Values and Inclusivity in the ACT Community
Azimuth 2020-06-02
In the tenth and final talk of this spring’s ACT@UCR seminar, Nina Otter will lead a discussion about diversity in the applied category theory community. This is a change from her originally scheduled talk, due to the killing of George Lloyd and the ensuing crisis.
The discussion will take place at the originally scheduled time: on Wednesday June 3rd at 5 pm UTC, which is 10 am in California, or 1 pm on the east coast of the United States, or 6 pm in the UK. It will be held online via Zoom, here:
https://ucr.zoom.us/j/607160601
Afterwards we will talk at the Category Theory Community Server, here:
You can join the conversation there if you sign in.
• Nina Otter, Values and Inclusivity in the Applied Category Theory Community
Abstract. Saddened by the current events, we are taking this opportunity to pause and reflect on what we can do to change the status quo and try to bring about real and long-lasting change. Thus, we are holding a discussion aimed at finding concrete solutions to make the Applied Category Theory community more inclusive, and also to reflect about the values that our community would like to stand for and endorse, in particular, in terms of which sources of funding go against our values. While this discussion is specific to the applied category theory community, we believe that many of the topics will be of interest also to people in other fields, and thus we welcome anybody with an interest to attend. The discussion will consist of two parts: we will have first several people give short talks to discuss common issues that we need to address, as well as present specific plans for initiatives that we could take. We believe that the current pandemic, and the fact that all activities are now taking place remotely, gives us the opportunity to involve people who would otherwise find it difficult to travel, because of disabilities, financial reasons or care-taking responsibilities. Thus, now we have the opportunity to come up with new types of mentoring, collaborations, and many other initiatives that might have been difficult to envision until just a couple of months ago. The second part of the discussion will take place on the category theory community server, and its purpose is to allow for a broader participation in the discussion, and ideally during this part we will be able to flesh out in detail the specific initiatives that have been proposed in the talks.