Back to the Sixties.

Next time you're looking for inspiration, watch the Obamas' graduation day speeches. These two could have been very successful as televangelists for education if we hadn't given them their current jobs.

Michelle Obama spoke at University of California at Merced and you can read the text of her speech online.

I thought it was interesting to note, too, that Michelle's speech was mostly about other people. She mentioned a lot of names of students, those who apparently pushed hard for her to visit there. I thought that was interesting, especially given that our President uses his own experiences as examples, and he talks about his mother quite frequently in his speeches.

The text of the President's speech at Notre Dame is here and I watched it live on, of all places, Fox. I really enjoyed learning about how the civil rights negotiations almost broke down. I never learned the history of the 1960's in school.

Of course as soon as the speech ended, despite the standing ovation, Fox brought out our favorite chump, Michael Steele, who immediately started criticizing the President. If you don't know who Michael Steele is (and I was surprised to learn recently that some of my friends had never heard of him), go to Rachel Maddow's show online and type his name in the search box. I particularly like the way she highlights what a joke he is. So I turned the tv off when he started saying the same old things he always says.

Overall, I was hugely impressed with the Notre Dame speech, with only perhaps a very minor quibble over a point at the end- the last analogy to "fishermen." It's stupid that semantics matters, but I think it would have been better to say "they discovered that they all enjoyed fishing." Why re-emphasize that no women were included on the original civil rights commission? In the same speech where you want to make a claim for women's equal rights? Come on, who edited that?

(And I'm not even going to mention what some of my hippie-ish vegan, animal-rights activist friends say about fishing.)

In the end, we're not all fishermen. The point is supposed to be that we're all human beings.

Speaking of human beings, I guess I was thinking about these "little" slights we all take for granted, because like a lot of geeks I saw the new Star Trek movie.

I liked it well enough, but one thing stood out to me. By keeping basically the same characters as the original show, and the same miniskirts, the people who made this movie are helping (inadvertently or otherwise ) to perpetuate some of the same old stereotypes.

The original show had almost no women, and the new movie was the same in that regard.

Why? Just a total lack of originality? Because of Pepsi throwback, we have to be all nostalgic for the 1960s?

Perhaps the blackest humor of these filmmakers' choices is that the story is set a couple hundred years into the future, and yet childbirth still appears to be the same medical mystery (just like in the Star Wars movies). How depressing is that. Here's hoping that in the future, someone will at least have figured out some better solutions for PMS.

I always liked how the Star Trek franchise promoted technology, the spirit of exploration, and diversity: celebrating the differences and commonalities among races, and (at least among the imaginary space varieties) species.

I can only wonder how much watching these shows as a child must have influenced me to want a career as a scientist. They were some of the only shows I remember watching that promoted women in roles other than the traditional mom, girlfriend, daughter or housekeeper (unlike watching reruns of The Brady Bunch from the same era).

And although it was too late to help me choose a major, I rejoiced when they created a woman character who excelled at engineering.

Yet here we are, more than 40 years later (the original show first aired in 1966), and girls are only recently starting to be allowed to command space missions, both on tv and in real life. While some shows are attempting to put women in other interesting science-related careers, like CSI, what still gets the most attention? Their cleavage.

So I can't help feeling like the uproar over Obama's speech with regard to the abortion debate highlights how in the real-life year 2009, women are still pretty far from "equal".

Even our President doesn't have a solution to bridge that particular divide, but I like that he wants to try.

To the website formerly known as Change.gov

Dear President Obama and VP Biden,

On your website, you wrote:

Promoting Women in Math and Science: Women constitute 45 percent of the workforce in the U.S., but hold just 12 percent of science and engineering jobs in business and industry. Women also make up just 9 percent of the recipients of engineering-related bachelor's degrees. President Obama and Vice President Biden believe that every student should have equal access to education in math, science, and technology in order to compete on a global scale.

I'm writing to ask what you're planning to DO about this. Your website talks about "promoting" but I don't see any plan of action?

Actions speak louder than words.

Right now, I'm looking at being UNEMPLOYED as a woman with a PhD in Science and >5 years of Post-doctoral research experience.

Where's my promotion?

I'm looking at grants and and university policies.

Here's what needs to change.


1. NIH should allow ANYONE AND EVERYONE with a PhD to apply for ALL GRANTS.

Grant review should be done WITHOUT regard to past performance, depending ONLY on innovation and, if necessary, preliminary data (which, by the way, I have in spades!).

Just in case you don't understand why I'm telling you this, it's because the current funding mechanisms are:

a) Hierarchical
b) Archaic
c) Terribly biased (both with regards to gender and, dare I say it, ethnicity)
d) Exclusive of young people

Don't you like the support of the youth? Well, "young" investigator in science-land is anyone under the age of 40 (or maybe 42, when you get your first real grant in the current system?).

The current system COMPLETELY EXCLUDES YOUNG PEOPLE FROM DOING INDEPENDENT RESEARCH.

Where do you think the innovation comes from? Those 60-year old tenured professors?

Come on, really?

2. Universities should allow ANYONE AND EVERYONE with a PhD to apply for GRANTS AND LAB SPACE.

Currently, universities are blocking everyone post-PhD and pre-faculty from applying for independent funding. They do this because lab space is tied up with teaching responsibilities, which when you think about it.... really makes no sense.

To put it simply, at universities all over this country, we have faculty who don't teach anything, and researchers with no lab space of their own.

We have thousands of young, hardworking, trained researchers who are all going to quit science if you don't do something about it PRONTO.

Even better, YOU paid to train us. You, the government. The taxpayer. You paid to train us, and now you're going to have to start over from scratch. You know all those articles about how there's a dearth of scientists? There's two things you need to know about those.

1. They're TOTALLY FALSE. There are PLENTY of scientists, we just don't have the resources we need.

2. The fears about having a shortage of actual scientists are about to become true, if you don't act now and do something about it, you'll lose a whole generation (or two) of young people who wouldn't touch science as a career. Wouldn't even consider it when they see the job prospects. And they'd be totally justified, too.

My point being, this problem should be totally avoidable, but NIH and university policies make no sense. Put them together, and the "system", such as it is, was never designed to work as a a system, and instead it works against any kind of national research progress (especially health research, which you claim to care about!) .

You may be wondering why I'm writing this now, when it's maybe too late.

I'm writing this now because I'm hearing two rumors.

Rumor 1. That the Stimulus Plan (the name of which frankly sounds like the economic version of a pornographic fluffer).. wait, I lost my train of thought. Oh, right. That the Stimulus Plan has, in the current (recent?) version, money for >1000 2-year grants.

Rumor 2. That the NIH part of the Stimulus Plan is on the chopping block (thank you, Republiscum who would rather cut taxes, like that's really going to help anything).


If Rumor 1 is right, then you have to make sure these grants are AVAILABLE and ACCESSIBLE to researchers at ALL LEVELS (even women! even non-faculty!).

If Rumor 2 is correct, none of this matters, and you've got your work cut out for you.

Uh, good luck. Have fun running the country

Sincerely,

MsPhD


p.s.

Thank you for your inspiring speeches, they're great. But actions still speak louder than words.

p.p.s.

If this isn't sufficiently clear, feel free to contact me via this blog and I will happily explain it to you and your support staff.