Season 1 |
Bonus Episode 7: How to be bold and gracefully assertive
[00:00:00] RORI: Hey, Emilia.
[00:00:01] EMILIA: Hey, Rori.
[00:00:02] RORI: Dr. Fatimah Jackson.
[00:00:04] EMILIA: I know.
[00:00:06] RORI: She's such, like, a consummate scientist. Six kids! I don't know anyone who's done anything like that except her. Like, she brings her science to the way she parents, right? I loved what she said. She was like, well, you know, Because of the grandmother hypothesis, I have to show up for my grandkids.
[00:00:23] EMILIA: Yeah, I love the way that hypothesis informs her grandmothering.
[00:00:27] RORI: Her life informs her science, her life informs like what questions she's gonna ask, and then science informs like how she's a grandparent.
[00:00:34] EMILIA: It sounds like her family is happy and around her.
[00:00:37] RORI: Yeah!
[00:00:37] EMILIA: They love her.
[00:00:38] RORI: She lives next door to one of her daughters.
I'm like, what a dream.
[00:00:42] EMILIA: Maybe one day my daughter will live near me.
[00:00:44] RORI: Let us all live such a good dream. Welcome back to Science Wise. Today, Emilia and I are talking about our conversation with the incomparable Dr. Fatimah Jackson. We'll bring you three take-home lessons from it.
So Emilia, what's one of the lessons that you got from our conversation?
[00:01:06] EMILIA: Um, it's almost difficult to describe. She's so grounded in her scientific mission.
[00:01:11] RORI: Yes.
[00:01:12] EMILIA: Being so grounded in her scientific mission really guided her through. Her career in so many different respects.
[00:01:19] RORI: Totally.
[00:01:19] EMILIA: For instance, if something was a research trend at the time, and I'm thinking about behavioral evolutionary genetics, she would see that it was a hot topic, but then she's like, no, I made a pact with God.
I am going to study malaria. And that's what I'm going to do.
[00:01:36] RORI: She was clear. I am not going to deviate from this. I'm going to study malaria. I'm going to study environmental factors that influence malaria, human genetic variation, and phenotypes in Black populations. And I mean, I think it's really remarkable.
Like, you know, the E. O. Wilson bullshit that she was talking about that, you know, has some eugenic roots, like it got popular. And because she was so clear, And grounded in her own mission, it didn't sway her.
[00:02:02] EMILIA: She was always very thoughtful and, and cognizant about the dangers of some of, of these trends. I think she talked about somebody at her institution who suggested that they give some samples to the Smithsonian.
And she understood that if they did, they were not going to have data sovereignty. And so she knew it was important. And I think now there's a lot of studies that highlight how this is a very important issue. And she had the foresight. to
know that.
[00:02:33] RORI: And I mean she inherited that honestly, right? Like the collection was assembled by Dr.
Montague Cobbs and he worked hard for that to have sample and data sovereignty at Howard. You know, these kind of like momentary trends of like, oh it could be a cool thing to, you know, donate the sample and people will know it came from Howard. She wasn't susceptible to that because she was so grounded in her mission to empower Black scientists that it wasn't attractive to her.
[00:03:00] EMILIA: It's hard to understand how you develop that inner strength or that clear vision, but she has a lot of that.
[00:03:08] RORI: And yeah,
[00:03:09] EMILIA: and that's impressive.
[00:03:09] RORI: It's totally impressive.
[00:03:11] EMILIA: What's another lesson for you, Rori?
[00:03:14] RORI: A lesson I got is that through your career, you may have to make a balance between decisions that you make that result in sacrifice on your part and result in ease.
Dr. Jackson made some decisions that prioritized her science and her career and she had to give something up for that. She talked about pursuing her PhD and she had kids. Of course, getting a PhD, you don't get paid a lot, and she and her family were living in the projects, and she was not happy about that.
Didn't she say she was like, talking to somebody about how unhappy she was with where they were living, and they were like, Well, you could quit your PhD job and go get a higher paying job, and then you wouldn't have to live there anymore, and she was like, Well, I'm not gonna do that, and it was worth it to her?
I'm not saying that PhD students shouldn't be paid much better, or that Dr. Jackson back then shouldn't have been being paid much better, but she did make a choice. to prioritize her science, even when it caused discomfort for herself and for others.
[00:04:10] EMILIA: Yeah, and I think sometimes when students do a PhD, they have to make some sacrifices.
For instance, some students have to be away from, far away from their families, and sometimes that's difficult. But yeah, of course, there are many situations where there are some unnecessary sacrifices. Like, I don't think people should be in an abusive work situation.
[00:04:30] RORI: Oh yeah, that's not like a sacrifice then.
Then it's just unnecessary, unproductive suffering. I don't know, Emilia, you and I are both raised Catholic. We have like, some kind of relationship to the idea of suffering as a good thing. But, but it's not necessarily, clearly, right?
[00:04:45] EMILIA: Of course. I think it depends on how people
define suffering.
[00:04:48] RORI: And I think we see this in Dr. Jackson, too.
[00:04:51] EMILIA: Yeah, I mean, she tried so many things, right, that requires sacrifice. She got a, an assistant professor position at UC Berkeley after graduating, uh, from Cornell. She didn't do a postdoc, right, that's really impressive. Yeah. But then she had to move after a few years because the amount of money she was getting for her salary was not enough.
[00:05:11] RORI: Yeah.
[00:05:11] EMILIA: So she tried that. And she's like, okay, this is not working out.
[00:05:15] RORI: Yeah.
[00:05:15] EMILIA: I'm going to find another solution.
[00:05:18] RORI: She didn't say like, oh, I can just like to make this work to stay at this fancy, prestigious university on a very low salary in a very expensive place. She was like, no, I have a limit. I'm going to choose ease.
And so she chose ease sometimes in that case. She chose a more easeful life. She said when she was making the choice to leave the UNC Chapel Hill position that she was kind of like semi-remote, and she was away from her family. She said I thought that I was about as unhappy as I needed to be. So I quit that job.
[00:05:45] EMILIA: Eventually she knew it was time to leave it.
[00:05:47] RORI: So I guess the thing is that you have to discern sometimes you're going to have to. Say no to something pleasant or do something difficult if you're gonna get this, if you're gonna have this academic science life. But you have to discern, it's not like you always need to make the difficult choice.
[00:06:00] EMILIA: Yeah and maybe, and maybe that's the lesson here that, and she sort of says it right, decide when you're as unhappy as you need to be.
[00:06:10] RORI: Yeah, I mean, that's some wisdom. Like, embroider that on a pillow.
[00:06:14] EMILIA: What's your next lesson, Rori?
[00:06:16] RORI: Well, okay, Emilia. This is not exactly a lesson, because I don't know how Dr.
Jackson does this. But I feel like she moves with a kind of confidence and boldness and graceful assertion that carries her through transitions and challenges.
[00:06:34] EMILIA: Like one thing
that she said is that when they move to Africa, to Tanzania, they move with the intention to live there.
[00:06:41] RORI: Yeah.
[00:06:42] EMILIA: To stay. That's bold. For anybody who has moved, they knows how difficult it can be to go to a different country, to have to make new connections with people there, get jobs.
[00:06:55] RORI: I mean, she was learning the language too, right?
[00:06:57] EMILIA: Yeah, and, and, and just to have the courage and confidence also, I suppose, to just say, yeah, we're going to move there and we're going to stay.
[00:07:07] RORI: Another bold move that she made. And, I mean, she, she called this a bold move, so I feel like I can. Is she went ahead and made a pact with God? It's pretty bold. She said it in the ways of, like, as if she and God were equals.
[00:07:18] EMILIA: She got malaria, right, and decided to make this pact.
[00:07:22] RORI: That's a really serious thing to do, right?
Like, what if you can't hold up your side of the pact?
That's scary. But she, she's bold and she has this follow through. It seems like she kind of imagines, as it says, what she wants her life to be like, and then she makes it so. And she did that with this pact, too. She was like, true to it. I wonder if some of this comes from, like, her parents.
I mean, you know, her dad died when she was so young, but she talked about being raised by his extended family, too, in Denver. And this really motivated, independent black community that descends from creating a black town. From the kind of beautiful community creativity to make something really stable.
That's bold. And they achieved it.
[00:08:13] EMILIA: Yeah, and I mean, she has so much grit in handling what I would think are really difficult decisions and situations. You know, like when she told us that story about Luca Cavalli Forza.
[00:08:25] RORI: Oh, yeah. At Tuskegee University?
[00:08:28] EMILIA: Yeah, that, that one. She asked him a question. What was the question, Rori?
[00:08:32] RORI: The question is,
are you going to include African American communities in the HGDP, which we talked about in a previous episode, very contentious.
[00:08:40] EMILIA: Right. And he said, of course, because did he say you are all good dancers and singers?
[00:08:45] RORI: Yeah, he said something super insulting. Like, of course, we'll include black people because you people are such good dancers and singers.
To a room of academics at the university.
[00:08:56] EMILIA: Yeah. Who were, you know, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, she knew that he didn't understand.
And so she got him a gift, you know, to expand his way of thinking.
[00:09:07] RORI: She brought him those children's books, and biographies of black scientists to school him. about
contributions from the Black community to science.
I mean, what a way to gracefully and with a gift educate him. I'm like, I've literally just like stormed out and slammed a door. She did so much more and so much better than that. It's like a model of respectful assertiveness.
[00:09:32] EMILIA: She has that quoi about her personality or aura, and I don't even know how she developed that.
[00:09:38] RORI: She learned some things, right? Like, from the black faculty at, uh, at UC Berkeley, in the black faculty group. This person would say, I have listened to you. Now you will listen to me.
[00:09:50] EMILIA: I like that.
[00:09:51] RORI: She's such an inspiration, and Emilia, I love talking with you about everything, including about Dr. Fatimah Jackson.
[00:09:57] EMILIA: I mean, Dr. Fatimah Jackson is so impressive, and she's so charming, and it was lovely to speak with her. I'm so glad she made space for us, and it was a delight.
[00:10:08] RORI: Absolutely.
Until the next time!
[00:10:10] EMILIA: Hopefully very soon,
Rori.
[00:00:01] EMILIA: Hey, Rori.
[00:00:02] RORI: Dr. Fatimah Jackson.
[00:00:04] EMILIA: I know.
[00:00:06] RORI: She's such, like, a consummate scientist. Six kids! I don't know anyone who's done anything like that except her. Like, she brings her science to the way she parents, right? I loved what she said. She was like, well, you know, Because of the grandmother hypothesis, I have to show up for my grandkids.
[00:00:23] EMILIA: Yeah, I love the way that hypothesis informs her grandmothering.
[00:00:27] RORI: Her life informs her science, her life informs like what questions she's gonna ask, and then science informs like how she's a grandparent.
[00:00:34] EMILIA: It sounds like her family is happy and around her.
[00:00:37] RORI: Yeah!
[00:00:37] EMILIA: They love her.
[00:00:38] RORI: She lives next door to one of her daughters.
I'm like, what a dream.
[00:00:42] EMILIA: Maybe one day my daughter will live near me.
[00:00:44] RORI: Let us all live such a good dream. Welcome back to Science Wise. Today, Emilia and I are talking about our conversation with the incomparable Dr. Fatimah Jackson. We'll bring you three take-home lessons from it.
So Emilia, what's one of the lessons that you got from our conversation?
[00:01:06] EMILIA: Um, it's almost difficult to describe. She's so grounded in her scientific mission.
[00:01:11] RORI: Yes.
[00:01:12] EMILIA: Being so grounded in her scientific mission really guided her through. Her career in so many different respects.
[00:01:19] RORI: Totally.
[00:01:19] EMILIA: For instance, if something was a research trend at the time, and I'm thinking about behavioral evolutionary genetics, she would see that it was a hot topic, but then she's like, no, I made a pact with God.
I am going to study malaria. And that's what I'm going to do.
[00:01:36] RORI: She was clear. I am not going to deviate from this. I'm going to study malaria. I'm going to study environmental factors that influence malaria, human genetic variation, and phenotypes in Black populations. And I mean, I think it's really remarkable.
Like, you know, the E. O. Wilson bullshit that she was talking about that, you know, has some eugenic roots, like it got popular. And because she was so clear, And grounded in her own mission, it didn't sway her.
[00:02:02] EMILIA: She was always very thoughtful and, and cognizant about the dangers of some of, of these trends. I think she talked about somebody at her institution who suggested that they give some samples to the Smithsonian.
And she understood that if they did, they were not going to have data sovereignty. And so she knew it was important. And I think now there's a lot of studies that highlight how this is a very important issue. And she had the foresight. to
know that.
[00:02:33] RORI: And I mean she inherited that honestly, right? Like the collection was assembled by Dr.
Montague Cobbs and he worked hard for that to have sample and data sovereignty at Howard. You know, these kind of like momentary trends of like, oh it could be a cool thing to, you know, donate the sample and people will know it came from Howard. She wasn't susceptible to that because she was so grounded in her mission to empower Black scientists that it wasn't attractive to her.
[00:03:00] EMILIA: It's hard to understand how you develop that inner strength or that clear vision, but she has a lot of that.
[00:03:08] RORI: And yeah,
[00:03:09] EMILIA: and that's impressive.
[00:03:09] RORI: It's totally impressive.
[00:03:11] EMILIA: What's another lesson for you, Rori?
[00:03:14] RORI: A lesson I got is that through your career, you may have to make a balance between decisions that you make that result in sacrifice on your part and result in ease.
Dr. Jackson made some decisions that prioritized her science and her career and she had to give something up for that. She talked about pursuing her PhD and she had kids. Of course, getting a PhD, you don't get paid a lot, and she and her family were living in the projects, and she was not happy about that.
Didn't she say she was like, talking to somebody about how unhappy she was with where they were living, and they were like, Well, you could quit your PhD job and go get a higher paying job, and then you wouldn't have to live there anymore, and she was like, Well, I'm not gonna do that, and it was worth it to her?
I'm not saying that PhD students shouldn't be paid much better, or that Dr. Jackson back then shouldn't have been being paid much better, but she did make a choice. to prioritize her science, even when it caused discomfort for herself and for others.
[00:04:10] EMILIA: Yeah, and I think sometimes when students do a PhD, they have to make some sacrifices.
For instance, some students have to be away from, far away from their families, and sometimes that's difficult. But yeah, of course, there are many situations where there are some unnecessary sacrifices. Like, I don't think people should be in an abusive work situation.
[00:04:30] RORI: Oh yeah, that's not like a sacrifice then.
Then it's just unnecessary, unproductive suffering. I don't know, Emilia, you and I are both raised Catholic. We have like, some kind of relationship to the idea of suffering as a good thing. But, but it's not necessarily, clearly, right?
[00:04:45] EMILIA: Of course. I think it depends on how people
define suffering.
[00:04:48] RORI: And I think we see this in Dr. Jackson, too.
[00:04:51] EMILIA: Yeah, I mean, she tried so many things, right, that requires sacrifice. She got a, an assistant professor position at UC Berkeley after graduating, uh, from Cornell. She didn't do a postdoc, right, that's really impressive. Yeah. But then she had to move after a few years because the amount of money she was getting for her salary was not enough.
[00:05:11] RORI: Yeah.
[00:05:11] EMILIA: So she tried that. And she's like, okay, this is not working out.
[00:05:15] RORI: Yeah.
[00:05:15] EMILIA: I'm going to find another solution.
[00:05:18] RORI: She didn't say like, oh, I can just like to make this work to stay at this fancy, prestigious university on a very low salary in a very expensive place. She was like, no, I have a limit. I'm going to choose ease.
And so she chose ease sometimes in that case. She chose a more easeful life. She said when she was making the choice to leave the UNC Chapel Hill position that she was kind of like semi-remote, and she was away from her family. She said I thought that I was about as unhappy as I needed to be. So I quit that job.
[00:05:45] EMILIA: Eventually she knew it was time to leave it.
[00:05:47] RORI: So I guess the thing is that you have to discern sometimes you're going to have to. Say no to something pleasant or do something difficult if you're gonna get this, if you're gonna have this academic science life. But you have to discern, it's not like you always need to make the difficult choice.
[00:06:00] EMILIA: Yeah and maybe, and maybe that's the lesson here that, and she sort of says it right, decide when you're as unhappy as you need to be.
[00:06:10] RORI: Yeah, I mean, that's some wisdom. Like, embroider that on a pillow.
[00:06:14] EMILIA: What's your next lesson, Rori?
[00:06:16] RORI: Well, okay, Emilia. This is not exactly a lesson, because I don't know how Dr.
Jackson does this. But I feel like she moves with a kind of confidence and boldness and graceful assertion that carries her through transitions and challenges.
[00:06:34] EMILIA: Like one thing
that she said is that when they move to Africa, to Tanzania, they move with the intention to live there.
[00:06:41] RORI: Yeah.
[00:06:42] EMILIA: To stay. That's bold. For anybody who has moved, they knows how difficult it can be to go to a different country, to have to make new connections with people there, get jobs.
[00:06:55] RORI: I mean, she was learning the language too, right?
[00:06:57] EMILIA: Yeah, and, and, and just to have the courage and confidence also, I suppose, to just say, yeah, we're going to move there and we're going to stay.
[00:07:07] RORI: Another bold move that she made. And, I mean, she, she called this a bold move, so I feel like I can. Is she went ahead and made a pact with God? It's pretty bold. She said it in the ways of, like, as if she and God were equals.
[00:07:18] EMILIA: She got malaria, right, and decided to make this pact.
[00:07:22] RORI: That's a really serious thing to do, right?
Like, what if you can't hold up your side of the pact?
That's scary. But she, she's bold and she has this follow through. It seems like she kind of imagines, as it says, what she wants her life to be like, and then she makes it so. And she did that with this pact, too. She was like, true to it. I wonder if some of this comes from, like, her parents.
I mean, you know, her dad died when she was so young, but she talked about being raised by his extended family, too, in Denver. And this really motivated, independent black community that descends from creating a black town. From the kind of beautiful community creativity to make something really stable.
That's bold. And they achieved it.
[00:08:13] EMILIA: Yeah, and I mean, she has so much grit in handling what I would think are really difficult decisions and situations. You know, like when she told us that story about Luca Cavalli Forza.
[00:08:25] RORI: Oh, yeah. At Tuskegee University?
[00:08:28] EMILIA: Yeah, that, that one. She asked him a question. What was the question, Rori?
[00:08:32] RORI: The question is,
are you going to include African American communities in the HGDP, which we talked about in a previous episode, very contentious.
[00:08:40] EMILIA: Right. And he said, of course, because did he say you are all good dancers and singers?
[00:08:45] RORI: Yeah, he said something super insulting. Like, of course, we'll include black people because you people are such good dancers and singers.
To a room of academics at the university.
[00:08:56] EMILIA: Yeah. Who were, you know, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, she knew that he didn't understand.
And so she got him a gift, you know, to expand his way of thinking.
[00:09:07] RORI: She brought him those children's books, and biographies of black scientists to school him. about
contributions from the Black community to science.
I mean, what a way to gracefully and with a gift educate him. I'm like, I've literally just like stormed out and slammed a door. She did so much more and so much better than that. It's like a model of respectful assertiveness.
[00:09:32] EMILIA: She has that quoi about her personality or aura, and I don't even know how she developed that.
[00:09:38] RORI: She learned some things, right? Like, from the black faculty at, uh, at UC Berkeley, in the black faculty group. This person would say, I have listened to you. Now you will listen to me.
[00:09:50] EMILIA: I like that.
[00:09:51] RORI: She's such an inspiration, and Emilia, I love talking with you about everything, including about Dr. Fatimah Jackson.
[00:09:57] EMILIA: I mean, Dr. Fatimah Jackson is so impressive, and she's so charming, and it was lovely to speak with her. I'm so glad she made space for us, and it was a delight.
[00:10:08] RORI: Absolutely.
Until the next time!
[00:10:10] EMILIA: Hopefully very soon,
Rori.