IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2020 - 6

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Promoting Diversity and Justice:
Our Challenge and Responsibility
By Seth Hutchinson

hree months ago, I began this
column with the observation
that COVID-19 had brought
an eerie calm to the streets of
Atlanta. Today, the streets are no
longer quiet. No, the pandemic has
not abated here in Georgia (it seems
that the opposite may be true), and
the streets aren't filled with folks
going about their ordinary daily
business. Instead, people have taken
to the streets to protest racially mo--
tivated social injustice. Atlanta is not
alone. What began in 2013 as the
hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has now
become an international movement,
and protests are occurring across the
world, in cities on six continents.
The struggle for civil rights in the
United States, and more broadly for
human rights across the globe, is not
new. Nor will the fight to ensure these
rights be quickly or easily won. But this
moment in history bears the hallmarks
of a turning point, as evidenced by the
growing momentum for reform and the
structural changes that are already
beginning to take place across the
United States. In this moment, the scientific community has a moral obligation to take a stand in the ongoing fight
for social justice, and I hope that each of
us will thoughtfully consider our own
personal role in this fight.
In our private lives, many of us have
access to the usual tools afforded to citizens in a democracy, but I believe that
our obligations extend beyond action as
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2020.3008834
Date of current version: 10 September 2020

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

private citizens of our respective nations. I believe we bear
an enhanced responsibility
to society due to our status in
the world and our role in
shaping the future through the
technology that we create.
At a minimum, we have a responsibility to strive for broad diversity in
our technical community, not only
because, as is often said, diverse teams
produce better ideas but also because it
is a moral imperative to include all
groups in processes that will bear consequentially on their lives. While
racially motivated injustice was the catalyst for this moment, our commitment to diversity should (and must) be
more comprehensive, including at least
race, ethnicity, religion, citizenship,
nationality, age, sexual or gender identity, and disability. Our Society has
taken action to encode these ideals in
our IEEE Robotics and Automation
Society (RAS) Code of Conduct, which
was approved by the RAS Administrative Committee in its June meeting. I
encourage you to read it and act deliberately when choosing collaborators or
students, selecting technical articles for
citation, organizing committees for
workshops and conferences, and even
inviting folks to join you for dinner or
drinks at conferences. Further, when
you review articles, write letters of recommendation, or assign grades, be
mindful of your own implicit biases;
take an honest assessment, informed
by any of the available workshops or
webinars on the topic. Don't stop with
these steps. Be proactive. Learn more.

SEPTEMBER 2020

Make change happen. As scientists, we aggressively push
against the status quo to
advance the frontier of technology. Take this same attitude to the task of effecting
social change. We are well
equipped for this challenge and should
be at the forefront in these issues.
ICRA 2020
Change is also coming to the way we
conduct our conferences. By now,
many of you have participated in this
year's IEEE International Conference
on Robotics and Automation (ICRA
2020), our first fully virtual flagship
conference. By objective measures,
ICRA 2020 was a huge success, with
more than 5,000 registered participants,
of whom more than 3,000 were students; more than 1,500 recorded video
presentations by authors; 22 livestreaming events produced by IEEE.tv,
including plenaries, keynotes, workshops, and demos, for a total of 54 h of
streaming over 13 days; and more than
32,000 combined views of streamed
events on IEEE.tv (40% of which were
live views) watched in more than
50 countries.
My main fear about the fully virtual
format was that the conference would
be cold and impersonal, with no chance
for any genuine interaction. Those fears
were unfounded. I watched the Slack
channels and saw students connecting
with one another, inviting new colleagues
to join scientific discussions, and
-collectively solving various technical
problems for accessing conference

http://www.IEEE.tv http://www.IEEE.tv

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2020

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