Season 1 |
Episode 8: Uncovering Human Evolutionary Truths with Dr. Fatimah Jackson
[00:00:00] Rori: You're listening to Science Wise, the podcast designed to inspire people embarking on a journey in science through conversations that will feel like talking with your wisest auntie.
[00:00:09] Emilia: Who just so happens to be a badass scientist. I'm Emilia.
[00:00:12] Rori: And I'm Rori. We're two scientists on a mission to make the world of science more welcoming and to amplify the contributions of women.
[00:00:21] Emilia: Dr. Fatimah Jackson is a force of nature. She got her PhD in 1981 at Cornell University in Biological Anthropology. She was one of vanishingly few African American women who leaned in and changed the field that was struggling with scientific racism. She excelled in Faculty positions at a handful of prominent public institutions like UC Berkeley, University of Florida, University of Maryland, and UNC Chapel Hill, before enthusiastically moving on to Howard University. She has earned many awards, including The highest lifetime achievement award from the American Association of Biological Anthropologists for her immense research on the relationship between population genetic variation and the environment, particularly in Black populations. As a woman ahead of her time, she challenged highly respected population geneticists about racist frameworks they imposed on the science, and she did it with grace. She's accomplished so much. while raising six kids who she remains tight with. We cannot wait for you to hear some of our conversations with Dr. Fatimah Jackson.
[00:01:32] Rori: we are simply thrilled to have Dr. Fatimah Jackson with us today. Dr. Jackson has been a pillar in the community for decades. Decades. rightfully earned the American Association of Biological Anthropology's Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award, which is one of the most prestigious awards that you could earn in her field,
[00:01:52] Fatimah: Woohoo! Darwin's flipping in his grave!
[00:01:56] Rori: First, we're going to talk a little bit about your early life I learned that you did most of your growing up in a very close and loving household with your mom, your aunt, and your grandmother, and while your mom and your aunt had both been had quite a lot of education, had earned master's degrees. You did grow up with some financial instability in Denver. What did you learn growing up in that?
[00:02:21] Fatimah: that's a very interesting question because my father had passed when I was six years old his family was all around us. They're originally from Colorado, his family, the Colliers, came out from Missouri after Reconstruction, and they set up
a black town called Deerfield, Colorado. So the Deerfield, Colorado is a ghost town now, but that's the cultural context that I grew up in was that even though my mother's family, my maternal lineage is from Massachusetts and Education, of course, was very important for them. We were living in Colorado, and the attitude in Colorado was just to manage to get by we were a strong clan. Even though my father had passed, I was embraced by the rest of the family.
[00:03:15] Rori: And, of course, we still had segregated
[00:03:17] Fatimah: schools, so I went to all Black schools, and it's hard to think of Denver as having Black schools, but, in fact, they did. African Americans Mexican Americans and the Japanese Americans who were there because of the internment camps, we all grew up together.
[00:03:37] Fatimah: I learned a lot about other people's cultures. I think that it helped a lot with the tolerance, but dominant culture, cultural influence where I grew up was Black, was African American. So I really didn't have, contact with European Americans until I went to college.
[00:03:55] Rori: That was a big shift. I can only imagine.
[00:03:58] Fatimah: that was huge. And everyone was wearing the little mini skirts and the go go boots we would all try to wear these blue jeans that were so tight that you had to lay down in the bathtub to zip up.
[00:04:12] Emilia: sounds uncomfortable.
[00:04:13] Fatimah: blue jeans never really fit most of the African American girls because we had the derriere going on,
[00:04:21] Rori: uhhuh And you were like, wait a minute.
[00:04:23] Fatimah: like
[00:04:23] Rori: differences in leg morphology with a lack of differences in the structural construction of blue jeans.
[00:04:31] Fatimah: yes. that's where I really got interested in physical or biological anthropology from the personal need to try to find clothes that fit and to figure out as most young people try to figure out where do I fit in this mix of many different people that I was encountering in college.
[00:04:55] Emilia: Or maybe it was initiated because you were in, such a diverse community
[00:04:58] Fatimah: Yes, yeah, it was so diverse and yet we could see patterns because pattern recognition is extremely important if you're in science. And I could see that, because I ran track African Americans and people of African descent tended to dominate the fast races, but at that we really weren't seeing a lot of African American presence in the long distance running. So I thought what do I do? What's going on here? And of course, swimming you didn't see African Americans in swimming. So I wondered, was it because there were, no swimming pools in African American community, or was it because we had more dense bones and so we sank more or I just I wondered. That wondering got me into human biology and that's where I've been ever since.
[00:05:55] Rori: you came from this. Environment of like immense diversity, in your high school. And then you went to a predominantly white institution at Cornell.
[00:06:06] Fatimah: my first two years were at University of Colorado, I transferred to Cornell University.
[00:06:11] Emilia: you transfer?
[00:06:12] Fatimah: because I saw my, my future husband's picture in the newspaper, Rocky Mountain News. It said, ungrateful Negroes take over student union. I said, that's where I want to go.
So, were you unhappy at Colorado? Is it really because you saw the picture of your future husband and you said I want to go Cornell. or,
I just wanted to see something different because, my mother had been in the USO during World War II and so she had pictures of North Africa and Italy and with the Tuskegee Airmen. And so she was the one who brought that spirit of adventure and travel. and, of course, being around her it got me thinking and I looked at the pictures and I thought, Oh, I'd like to, I'd like to see the world too.
[00:07:10] Rori: a gift. Did she support you? Was she happy for you to go to school? huh.
[00:07:15] Fatimah: very supportive, fortunately. She and my grandmother, they went against the general tendency in my family paternal family, which is that the girls get married early and they start having babies I also wanted to, I wanted to be in a place that I thought would be more progressive.
[00:07:34] Emilia: in what way?
[00:07:35] Fatimah: politically in terms of the Black Power struggle and in terms of where our people were going. It was a lot of discussion about building a nation getting a major that was relevant for the revolution.
[00:07:50] Fatimah: But the only thing at Cornell is that I really had to work a lot there's a saying that my grandmother used to say. She said, you have to root hog or die poor so that was what she said you're going to have to do at Cornell. You're going to have to root hog or die poor that's really how it was for me. I worked very hard and fortunately I had good mentors at Cornell
[00:08:18] Rori: your mentors?
[00:08:20] Fatimah: I said, I'm going to sit in the front row, even if I have to have my pajamas on because it's an early morning biochemistry class. I'm going to be there and I'm going to be the first one to ask a question so I'm going to take control of this And I'm going to introduce myself to the professor so they understand that whatever assumptions they had, they better throw those by the wayside because not today.
[00:08:49] Rori: Not powerful. And that takes so much strength. You're like, I'm going to head off this dismissing of me at the start.
[00:08:56] Fatimah: You showed up, you did more, you were more participatory, and it
[00:08:59] Rori: worked, it sounds like.
[00:09:00] Fatimah: It worked. Because if you work hard, and if you've got some potential best of the professors, latch onto that they recognize it, and they reward you for it,
was your major then?
[00:09:07] Fatimah:My major was biological anthropology, human biology, so
[00:09:18] Rori: was that received in like the black power community that you were a part
of?
[00:09:22] Fatimah: oh, that's, It's not going to bring about liberation,
[00:09:26] Rori: But you did between your undergrad and
[00:09:28] Emilia: your PhD, you mentioned that you went to Africa for three years.
why did you do that?
[00:09:33] Fatimah: so my husband was doing research, his master's research,
and, he did not want to fight in Vietnam. And he had the opportunity to go to Tanzania, East Africa by that time, I, we had married. I did what we do. We follow our husbands. I had been admitted to a PhD program at Cornell. I had to put that on hold because of the pressing issue of wanting to keep the family together and wanting to be a wife. And so I went to Tanzania and we didn't speak the, language, so we had to learn it there of course I had a bachelor's degree from Cornell, so that allowed the Tanzanian government to be interested in employing me, and of course my husband was already doing research and they sent us to a rural area, upcountry, and that's where I learned a lot about evolution, a lot about human biology because we went to a place it's called Kilosa, and it was a place where very few expatriates were living and I worked for the Ministry of National Education. My husband worked for the Ministry of Agriculture.
[00:10:57] Rori: Wow, rural Africa. And you were working in the schools there.
[00:11:02] Fatimah: so I was working at a teacher training college.
[00:11:05] Rori: Okay, cool.
[00:11:07] Fatimah: Physics and English and of course in the process, I also learned the Tanzanian Perspective on biology. And they had their own taxonomic systems. So they weren't using the Linnaean system. They had their own system so they taught me.
[00:11:26] Rori: That is so cool. How did it change your ideas? you have any examples of a way that you're thinking of biological systems shifted once you learned the Tanzanian system?
[00:11:37] Fatimah: the Tanzanian system is very practical. They will name an insect, for example, based upon its utility for humans. So if it's not very useful for humans, then it's in a different category than if it's if its presence is actually beneficial.
[00:11:56] Emilia: so your plan was to go to Africa for a time and then come back and
do your
[00:12:02] Fatimah: I was worried that. I would never come back.
[00:12:05] Rori: huh?
[00:12:06] Fatimah: so we went with the idea that we're going to stay here,
[00:12:12] Emilia: what happened, like what made you come back then?
[00:12:18] Fatimah: I came down to Dar es Salaam got bitten by a mosquito that I probably didn't have a, passive immunity to. And when I went back to the upcountry area, I had been dancing with my students, but my arms were so sore. And then I got really sick. I developed jaunters and, I lost the ability to speak they had to rush me to the hospital And in the hospital they said, she hardly has any malaria. But when you're a virgin, in of malaria uh, You suffer a lot more than the people who have some adaptation to it. It was very severe. But when I lost the ability to speak, I said, I have to make a covenant to God. If you let me go back to school, I will study malaria. So that was my covenant. I'm so stupid. I'm just like, like can make a covenant with God, right? so I did get over the malaria. So then it was my turn. It was my turn to follow through on my commitment, which was to go back to school, get my Ph. D., and study malaria. So I did. I went back to Cornell, and I almost got pulled into studying sociobiology and neurobiology because E. O. Wilson had just come out with his book and it was, everyone was talking about sociobiology, but I remembered, that's right. I made a covenant With God. So I
[00:13:54] Rori: So you can't go back on that. So you're
[00:13:56] Fatimah: go back on it.
[00:13:57] Rori: It doesn't matter how fancy E. O.Wilson's stuff is feeling right
[00:14:01] Fatimah: right, what about the community that you left in
[00:14:03] Emilia: Tanzania? Like how was that leaving that community?
[00:14:06] Fatimah: that was hard because they wanted us to come back. They said, just go, but come back because you are going to be ambassadors for us. And you'll people about how, we live. They said, we know in most of Europe and the United States, people think that, we're just animals. And we're just animals. They show pictures of Africa and they show elephants and lions, but they don't show the people at that time, of course, we didn't have as rich an understanding about human evolution the way we do now. Now, East Africa is like, yeah, this is a homeland for humanity.
[00:14:45] Rori: Totally.
[00:14:46] Emilia: So what were the narratives back then about human evolution for our listeners?
[00:14:50] Fatimah: evolution, We're not sure if humankind evolved in Africa first. People thought, must be, India, must be, but definitely if they were in Africa, they were European looking. They weren't African looking.
[00:15:05] Rori: Oh my god.
[00:15:06] Fatimah: one of the things that happened was the discovery of Australopithecus Africanus Lucy. And when Don Johanson and Tim White,identified Lucy and there was no doubt in their minds that this was a person Indigenous to East Africa and so these prominent white American scholars came out and said the earliest humankind were in Africa. And that volumes. that to the chagrin of all the races. And it's one of the reasons that, that I've stuck with human evolution because I feel like there's a truth there that bring us together if we would just listen. Listen to truth. And I've been aided and abetted by the researchers who are doing high quality work and trying to get beyond the racial stereotypes and paradigms
[00:16:09] Rori: yeah, to actually look at the data, actually do some science instead putting our racist ideas, like imposing them onto a scientific framework,
[00:16:18] Fatimah: Exactly. And that gives me hope because it means that underneath all of this stuff, there are human beings and we just might realize that we're all related to each other,
[00:16:32] Rori: if this is not a good pitch for studying human evolution and anthropology, I don't know what is right there. Have all these listeners are gonna be changing their major after they hear this,
[00:16:42] Fatimah: that's okay.
[00:16:45] Emilia: you went back to Cornell, you became a PhD student. I imagine that back then you were probably one of the few women in your graduate program.
[00:16:55] Rori: And any black women apart from
[00:16:58] Fatimah: No.
[00:16:59] Emilia: so how was that like?
[00:17:00] Fatimah: That's Cornell you root hog or you die poor. So yes, it's hard
that you don't see people that look like you, but you look for other things in people that you can bond with, they're not going to necessarily understand where you're coming from, but you find the other aspects of your life that you can connect with them. I think that if we don't recognize the whole people that we are, then we cut ourselves short of major insights and major growth. I had a really good professor from parasitology. I was his last PhD student. He was a veterinary parasitologist, but that's where I learn about malaria.He treated me like,a daughter or a granddaughter. he, even washed my laundry on several occasions because he was invested in me. And I would say to him, Dr. Whitlock, how can I repay you And he said, just play it forward that's the lesson that we should all keep in mind that whatever good has come to you, pass it on to the nextperson because we are all connected here.
[00:18:19] Rori: And you have done that in spades. It's so impressive. Dr. Whitlock, I hope wherever his being is, he knows it has been paid forward.
[00:18:28] Fatimah: first of all,
[00:18:29] Rori: I don't know many academics who have six kids. like this is very impressive as somebody with only two kids. I'm like, wow, Dr. Jackson, that's very impressive. What was parental leave like for your different births?
[00:18:44] Fatimah: no, there wasn't any parental leave.
[00:18:46] Rori: Not any time. Not
[00:18:48] Fatimah: At anytime no the last child, he's 33 now, he, was born in, 89. I had, asked my, chair at the University of Florida,I said, I really need to take some time off. And he said, well, we just can't handle that. I mean, we don't haveanyone to replace you.
[00:19:08] Rori: Wow. In 89, they were like, no, no leave for you.
[00:19:11] Fatimah: did you have somebody help you? Like,
[00:19:13] Emilia: did you take your kid with you
[00:19:16] Fatimah: We bought a van, and we parked it in the parking lot at Berkeley and then I would, uh, nurse my newborn baby there and then my husband would come and, because he was, he was teaching, but not at the same time that I was, so either he would take the baby around to burp the baby and so forth, Or, one of my graduate students. In fact, she's a, she's a full professor now. But, yeah, she, she would take the baby around and she told me, cause she's white American, she said, when she'd be pushing this little brown baby around, her friends would come up to her and say, So, what have you been doing? Ha, Ha, ha, ha, ha. And,
[00:19:59] Rori: interesting. I'm curious. are you a grandparent yet or not
[00:20:03] Fatimah: Oh yes. Yeah, my husband and I have 11 grandchildren.
[00:20:06] Rori: Oh my gosh. Congratulations.
[00:20:09] Fatimah: do you spend a lot of time with your grandchildren the kids all live around me. During Ramadan, we did a reenactment of the Battle ofBadr. This is a big battle. It's not numerically a big battle in Islam, but it's a big battle in terms of The development Islam. Yeah. So we reenacted it they had little swords made out of cardboard, my husband, I both try to stay involved with them because I also remember we teach human evolutionary biology. And so the whole grandmother hypothesis. That means we're supposed to be interacting with the grandkids. We're not supposed to be shutting them away. We're supposed to be transmitting the knowledge
[00:20:52] Rori: I love that. The grandmother hypothesis that your evolutionary biology informs your grandmothering your grandmothering informs your science. Obviously you're like in the car nursing right before you go and teach and your science informs how you be your grandmother. Pretty amazing. You were just mentioning, of course, that you were celebrating Ramadan and as we understand it, it was when you were at Cornell that you converted to Islam and that your faith is very important to you. you've described Islam as the thinking woman's religion how has your faith made you particularly well suited and prepared to be a scientist?
[00:21:28] Fatimah: I think that being critical is very essential for scientists.
[00:21:34] Rori: Absolutely.
[00:21:35] Fatimah: We have to be skeptical and critical. There are some things in Islam that you just have to believe because like any religion, it doesn't make any sense given what we know. But there's a lot of things in Islam that because of the degree to which science has evolved, we can understand a little bit better than your average Bedouin out in the desert.Who's just taking things on faith. But for example, There are several times in the Quran where Allah, God says that he's going to grab the lying, sinful people by their forelocks. So like, when we read that, we're like, what's up with that? Like, why forelocks?Except the neuroscientists tell us that this prefrontal cortex is where it's the executive center of the brain. Was that known 1, 400 years ago? No, but that's where the rubber meets the road. Maybe the insight was always there, but people didn't understand the mechanisms. Since I teach evolution, I've been thinking about how do you reconcile evolution and kind of fundamentalist views of Islam or Christianity Or, Judaism or or Buddhism or whatever. And I've done a lot of thinking on it. I haven't resolved it, but I think the key is in thinking about ultimate causation versus proximate causation. So as scientists, we're really good at discovering proximate causation. If evolution is a process, then the process of evolution, the mechanism is of course natural selection And genetic drift and mutation And so forth. But where's God in that? Way back, further back. And in fact, one of the names of God in Islam is, He's the Evolver. So pretty telling. Yeah. that's how I've reconciled the seeming discordance between religious belief and scientific belief But knowing that I've got to stay flexible in both domains, because what was true, Four years ago in science is no longer true. We used to teach that, all your fat cells are laid down when you're born and then you don't get any additional fat cells, no gain or loss of fat cells. That's before Liposuction will suck out those adipose, that adiposetissue. Now you have fewer fat cells or we can inject fat cells we have the technology now to do things that were seemingly impossible 20 years ago.
[00:24:28] Emilia: You did your undergraduate, your PhD at Cornell and I think also a postdoc, right?
[00:24:35] Fatimah: No. I didn't to do a postdoc.
[00:24:38] Emilia: So that means you went directly into UC Berkeley then.
[00:24:41] Fatimah: Yes,
[00:24:42] Rori: Pretty big deal, to just get a PhD and then go get a faculty job at UC Berkeley,
[00:24:46] Emilia: I hear stories that sometimes back then people just call each other on the phone and they say things like, Oh, there's a position here. Do you have a student? like how did it happen?
[00:25:02] Fatimah:I did apply, I was incredibly naive. I thought, if you apply, then you should get it, right? That's not the way the world works. When I applied, I did get calls from people at Berkeley. I remember one faculty member called me and said what kind of Muslim are you? It's totally illegal question but I didn't know so I, told him my story and so forth, but I mean, I'm just plain vanilla Sunni Muslim. I don't know if you all have had this experience, but sometimes when people see us, not only do they not assume that we are scientists, but they're more intrigued by the tone of our voice and our eloquence and our mastery of words. When I showed up at Berkeley for the interview. Somehow, I forgot all my slides.The slides I had brought were some slides that had to do with Maasai and lactose. so they said,do you want to talk about that? I said, no, I want to talk about malaria and cassava and cyanogenic glycosides I remember seeing The Dean of the graduate school, an African American man he was holding his breathas I was talking is she gonna embarrass us or gonna be But it turned out fine, you know, and then they offered me the job and I was like, of course you should because, had zero publications but because Cornell had offered me a position and I thought I need to move beyond Cornell
[00:26:40] Rori: again your mom's influence, like you gotta see something
different.
[00:26:43] Fatimah: you've see something different ships are not meant to stay in the harbor. They're meant to sail the big seas. that's what we have to do. That's what we're built for. I was able to do a lot at Berkeley, but it was difficult to have young kids and To be making19,000 a year. Yeah.
[00:27:05] Rori: I know times are different, but but not that different. It,
[00:27:09] Fatimah: was a struggle. And California very expensive,
[00:27:12] Rori: your time at UC Berkeley overlapped with David Blackwell's time there.
[00:27:15] Fatimah: Yes,
[00:27:16] Rori: a statistician!
Emilia and I are, like, have backgrounds in stats
[00:27:19] Emilia: Yes. I learned one of his theorems when I was a grad student at
Cornell
[00:27:24] Fatimah: Yeah. He did game theory. Yeah. I was just going to tell you a story about him. And that is that they had the black faculty meetings. so I was a new faculty member and they invited me to come to them. But of course the culture was at Berkeley, for black faculty, it was that if you're a junior, just shut up and listen and that was okay, because I really didn't have much to say anyway. I didn't know who these people were, except
[00:27:54] Rori: wait, were, there a lot of black faculty at Berkeley then?
[00:27:57] Fatimah: there There were about 20 people in the meeting.
Yeah. And, one of them was a physicist who had, was married to somebody from my hometown, from Denver. So yeah, so that was interesting. But yeah, Blackwell, I remember meeting, and he said to me, You can go far in biological anthropology because nobody knows anything about biological anthropology.So he said, not chemistry where all the theorems have already been identified. But he said in biological anthropology, that's wide open. And I thought, oh, okay. I wasn't mature enough to really understand what he was saying.
[00:28:39] Rori: Yeah. your field doesn't even exist yet. He's like, you can, you can make
this
[00:28:43] Fatimah: can make it. Yeah.
[00:28:45] Rori: You and David Blackwell have something in common, which is that You both are academics with a lot of kids each, like he had six or eight kids or so.
[00:28:53] Fatimah: Oh, did he? I didn't know. I didn't know. Yeah. Again, I didn't ask the important questions. I just sat there impressed all these good looking black men were there and that they had PhDs. And the other thing I remember is that brother that was married to a woman from Denver, He said something that I've always used as a model. everybody was talking and you know how men talk over each other and cut each other off. And yeah, I'm the best one. No, I'm the best one like that. Right he said, I've listened to you. Now you will listen to me. And that phrase stuck with me because it's like a self empowerment and he's expressing it to other African American men. But the way he said it really impressed me as, so this is how you get your point across. It was polite, but he was firm, and he said, I've listened to you, so you will listen to me. And then he said whatever he had to say, whatever it
[00:29:55] Rori: yeah. But what an approach. it seems like you had like several gems of mentorship from this group.
[00:30:00] Emilia: Going forward in time. the sequencing of the first genome happened maybe 20 years ago when people were organizing for that project what was that like, I've heard you talk about a prominent population geneticist, Luca Cavalli Forza.
[00:30:16] Fatimah: Yeah, Luca had a, huge hand, of course, in the human genome diversity. Human Genome Diversity Project. But He had a lot of antiquated ideas. He was saying we have to take into account these primitive people.I said, you can't say that. He said, but what should I say? are you an idiot? What if I called your mom a primitive?
[00:30:40] Rori: as if there's no other adjective
[00:30:42] Fatimah: Yes, it's like he didn't get it. He was still in that mindset. You remember the picture in Science where he had A bahá'í woman and he was pulling blood from her, but she was naked. And it was on the cover of science. And the complaint of course, was that you wouldn't want your own Italian woman naked The African, Central African woman had a, look of disinterest on her face. So that suggests to me a lack of informed consent. With the blood collection that he wasdoing.
[00:31:17] Rori: how does this blood collection impact her or benefit her? very classic colonial science.
[00:31:22] Fatimah: Very classic , and it was so hard for him to step out of that mindset. But he and many members from the Department of Energy went to Tuskegee, Which we also call the scene of the crime because of the know, Tuskegee syphilis study and the the government's involvement in that.He was there and as he gave his presentation about the Human Genome Diversity Project and I remember raising my hand and he said, Yes, Fatimah. And I said Dr. Cavalli Sforza, are you interested in African Americans being involved in the Human Genome Diversity Project? And I said, Okay. And he said, But of course, because you people are wonderful singers and dancers.
[00:32:12] Rori: Oh my god.
[00:32:13] Fatimah: This groan. he didn't know that in the audience were physicists and mathematicians. And, he was answering you answering
[00:32:25] Emilia: you're, a scientist.
[00:32:26] Fatimah: I went to the library, to the George Washington Carver bookstore, bought some little children's booklets on blacks in engineering, blacks in science, blacks in medicine. And then I saw him later that evening And said, Oh, I have a gift for you And I gave him the books. And then he never talked to me after that.
[00:32:53] Rori: You made your statement though with I, with a
[00:32:56] Fatimah: gift. he was a senior person. At that time, he was very senior. So you. don't want to disrespect him, but he was just wrong. so you try to educate people. But I think after that He really didn't want much more to do with me.
[00:33:13] Rori: When he said that, when he said Oh, of course, we want African American genome, it's because of African American dancing and singing or whatever. did other people in the audience
[00:33:25] Fatimah: Oh, yeah, it was collective groan.whole audience went, Oh, yeah.
[00:33:32] Emilia: Dr. Jackson, you have been at a lot of institutions. So is this because you were Pursuing a new opportunity or was it by necessity?
[00:33:41] Rori: What motivated you to move
[00:33:42] Fatimah: I'm in a two career family.
[00:33:44] Rori: Yeah
[00:33:45] Fatimah: you do want to, do? he's, he was a professor of nutrition.
So he finished up at Cornell as well. And what if the shoe had been on the other foot, so I said it's the right thing to do If I'm flexible and can move, then let's move to where he can get a university position because if the shoe were on the other foot, I would want that. How many women have had to just swallow their pride and not be able to pursue an academic life because their husband was intransigent. So I was, Yeah. I wasn't going to be intransigent it,it turned out fine, we went from Berkeley to Florida, And then we were there in Florida, and then my husband got a better position at Maryland, so then I applied and I got the position, and then,
[00:34:39] Rori: a long time.
[00:34:40] Fatimah: Oh yeah, 20 years, I'm emeritus there, yeah.
[00:34:43] Rori: At that point You could have retired. You said earlier that You feel like you're still somebody in their twenties who's like, next question, let's go instead, you took this position at Howard you had been at these predominantly white institutions,
[00:34:59] Fatimah: Well, I left Maryland to go to UNC Chapel Hill because they offered me a directorship Of a, research institute.
[00:35:07] Fatimah: Maryland wasn't offering me that So I thought, hey, let's do it. Plus, I need the money we're still academic. So we don't We don't have big salaries, you know? But I don't like living away from my family. That's what I realized. So after five years I figured I was as unhappy as I needed to be I was driving back and forth between Maryland and North Carolina. okay. So it was like. moving there.
[00:35:38] Emilia: Yeah.
[00:35:38] Fatimah: Just me, yeah. So that was, and sometimes the kids would rotate through and come visit but it wasn't an optimal situation. The other thing is that, I was the first scientist to be in charge of this institute was called the Institute of African American Research. I had been like a social science, history, political science. It was their institute. And here I come talking about all kinds of things, you know.
[00:36:11] Rori: about like genetic variation. You're like, Oh, this is different. Different
[00:36:14] Fatimah: Yes. Exactly. I didn't change, but I think that they saw me and didn't realize, no, she really is a scientist.
[00:36:23] Rori: These assumptions people make when they see you. You're like, even if they're like, Oh, she's an academic, they're going to assume a kind of academic that
[00:36:30] Fatimah: Yeah, she's in the humanities or something. Yeah, So I think that was a challenge for them, but I got grant money. We put on a big conference looking at genetic variation in Continental Africa and the Diaspora people flew in from Africa, and I had ambassadors from different African and American countries, and People are still talking about it. We had a lot of West Indian food. we say if a person can give a good, a conference, that they can throw down. I felt like I could throw down, get historians, but also get molecular biologists. People like Sarah Tishkoff were there. uh.
[00:37:13] Rori: bridges there.
[00:37:14] Fatimah: Oh, yeah. Because I had money, That's when you have funding, can do that
kind of thing.
[00:37:20] Rori: and then Yeah. that's the thing when you get the support, the financial support, then you can do the thing.
[00:37:25] Fatimah: But the more successful I was, the more I seemed to anger the powers that be at that time at, UNC. It's like they, they didn't hire me to be successful so when Howard called, I said, I'm out to Howard, because I have always wanted to come to Howard It's like, specifically, yeah, because it's the top HBCU. And at Cornell, my husband and I were always talking about, oh, we wish we could come to Howard. and in fact, Berkeley was consolation prize because Howard didn't have the funding to, us to go there. So I went to Berkeley, which they weren't too happy about at Berkeley. To were. Consolation prize, right? There's something about an HBCU that you're in a milieu where you can think me. I can think more sophisticated. I remember at UNC, I was surrounded by smart people, but they didn't understand, for example, why I wanted to teach a course on The biological consequences of the transatlantic slave trade. They couldn't understand it. They said, we already have a course on colonialism. I said, that's not the same thing. You're not understanding I don't want to say I had to dumb down what I wanted to do, but I had to always express it. It's like in another language. I had to say what I wanted to do, what was in my heart, what really motivated me in a way that they could understand And sometimes they couldn't understand. I was very glad to finally be picked up by Howard And to be able to try to think more sophisticated thoughts.
[00:39:20] Rori: how is it. different at Howard if you proposed a class you didn't feel like you had to translate language, you didn't feel like you had to struggle to explain the significance?
[00:39:27] Fatimah: No. you don't have to do that. What you don't have at Howard is money.
[00:39:32] Rori: Yeah.
[00:39:33] Fatimah: money. The labs are decimated. , things don't work, the electricity goes off So those are handicaps that Howard has. But with good leadership, we should be able to overcome some of those obstacles, many of the students who go to Howard are very good. I've had Rhodes Scholar, I had a couple of Marshall Scholars Fulbright Scholars, and these are undergraduates. The level of
[00:40:04] Rori: intellectual innovation is just really different there.
[00:40:08] Emilia: so what would you revise and resubmit?
[00:40:12] Fatimah: the only thing that I think that I would change, or revise, and resubmit, is I would learn more Arabic. Because so much of the early scholarship,it was in Arabic, it's Like, knowing Latin. But Only better because we had brighter people, I think speaking Arabic and writing in Arabic. And I'd like get my hands on some of the manuscripts Timbuktu. Where they wrote in Arabic and also using Arabic script. And they had scientific thoughts about Caesarean birth and, about eye surgery. And I'd know what they had to say, I did spend a little bit of time at University of Khartoum, and of course I did Fulbright scholarship in Egypt. I'm familiar with the Arabic and I can read, but knowing deep down like the etymology of certain words I wish that could do that.
[00:41:18] Rori: I feel like I've learned so much
[00:41:20] Fatimah: yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for giving us your time. we really appreciate it. much for sharing the gift of your wisdom Thank you guys so very much. When I talk about these experiences, I'm reliving them. because the brain doesn't really differentiate time. So I was back in Tanzania and then I was in Liberia and I was at Berkeley again of course, I'm the perpetual optimist. So I try to look for the good in everything. Maybe that's the Pollyanna in me. But in any event, I have enjoyed this journey and down memory lane. Thank you guys very much. I appreciate it.
[00:42:02] Rori: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like what you heard, share it with your friends, students, and colleagues, or sign up for our announcement list at sciencewisepodcast. org.
[00:42:12] Emilia: You can also support this program by writing a review if your listening platform allows it.
[00:42:17] Rori: This episode was produced and edited by Maribel Quezada Smith, sound engineering by Maribel Quezada Smith, Special thanks to Dr. Fatimah Jackson. The hosts of Science Wise are Emilia Huerta Sanchez and me, Rori Rolfhs.
[00:00:09] Emilia: Who just so happens to be a badass scientist. I'm Emilia.
[00:00:12] Rori: And I'm Rori. We're two scientists on a mission to make the world of science more welcoming and to amplify the contributions of women.
[00:00:21] Emilia: Dr. Fatimah Jackson is a force of nature. She got her PhD in 1981 at Cornell University in Biological Anthropology. She was one of vanishingly few African American women who leaned in and changed the field that was struggling with scientific racism. She excelled in Faculty positions at a handful of prominent public institutions like UC Berkeley, University of Florida, University of Maryland, and UNC Chapel Hill, before enthusiastically moving on to Howard University. She has earned many awards, including The highest lifetime achievement award from the American Association of Biological Anthropologists for her immense research on the relationship between population genetic variation and the environment, particularly in Black populations. As a woman ahead of her time, she challenged highly respected population geneticists about racist frameworks they imposed on the science, and she did it with grace. She's accomplished so much. while raising six kids who she remains tight with. We cannot wait for you to hear some of our conversations with Dr. Fatimah Jackson.
[00:01:32] Rori: we are simply thrilled to have Dr. Fatimah Jackson with us today. Dr. Jackson has been a pillar in the community for decades. Decades. rightfully earned the American Association of Biological Anthropology's Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award, which is one of the most prestigious awards that you could earn in her field,
[00:01:52] Fatimah: Woohoo! Darwin's flipping in his grave!
[00:01:56] Rori: First, we're going to talk a little bit about your early life I learned that you did most of your growing up in a very close and loving household with your mom, your aunt, and your grandmother, and while your mom and your aunt had both been had quite a lot of education, had earned master's degrees. You did grow up with some financial instability in Denver. What did you learn growing up in that?
[00:02:21] Fatimah: that's a very interesting question because my father had passed when I was six years old his family was all around us. They're originally from Colorado, his family, the Colliers, came out from Missouri after Reconstruction, and they set up
a black town called Deerfield, Colorado. So the Deerfield, Colorado is a ghost town now, but that's the cultural context that I grew up in was that even though my mother's family, my maternal lineage is from Massachusetts and Education, of course, was very important for them. We were living in Colorado, and the attitude in Colorado was just to manage to get by we were a strong clan. Even though my father had passed, I was embraced by the rest of the family.
[00:03:15] Rori: And, of course, we still had segregated
[00:03:17] Fatimah: schools, so I went to all Black schools, and it's hard to think of Denver as having Black schools, but, in fact, they did. African Americans Mexican Americans and the Japanese Americans who were there because of the internment camps, we all grew up together.
[00:03:37] Fatimah: I learned a lot about other people's cultures. I think that it helped a lot with the tolerance, but dominant culture, cultural influence where I grew up was Black, was African American. So I really didn't have, contact with European Americans until I went to college.
[00:03:55] Rori: That was a big shift. I can only imagine.
[00:03:58] Fatimah: that was huge. And everyone was wearing the little mini skirts and the go go boots we would all try to wear these blue jeans that were so tight that you had to lay down in the bathtub to zip up.
[00:04:12] Emilia: sounds uncomfortable.
[00:04:13] Fatimah: blue jeans never really fit most of the African American girls because we had the derriere going on,
[00:04:21] Rori: uhhuh And you were like, wait a minute.
[00:04:23] Fatimah: like
[00:04:23] Rori: differences in leg morphology with a lack of differences in the structural construction of blue jeans.
[00:04:31] Fatimah: yes. that's where I really got interested in physical or biological anthropology from the personal need to try to find clothes that fit and to figure out as most young people try to figure out where do I fit in this mix of many different people that I was encountering in college.
[00:04:55] Emilia: Or maybe it was initiated because you were in, such a diverse community
[00:04:58] Fatimah: Yes, yeah, it was so diverse and yet we could see patterns because pattern recognition is extremely important if you're in science. And I could see that, because I ran track African Americans and people of African descent tended to dominate the fast races, but at that we really weren't seeing a lot of African American presence in the long distance running. So I thought what do I do? What's going on here? And of course, swimming you didn't see African Americans in swimming. So I wondered, was it because there were, no swimming pools in African American community, or was it because we had more dense bones and so we sank more or I just I wondered. That wondering got me into human biology and that's where I've been ever since.
[00:05:55] Rori: you came from this. Environment of like immense diversity, in your high school. And then you went to a predominantly white institution at Cornell.
[00:06:06] Fatimah: my first two years were at University of Colorado, I transferred to Cornell University.
[00:06:11] Emilia: you transfer?
[00:06:12] Fatimah: because I saw my, my future husband's picture in the newspaper, Rocky Mountain News. It said, ungrateful Negroes take over student union. I said, that's where I want to go.
So, were you unhappy at Colorado? Is it really because you saw the picture of your future husband and you said I want to go Cornell. or,
I just wanted to see something different because, my mother had been in the USO during World War II and so she had pictures of North Africa and Italy and with the Tuskegee Airmen. And so she was the one who brought that spirit of adventure and travel. and, of course, being around her it got me thinking and I looked at the pictures and I thought, Oh, I'd like to, I'd like to see the world too.
[00:07:10] Rori: a gift. Did she support you? Was she happy for you to go to school? huh.
[00:07:15] Fatimah: very supportive, fortunately. She and my grandmother, they went against the general tendency in my family paternal family, which is that the girls get married early and they start having babies I also wanted to, I wanted to be in a place that I thought would be more progressive.
[00:07:34] Emilia: in what way?
[00:07:35] Fatimah: politically in terms of the Black Power struggle and in terms of where our people were going. It was a lot of discussion about building a nation getting a major that was relevant for the revolution.
[00:07:50] Fatimah: But the only thing at Cornell is that I really had to work a lot there's a saying that my grandmother used to say. She said, you have to root hog or die poor so that was what she said you're going to have to do at Cornell. You're going to have to root hog or die poor that's really how it was for me. I worked very hard and fortunately I had good mentors at Cornell
[00:08:18] Rori: your mentors?
[00:08:20] Fatimah: I said, I'm going to sit in the front row, even if I have to have my pajamas on because it's an early morning biochemistry class. I'm going to be there and I'm going to be the first one to ask a question so I'm going to take control of this And I'm going to introduce myself to the professor so they understand that whatever assumptions they had, they better throw those by the wayside because not today.
[00:08:49] Rori: Not powerful. And that takes so much strength. You're like, I'm going to head off this dismissing of me at the start.
[00:08:56] Fatimah: You showed up, you did more, you were more participatory, and it
[00:08:59] Rori: worked, it sounds like.
[00:09:00] Fatimah: It worked. Because if you work hard, and if you've got some potential best of the professors, latch onto that they recognize it, and they reward you for it,
was your major then?
[00:09:07] Fatimah:My major was biological anthropology, human biology, so
[00:09:18] Rori: was that received in like the black power community that you were a part
of?
[00:09:22] Fatimah: oh, that's, It's not going to bring about liberation,
[00:09:26] Rori: But you did between your undergrad and
[00:09:28] Emilia: your PhD, you mentioned that you went to Africa for three years.
why did you do that?
[00:09:33] Fatimah: so my husband was doing research, his master's research,
and, he did not want to fight in Vietnam. And he had the opportunity to go to Tanzania, East Africa by that time, I, we had married. I did what we do. We follow our husbands. I had been admitted to a PhD program at Cornell. I had to put that on hold because of the pressing issue of wanting to keep the family together and wanting to be a wife. And so I went to Tanzania and we didn't speak the, language, so we had to learn it there of course I had a bachelor's degree from Cornell, so that allowed the Tanzanian government to be interested in employing me, and of course my husband was already doing research and they sent us to a rural area, upcountry, and that's where I learned a lot about evolution, a lot about human biology because we went to a place it's called Kilosa, and it was a place where very few expatriates were living and I worked for the Ministry of National Education. My husband worked for the Ministry of Agriculture.
[00:10:57] Rori: Wow, rural Africa. And you were working in the schools there.
[00:11:02] Fatimah: so I was working at a teacher training college.
[00:11:05] Rori: Okay, cool.
[00:11:07] Fatimah: Physics and English and of course in the process, I also learned the Tanzanian Perspective on biology. And they had their own taxonomic systems. So they weren't using the Linnaean system. They had their own system so they taught me.
[00:11:26] Rori: That is so cool. How did it change your ideas? you have any examples of a way that you're thinking of biological systems shifted once you learned the Tanzanian system?
[00:11:37] Fatimah: the Tanzanian system is very practical. They will name an insect, for example, based upon its utility for humans. So if it's not very useful for humans, then it's in a different category than if it's if its presence is actually beneficial.
[00:11:56] Emilia: so your plan was to go to Africa for a time and then come back and
do your
[00:12:02] Fatimah: I was worried that. I would never come back.
[00:12:05] Rori: huh?
[00:12:06] Fatimah: so we went with the idea that we're going to stay here,
[00:12:12] Emilia: what happened, like what made you come back then?
[00:12:18] Fatimah: I came down to Dar es Salaam got bitten by a mosquito that I probably didn't have a, passive immunity to. And when I went back to the upcountry area, I had been dancing with my students, but my arms were so sore. And then I got really sick. I developed jaunters and, I lost the ability to speak they had to rush me to the hospital And in the hospital they said, she hardly has any malaria. But when you're a virgin, in of malaria uh, You suffer a lot more than the people who have some adaptation to it. It was very severe. But when I lost the ability to speak, I said, I have to make a covenant to God. If you let me go back to school, I will study malaria. So that was my covenant. I'm so stupid. I'm just like, like can make a covenant with God, right? so I did get over the malaria. So then it was my turn. It was my turn to follow through on my commitment, which was to go back to school, get my Ph. D., and study malaria. So I did. I went back to Cornell, and I almost got pulled into studying sociobiology and neurobiology because E. O. Wilson had just come out with his book and it was, everyone was talking about sociobiology, but I remembered, that's right. I made a covenant With God. So I
[00:13:54] Rori: So you can't go back on that. So you're
[00:13:56] Fatimah: go back on it.
[00:13:57] Rori: It doesn't matter how fancy E. O.Wilson's stuff is feeling right
[00:14:01] Fatimah: right, what about the community that you left in
[00:14:03] Emilia: Tanzania? Like how was that leaving that community?
[00:14:06] Fatimah: that was hard because they wanted us to come back. They said, just go, but come back because you are going to be ambassadors for us. And you'll people about how, we live. They said, we know in most of Europe and the United States, people think that, we're just animals. And we're just animals. They show pictures of Africa and they show elephants and lions, but they don't show the people at that time, of course, we didn't have as rich an understanding about human evolution the way we do now. Now, East Africa is like, yeah, this is a homeland for humanity.
[00:14:45] Rori: Totally.
[00:14:46] Emilia: So what were the narratives back then about human evolution for our listeners?
[00:14:50] Fatimah: evolution, We're not sure if humankind evolved in Africa first. People thought, must be, India, must be, but definitely if they were in Africa, they were European looking. They weren't African looking.
[00:15:05] Rori: Oh my god.
[00:15:06] Fatimah: one of the things that happened was the discovery of Australopithecus Africanus Lucy. And when Don Johanson and Tim White,identified Lucy and there was no doubt in their minds that this was a person Indigenous to East Africa and so these prominent white American scholars came out and said the earliest humankind were in Africa. And that volumes. that to the chagrin of all the races. And it's one of the reasons that, that I've stuck with human evolution because I feel like there's a truth there that bring us together if we would just listen. Listen to truth. And I've been aided and abetted by the researchers who are doing high quality work and trying to get beyond the racial stereotypes and paradigms
[00:16:09] Rori: yeah, to actually look at the data, actually do some science instead putting our racist ideas, like imposing them onto a scientific framework,
[00:16:18] Fatimah: Exactly. And that gives me hope because it means that underneath all of this stuff, there are human beings and we just might realize that we're all related to each other,
[00:16:32] Rori: if this is not a good pitch for studying human evolution and anthropology, I don't know what is right there. Have all these listeners are gonna be changing their major after they hear this,
[00:16:42] Fatimah: that's okay.
[00:16:45] Emilia: you went back to Cornell, you became a PhD student. I imagine that back then you were probably one of the few women in your graduate program.
[00:16:55] Rori: And any black women apart from
[00:16:58] Fatimah: No.
[00:16:59] Emilia: so how was that like?
[00:17:00] Fatimah: That's Cornell you root hog or you die poor. So yes, it's hard
that you don't see people that look like you, but you look for other things in people that you can bond with, they're not going to necessarily understand where you're coming from, but you find the other aspects of your life that you can connect with them. I think that if we don't recognize the whole people that we are, then we cut ourselves short of major insights and major growth. I had a really good professor from parasitology. I was his last PhD student. He was a veterinary parasitologist, but that's where I learn about malaria.He treated me like,a daughter or a granddaughter. he, even washed my laundry on several occasions because he was invested in me. And I would say to him, Dr. Whitlock, how can I repay you And he said, just play it forward that's the lesson that we should all keep in mind that whatever good has come to you, pass it on to the nextperson because we are all connected here.
[00:18:19] Rori: And you have done that in spades. It's so impressive. Dr. Whitlock, I hope wherever his being is, he knows it has been paid forward.
[00:18:28] Fatimah: first of all,
[00:18:29] Rori: I don't know many academics who have six kids. like this is very impressive as somebody with only two kids. I'm like, wow, Dr. Jackson, that's very impressive. What was parental leave like for your different births?
[00:18:44] Fatimah: no, there wasn't any parental leave.
[00:18:46] Rori: Not any time. Not
[00:18:48] Fatimah: At anytime no the last child, he's 33 now, he, was born in, 89. I had, asked my, chair at the University of Florida,I said, I really need to take some time off. And he said, well, we just can't handle that. I mean, we don't haveanyone to replace you.
[00:19:08] Rori: Wow. In 89, they were like, no, no leave for you.
[00:19:11] Fatimah: did you have somebody help you? Like,
[00:19:13] Emilia: did you take your kid with you
[00:19:16] Fatimah: We bought a van, and we parked it in the parking lot at Berkeley and then I would, uh, nurse my newborn baby there and then my husband would come and, because he was, he was teaching, but not at the same time that I was, so either he would take the baby around to burp the baby and so forth, Or, one of my graduate students. In fact, she's a, she's a full professor now. But, yeah, she, she would take the baby around and she told me, cause she's white American, she said, when she'd be pushing this little brown baby around, her friends would come up to her and say, So, what have you been doing? Ha, Ha, ha, ha, ha. And,
[00:19:59] Rori: interesting. I'm curious. are you a grandparent yet or not
[00:20:03] Fatimah: Oh yes. Yeah, my husband and I have 11 grandchildren.
[00:20:06] Rori: Oh my gosh. Congratulations.
[00:20:09] Fatimah: do you spend a lot of time with your grandchildren the kids all live around me. During Ramadan, we did a reenactment of the Battle ofBadr. This is a big battle. It's not numerically a big battle in Islam, but it's a big battle in terms of The development Islam. Yeah. So we reenacted it they had little swords made out of cardboard, my husband, I both try to stay involved with them because I also remember we teach human evolutionary biology. And so the whole grandmother hypothesis. That means we're supposed to be interacting with the grandkids. We're not supposed to be shutting them away. We're supposed to be transmitting the knowledge
[00:20:52] Rori: I love that. The grandmother hypothesis that your evolutionary biology informs your grandmothering your grandmothering informs your science. Obviously you're like in the car nursing right before you go and teach and your science informs how you be your grandmother. Pretty amazing. You were just mentioning, of course, that you were celebrating Ramadan and as we understand it, it was when you were at Cornell that you converted to Islam and that your faith is very important to you. you've described Islam as the thinking woman's religion how has your faith made you particularly well suited and prepared to be a scientist?
[00:21:28] Fatimah: I think that being critical is very essential for scientists.
[00:21:34] Rori: Absolutely.
[00:21:35] Fatimah: We have to be skeptical and critical. There are some things in Islam that you just have to believe because like any religion, it doesn't make any sense given what we know. But there's a lot of things in Islam that because of the degree to which science has evolved, we can understand a little bit better than your average Bedouin out in the desert.Who's just taking things on faith. But for example, There are several times in the Quran where Allah, God says that he's going to grab the lying, sinful people by their forelocks. So like, when we read that, we're like, what's up with that? Like, why forelocks?Except the neuroscientists tell us that this prefrontal cortex is where it's the executive center of the brain. Was that known 1, 400 years ago? No, but that's where the rubber meets the road. Maybe the insight was always there, but people didn't understand the mechanisms. Since I teach evolution, I've been thinking about how do you reconcile evolution and kind of fundamentalist views of Islam or Christianity Or, Judaism or or Buddhism or whatever. And I've done a lot of thinking on it. I haven't resolved it, but I think the key is in thinking about ultimate causation versus proximate causation. So as scientists, we're really good at discovering proximate causation. If evolution is a process, then the process of evolution, the mechanism is of course natural selection And genetic drift and mutation And so forth. But where's God in that? Way back, further back. And in fact, one of the names of God in Islam is, He's the Evolver. So pretty telling. Yeah. that's how I've reconciled the seeming discordance between religious belief and scientific belief But knowing that I've got to stay flexible in both domains, because what was true, Four years ago in science is no longer true. We used to teach that, all your fat cells are laid down when you're born and then you don't get any additional fat cells, no gain or loss of fat cells. That's before Liposuction will suck out those adipose, that adiposetissue. Now you have fewer fat cells or we can inject fat cells we have the technology now to do things that were seemingly impossible 20 years ago.
[00:24:28] Emilia: You did your undergraduate, your PhD at Cornell and I think also a postdoc, right?
[00:24:35] Fatimah: No. I didn't to do a postdoc.
[00:24:38] Emilia: So that means you went directly into UC Berkeley then.
[00:24:41] Fatimah: Yes,
[00:24:42] Rori: Pretty big deal, to just get a PhD and then go get a faculty job at UC Berkeley,
[00:24:46] Emilia: I hear stories that sometimes back then people just call each other on the phone and they say things like, Oh, there's a position here. Do you have a student? like how did it happen?
[00:25:02] Fatimah:I did apply, I was incredibly naive. I thought, if you apply, then you should get it, right? That's not the way the world works. When I applied, I did get calls from people at Berkeley. I remember one faculty member called me and said what kind of Muslim are you? It's totally illegal question but I didn't know so I, told him my story and so forth, but I mean, I'm just plain vanilla Sunni Muslim. I don't know if you all have had this experience, but sometimes when people see us, not only do they not assume that we are scientists, but they're more intrigued by the tone of our voice and our eloquence and our mastery of words. When I showed up at Berkeley for the interview. Somehow, I forgot all my slides.The slides I had brought were some slides that had to do with Maasai and lactose. so they said,do you want to talk about that? I said, no, I want to talk about malaria and cassava and cyanogenic glycosides I remember seeing The Dean of the graduate school, an African American man he was holding his breathas I was talking is she gonna embarrass us or gonna be But it turned out fine, you know, and then they offered me the job and I was like, of course you should because, had zero publications but because Cornell had offered me a position and I thought I need to move beyond Cornell
[00:26:40] Rori: again your mom's influence, like you gotta see something
different.
[00:26:43] Fatimah: you've see something different ships are not meant to stay in the harbor. They're meant to sail the big seas. that's what we have to do. That's what we're built for. I was able to do a lot at Berkeley, but it was difficult to have young kids and To be making19,000 a year. Yeah.
[00:27:05] Rori: I know times are different, but but not that different. It,
[00:27:09] Fatimah: was a struggle. And California very expensive,
[00:27:12] Rori: your time at UC Berkeley overlapped with David Blackwell's time there.
[00:27:15] Fatimah: Yes,
[00:27:16] Rori: a statistician!
Emilia and I are, like, have backgrounds in stats
[00:27:19] Emilia: Yes. I learned one of his theorems when I was a grad student at
Cornell
[00:27:24] Fatimah: Yeah. He did game theory. Yeah. I was just going to tell you a story about him. And that is that they had the black faculty meetings. so I was a new faculty member and they invited me to come to them. But of course the culture was at Berkeley, for black faculty, it was that if you're a junior, just shut up and listen and that was okay, because I really didn't have much to say anyway. I didn't know who these people were, except
[00:27:54] Rori: wait, were, there a lot of black faculty at Berkeley then?
[00:27:57] Fatimah: there There were about 20 people in the meeting.
Yeah. And, one of them was a physicist who had, was married to somebody from my hometown, from Denver. So yeah, so that was interesting. But yeah, Blackwell, I remember meeting, and he said to me, You can go far in biological anthropology because nobody knows anything about biological anthropology.So he said, not chemistry where all the theorems have already been identified. But he said in biological anthropology, that's wide open. And I thought, oh, okay. I wasn't mature enough to really understand what he was saying.
[00:28:39] Rori: Yeah. your field doesn't even exist yet. He's like, you can, you can make
this
[00:28:43] Fatimah: can make it. Yeah.
[00:28:45] Rori: You and David Blackwell have something in common, which is that You both are academics with a lot of kids each, like he had six or eight kids or so.
[00:28:53] Fatimah: Oh, did he? I didn't know. I didn't know. Yeah. Again, I didn't ask the important questions. I just sat there impressed all these good looking black men were there and that they had PhDs. And the other thing I remember is that brother that was married to a woman from Denver, He said something that I've always used as a model. everybody was talking and you know how men talk over each other and cut each other off. And yeah, I'm the best one. No, I'm the best one like that. Right he said, I've listened to you. Now you will listen to me. And that phrase stuck with me because it's like a self empowerment and he's expressing it to other African American men. But the way he said it really impressed me as, so this is how you get your point across. It was polite, but he was firm, and he said, I've listened to you, so you will listen to me. And then he said whatever he had to say, whatever it
[00:29:55] Rori: yeah. But what an approach. it seems like you had like several gems of mentorship from this group.
[00:30:00] Emilia: Going forward in time. the sequencing of the first genome happened maybe 20 years ago when people were organizing for that project what was that like, I've heard you talk about a prominent population geneticist, Luca Cavalli Forza.
[00:30:16] Fatimah: Yeah, Luca had a, huge hand, of course, in the human genome diversity. Human Genome Diversity Project. But He had a lot of antiquated ideas. He was saying we have to take into account these primitive people.I said, you can't say that. He said, but what should I say? are you an idiot? What if I called your mom a primitive?
[00:30:40] Rori: as if there's no other adjective
[00:30:42] Fatimah: Yes, it's like he didn't get it. He was still in that mindset. You remember the picture in Science where he had A bahá'í woman and he was pulling blood from her, but she was naked. And it was on the cover of science. And the complaint of course, was that you wouldn't want your own Italian woman naked The African, Central African woman had a, look of disinterest on her face. So that suggests to me a lack of informed consent. With the blood collection that he wasdoing.
[00:31:17] Rori: how does this blood collection impact her or benefit her? very classic colonial science.
[00:31:22] Fatimah: Very classic , and it was so hard for him to step out of that mindset. But he and many members from the Department of Energy went to Tuskegee, Which we also call the scene of the crime because of the know, Tuskegee syphilis study and the the government's involvement in that.He was there and as he gave his presentation about the Human Genome Diversity Project and I remember raising my hand and he said, Yes, Fatimah. And I said Dr. Cavalli Sforza, are you interested in African Americans being involved in the Human Genome Diversity Project? And I said, Okay. And he said, But of course, because you people are wonderful singers and dancers.
[00:32:12] Rori: Oh my god.
[00:32:13] Fatimah: This groan. he didn't know that in the audience were physicists and mathematicians. And, he was answering you answering
[00:32:25] Emilia: you're, a scientist.
[00:32:26] Fatimah: I went to the library, to the George Washington Carver bookstore, bought some little children's booklets on blacks in engineering, blacks in science, blacks in medicine. And then I saw him later that evening And said, Oh, I have a gift for you And I gave him the books. And then he never talked to me after that.
[00:32:53] Rori: You made your statement though with I, with a
[00:32:56] Fatimah: gift. he was a senior person. At that time, he was very senior. So you. don't want to disrespect him, but he was just wrong. so you try to educate people. But I think after that He really didn't want much more to do with me.
[00:33:13] Rori: When he said that, when he said Oh, of course, we want African American genome, it's because of African American dancing and singing or whatever. did other people in the audience
[00:33:25] Fatimah: Oh, yeah, it was collective groan.whole audience went, Oh, yeah.
[00:33:32] Emilia: Dr. Jackson, you have been at a lot of institutions. So is this because you were Pursuing a new opportunity or was it by necessity?
[00:33:41] Rori: What motivated you to move
[00:33:42] Fatimah: I'm in a two career family.
[00:33:44] Rori: Yeah
[00:33:45] Fatimah: you do want to, do? he's, he was a professor of nutrition.
So he finished up at Cornell as well. And what if the shoe had been on the other foot, so I said it's the right thing to do If I'm flexible and can move, then let's move to where he can get a university position because if the shoe were on the other foot, I would want that. How many women have had to just swallow their pride and not be able to pursue an academic life because their husband was intransigent. So I was, Yeah. I wasn't going to be intransigent it,it turned out fine, we went from Berkeley to Florida, And then we were there in Florida, and then my husband got a better position at Maryland, so then I applied and I got the position, and then,
[00:34:39] Rori: a long time.
[00:34:40] Fatimah: Oh yeah, 20 years, I'm emeritus there, yeah.
[00:34:43] Rori: At that point You could have retired. You said earlier that You feel like you're still somebody in their twenties who's like, next question, let's go instead, you took this position at Howard you had been at these predominantly white institutions,
[00:34:59] Fatimah: Well, I left Maryland to go to UNC Chapel Hill because they offered me a directorship Of a, research institute.
[00:35:07] Fatimah: Maryland wasn't offering me that So I thought, hey, let's do it. Plus, I need the money we're still academic. So we don't We don't have big salaries, you know? But I don't like living away from my family. That's what I realized. So after five years I figured I was as unhappy as I needed to be I was driving back and forth between Maryland and North Carolina. okay. So it was like. moving there.
[00:35:38] Emilia: Yeah.
[00:35:38] Fatimah: Just me, yeah. So that was, and sometimes the kids would rotate through and come visit but it wasn't an optimal situation. The other thing is that, I was the first scientist to be in charge of this institute was called the Institute of African American Research. I had been like a social science, history, political science. It was their institute. And here I come talking about all kinds of things, you know.
[00:36:11] Rori: about like genetic variation. You're like, Oh, this is different. Different
[00:36:14] Fatimah: Yes. Exactly. I didn't change, but I think that they saw me and didn't realize, no, she really is a scientist.
[00:36:23] Rori: These assumptions people make when they see you. You're like, even if they're like, Oh, she's an academic, they're going to assume a kind of academic that
[00:36:30] Fatimah: Yeah, she's in the humanities or something. Yeah, So I think that was a challenge for them, but I got grant money. We put on a big conference looking at genetic variation in Continental Africa and the Diaspora people flew in from Africa, and I had ambassadors from different African and American countries, and People are still talking about it. We had a lot of West Indian food. we say if a person can give a good, a conference, that they can throw down. I felt like I could throw down, get historians, but also get molecular biologists. People like Sarah Tishkoff were there. uh.
[00:37:13] Rori: bridges there.
[00:37:14] Fatimah: Oh, yeah. Because I had money, That's when you have funding, can do that
kind of thing.
[00:37:20] Rori: and then Yeah. that's the thing when you get the support, the financial support, then you can do the thing.
[00:37:25] Fatimah: But the more successful I was, the more I seemed to anger the powers that be at that time at, UNC. It's like they, they didn't hire me to be successful so when Howard called, I said, I'm out to Howard, because I have always wanted to come to Howard It's like, specifically, yeah, because it's the top HBCU. And at Cornell, my husband and I were always talking about, oh, we wish we could come to Howard. and in fact, Berkeley was consolation prize because Howard didn't have the funding to, us to go there. So I went to Berkeley, which they weren't too happy about at Berkeley. To were. Consolation prize, right? There's something about an HBCU that you're in a milieu where you can think me. I can think more sophisticated. I remember at UNC, I was surrounded by smart people, but they didn't understand, for example, why I wanted to teach a course on The biological consequences of the transatlantic slave trade. They couldn't understand it. They said, we already have a course on colonialism. I said, that's not the same thing. You're not understanding I don't want to say I had to dumb down what I wanted to do, but I had to always express it. It's like in another language. I had to say what I wanted to do, what was in my heart, what really motivated me in a way that they could understand And sometimes they couldn't understand. I was very glad to finally be picked up by Howard And to be able to try to think more sophisticated thoughts.
[00:39:20] Rori: how is it. different at Howard if you proposed a class you didn't feel like you had to translate language, you didn't feel like you had to struggle to explain the significance?
[00:39:27] Fatimah: No. you don't have to do that. What you don't have at Howard is money.
[00:39:32] Rori: Yeah.
[00:39:33] Fatimah: money. The labs are decimated. , things don't work, the electricity goes off So those are handicaps that Howard has. But with good leadership, we should be able to overcome some of those obstacles, many of the students who go to Howard are very good. I've had Rhodes Scholar, I had a couple of Marshall Scholars Fulbright Scholars, and these are undergraduates. The level of
[00:40:04] Rori: intellectual innovation is just really different there.
[00:40:08] Emilia: so what would you revise and resubmit?
[00:40:12] Fatimah: the only thing that I think that I would change, or revise, and resubmit, is I would learn more Arabic. Because so much of the early scholarship,it was in Arabic, it's Like, knowing Latin. But Only better because we had brighter people, I think speaking Arabic and writing in Arabic. And I'd like get my hands on some of the manuscripts Timbuktu. Where they wrote in Arabic and also using Arabic script. And they had scientific thoughts about Caesarean birth and, about eye surgery. And I'd know what they had to say, I did spend a little bit of time at University of Khartoum, and of course I did Fulbright scholarship in Egypt. I'm familiar with the Arabic and I can read, but knowing deep down like the etymology of certain words I wish that could do that.
[00:41:18] Rori: I feel like I've learned so much
[00:41:20] Fatimah: yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for giving us your time. we really appreciate it. much for sharing the gift of your wisdom Thank you guys so very much. When I talk about these experiences, I'm reliving them. because the brain doesn't really differentiate time. So I was back in Tanzania and then I was in Liberia and I was at Berkeley again of course, I'm the perpetual optimist. So I try to look for the good in everything. Maybe that's the Pollyanna in me. But in any event, I have enjoyed this journey and down memory lane. Thank you guys very much. I appreciate it.
[00:42:02] Rori: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like what you heard, share it with your friends, students, and colleagues, or sign up for our announcement list at sciencewisepodcast. org.
[00:42:12] Emilia: You can also support this program by writing a review if your listening platform allows it.
[00:42:17] Rori: This episode was produced and edited by Maribel Quezada Smith, sound engineering by Maribel Quezada Smith, Special thanks to Dr. Fatimah Jackson. The hosts of Science Wise are Emilia Huerta Sanchez and me, Rori Rolfhs.