Scholars argue field of nuclear science is racist

A class offered this semester at Princeton University called “Nuclear Princeton: An Indigenous Approach to Science and the Environment” is among an effort to combat alleged racism in the field of nuclear science.

It comes as a growing chorus of scholars accusing the field of past and present systemic racism.

George Washington University in November 2021 hosted a seminar titled “A Call for Antiracist Action in the U.S. Nuclear Community” to “confront a long legacy of racial disparities and injustices in the history of the nuclear field, many of which continue today,” its description stated.

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Turner has argued that the field of nuclear science is home to “epistemic racism,” commenting on how, at a Washington nuclear policy conference, many members of her community were “culturally assimilated at least in that space to Western norms — of dress, speech, and professionalism.” The researcher asserted the field must confront racist and colonial norms “to move forward.”

According to a Dec. 2021 opinion piece from the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit newsroom based in Teachers College, Columbia University, historic biases in the field of science are so ingrained that a “proactively anti-racist scientific method” is necessary. Co-author Iheoma Iruka did not respond to a request for comment.

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