Leidy Klotz on Subtracting Racism from Academia, Not Just Adding Diversity

Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now.

In this episode, Andrew is joined by Leidy Klotz, the author of Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, to discuss why we overlook subtraction, and how we can access its true potential.

From the episode:

Leidy Klotz: Obviously in academia we’re talking about, oh, this is a huge problem, racism in academia, and what do we do to try to address it? It was like, well, how do we add diversity? How do we diversify our department? How do we get more faculty of color? More women faculty in engineering, for example; we’re 80 percent male. It’s a huge problem, and of course we need to add diversity. But what about subtracting the racism? I mean, there’s the systemic racism, which is the thing that kind of everybody has recognized over the last year. Plus there’s the one or two racist guys still running around that we need to get out that would do just as much just as much good as adding diversity.

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Leidy Klotz studies and writes about how we transform things from how they are to how we want them to be. His research on the science of problem-solving has appeared in both Nature and Science and has been covered in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post among national newspapers on five continents. A professor at the University of Virginia, Leidy has authored more than 80 original research articles and writes on applications of his research for design, art, parenting, personal finance, climate change and many other fields.