3 ms·

Also a (former) non-white-male particle theorist (well, phenomenologist) here. This isn't hard data by any means but in the first year of my PhD, I attended a m

Also a (former) non-white-male particle theorist (well, phenomenologist) here. This isn't hard data by any means but in the first year of my PhD, I attended a mandatory summer school for all particle theorist (and associated fields) PhD students in the UK. There were about 95 student attendees. About 5 of those were women and only two of 95, including myself, were non-white. And very amusingly, the other non-white guy was someone I went to high school and university with. Also, he was on ATLAS and not strictly a theorist as such! If we discount myself on the grounds of being a phenomenologist, that probably makes things even worse.

thicknavyrain 7y ago
I will qualify this to say that of the people I know at CERN and other experimental collaborations, the groups seemed more diverse.
oefrha 7y ago
I hail from one of the top institutions in the U.S. and I'm happy to report that the diversity at least amongst grad students is much better. I didn’t count but the number of non-whites (that basically means Asian) is much greater than two, out of maybe thirty (phenom included).
JetSetWilly 7y ago
The general population of the UK is overwhelmingly white compared to eg. the US. Many parts of the UK eg. Scotland it is 98% white or more, so it would be expected that courses in any discipline are going to be overwhelmingly white at universities in those regions.
- thicknavyrain 7y ago
  For sure, although given that 87% of Britain is White British, for a cohort of 95 students in my year, one would expect all things equal for there to be about 12 non-white students, when in fact there were two. This is not to get mired into a debate about inclusion in STEM, but it's also worth noting that both me and my other non-white friend (who's background I know because we grew up together, weirdly), were very fortunate to have had quite middle class upbringings too, and hailed from Northwest London. In fact, I doubt it comes as any surprise for me to say that from my time at undergrad all the way up to completing my PhD, I suspect that the much bigger discriminant for getting into Physics is class more than race (gender is a separate issue here I suppose). I remember this coming up in a talk from someone on the IOP commission to look at inclusion in Physics, although for their online reports I can only find the ones on gender, for anyone interested: http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/support/girls_physics/reports-and-research/page_63816.html http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/support/girls_physics/r...
  - JetSetWilly 7y ago
    Another thing to consider is that the UK as a whole not being 99% white is a recent development of the last four or five decades. At least in the first few decades most immigrants were working class and so you wouldn't expect their offspring to be proportionately represented at university level for socioeconomic reasons. So I would argue the disparity is more of a socioeconomic access one than a racial one.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  UK population is 87% white (2011 census), US population is 72% white (2010 census). So non-white population is 13% in the UK and 28% in the US, "only" twice as much.

thicknavyrain 7y ago

I will qualify this to say that of the people I know at CERN and other experimental collaborations, the groups seemed more diverse.

oefrha 7y ago

I hail from one of the top institutions in the U.S. and I'm happy to report that the diversity at least amongst grad students is much better. I didn’t count but the number of non-whites (that basically means Asian) is much greater than two, out of maybe thirty (phenom included).

JetSetWilly 7y ago

The general population of the UK is overwhelmingly white compared to eg. the US. Many parts of the UK eg. Scotland it is 98% white or more, so it would be expected that courses in any discipline are going to be overwhelmingly white at universities in those regions.

thicknavyrain 7y ago
For sure, although given that 87% of Britain is White British, for a cohort of 95 students in my year, one would expect all things equal for there to be about 12 non-white students, when in fact there were two. This is not to get mired into a debate about inclusion in STEM, but it's also worth noting that both me and my other non-white friend (who's background I know because we grew up together, weirdly), were very fortunate to have had quite middle class upbringings too, and hailed from Northwest London. In fact, I doubt it comes as any surprise for me to say that from my time at undergrad all the way up to completing my PhD, I suspect that the much bigger discriminant for getting into Physics is class more than race (gender is a separate issue here I suppose). I remember this coming up in a talk from someone on the IOP commission to look at inclusion in Physics, although for their online reports I can only find the ones on gender, for anyone interested: http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/support/girls_physics/reports-and-research/page_63816.html http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/support/girls_physics/r...
- JetSetWilly 7y ago
  Another thing to consider is that the UK as a whole not being 99% white is a recent development of the last four or five decades. At least in the first few decades most immigrants were working class and so you wouldn't expect their offspring to be proportionately represented at university level for socioeconomic reasons. So I would argue the disparity is more of a socioeconomic access one than a racial one.
kgwgk 7y ago
UK population is 87% white (2011 census), US population is 72% white (2010 census). So non-white population is 13% in the UK and 28% in the US, "only" twice as much.