Asian Americans: The Forgotten Minority in Ecology

摘要

Many recent articles have focused on the lack of diversity in ecology and environmental fields (Becket al. 2014, Cid and Bowser 2015). These articles have effectively identified the alarming underrepresen-tation of racial minorities in ecology, in comparison with both the population of the United States andother scientific fields. In these studies and their analyses, Asian Americans are explicitly omitted fromthe discussion, as they are generally not considered to be underrepresented in the sciences. However,data suggest a significant underrepresentation of Asian Americans in the field of ecology. In 2018, AsianAmericans were 5.6% of the U.S. population but earned only 3.0% of ecology Ph.Ds (Fig. 1). A 2010study on faculty diversity across environmental disciplines found that Asians were only 2.2% of ecologyfaculty relative to 4.8% of the U.S. population (Taylor 2010).