernandez at the Computer Science department!!

To enhance awareness of gender and racial disparities in academia and my own implicit biases, I have started to examine and disclose the diversity of my references. Following a recent initiative by P. Zurn, D.S. Bassett, and N.C. Rust, I have been adding Citation Diversity Statements to the research articles that I publish since 2023.