Six Things a Diversity & Inclusion Chair Does
It is EACL week. What starts as a research project and gets digested into a paper, pushed through peer review and finally receives a poster or oral presentation culminates here: at an academic conference. A conference can be the icing on top of a successfully completed research project and at the same time the source of inspiration for the next one. It can be the place where the conversation happens that lands one the next job. It can be a foot into the door of a prestigious university or the introduction to collaborators needed for a research grant.
While conferences are considered as a necessary tool for exchange within the scientific community, they are not accessible for everyone. For many researchers outside of North America and Europe entrance fees are too high to be covered by universities or by the researchers themselves, let alone costs for obtaining a visa and travelling to a conference location far from their native countries, that are often considered too “dangerous” for international conferences to be held there. These are only a few of the many structural barriers inhibiting the free exchange of ideas, which is a core value of science.
Conference organisers recognize that these barriers exist, which is why many nominate people specifically to remove as many of these barriers as possible: the Diversity & Inclusion Chairs. If you have seen this title on conference websites and wondered what these people actually do, wonder no more. I am one of the D&I chairs of EACL 2024 and these are the tasks that the D&I chairs take on at an *ACL conference:
Raising D&I funds: Large tech companies regularly fund academic conferences in exchange for booths at the conference venue. Especially in NLP the influence of industry on the academic discourse is palpable. So why not ask them to fund the participation of people who could not afford to be at the conference otherwise? Being a D&I chair means writing letters to sponsorship representatives of companies asking for just that and hoping for the best.
Distributing D&I funds: Once the money is collected, it can be distributed to those who need it. A call for D&I grant applications is put online and advertised by the D&I chairs. After the call closes they sort the requests for assistance by different criteria. Is the person a paper author? What region of the world do they come from? What other barriers to attendance do they face? Spoiler alert - there is usually much less money than people needing it. And sending out rejection letters sucks.
Handling documents needed for the D&I grant awardees: Once the D&I chairs have determined who will receive money they have to make sure that this information gets to the people in question. Once they agree to accept the award, the D&I chairs stay in close contact with them to get them all the documents they need for a visa application. These documents can be different depending on where the person is applying, and time is of the essence, because the visa process is often slow and bureaucratic. If there are any major problems, the visa chair of the conference can help, too.
Organising affinity group meet-ups: You might be familiar with Queer in AI, but there are many other grassroot organisations run by researchers for researchers (also called affinity groups). Conferences are a great opportunity for these people to meet and connect, too. The D&I chairs reach out to affinity group members and ask whether they would like to organise events at the conference, and how the conference can support them in this. At EACL 2024 this means for example reserving rooms at the conference venue and advertising the events so as many people as possible can attend.
Organising Birds-of-a-feather-Sessions: The so called Birds-of-a-feather-sessions are informal gatherings of people who are interested in a certain research topic. It is the task of the D&I chairs to reach out to prominent figures in the research field and ask them to lead such sessions - which happens to varying degrees of success. If they say yes, the D&I chairs handle room bookings, scheduling and advertising the events, just as they do with affinity group meet-ups.
Handling accommodations at the conference: Do you need child-care at the conference venue, a wheel chair ramp or a quiet room? The D&I chairs make sure that you will get the accommodations you need to participate at the conference. Accessibility needs are very varied and can look different for every person. Because of this it is important to have people on site reacting whenever unexpected barriers pop up.
Unpaid labour is baked into the conference system, like reviewing papers and organising workshops. Volunteering in exchange for free entrance to the conference is for many (including me!) the only way to participate at the conference at all: Outside of universities and large tech companies in the global north, it is hard to find an employer who values academic conferences as highly as the immense cost of getting there and missing a whole week of work. This is why we, as a scientific community, need to think of other ways of exchanging our ideas. While D&I work is necessary, it can only ever be a bandaid. Global economic injustice, sexism, ableism and queerphobia will not be solved by an ever rotating set of unpaid and overworked academics.
This post was written by Sabine Weber. Sabine is a queer person who finished their PhD at the University of Edinburgh. They are interested in multilingual NLP, AI ethics, science communication and art. They organized Queer in AI socials and are D&I Chair of EACL 2024. You can find them on twitter as @multilingual_s or on their website.