Making a Physicist with Jazz

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical physicist and research scientist at the University of Washington. She specializes in early universe cosmology with an emphasis on classical and quantum fields in the early universe. Amongst her many activities, she is the principal investigator on a Fundamental Questions Institute (FQXi) funded project in the philosophy of science, with a particular focus on the presence and absence of Black and Native women in physics and astronomy. Chanda feels strongly about bad dark matter analogies. 

Talk Abstract: In 2005, theoretical physicist S. James Gates related a story about Abdus Salam where Salam explained that once Black people entered physics in large numbers, they would create something like jazz. Is this an essentialization of Black people or getting at the essence of how Black people have responded to the wake of slavery and colonialism? Using texts from a diverse set of disciplines -- English, ethnomusicology, and science, technology, and society studies -- I will reflect on possible answers to this question, what they tell us about how physicists are made, and whether this framework offers lessons for how physicists should be made.

WISE Ventures, a joint initiative of the Vice Provost for Faculty Development & Diversity and the Vice Provost for Graduate Education at Stanford, joins with the Department of Physics and the Black Community Services Center to sponsor this WISE Research Roundtable, one in a series of discussions with research scientists whose work illuminates paths to advance equity in scientific and technical fields.