I am a big believer in meditation and one of my favorite apps is Headspace. Users are encouraged to imagine the mind as a blue sky—the canvas onto which our thoughts and emotions appear. Clouds will inevitably roll in, representing anxiety and negative emotions, and, at times, those clouds may blanket the entire sky. But above the clouds, when you break through, the blue sky is always there.
For years, my work has explored how psychology and the applied behavioral sciences provide tools for policy design, implementation, and evaluation. More recently, I have turned my attention to behavioral science’s role in the pursuit of equity. In November 2024, my friend and colleague Mindy Hernandez and I published our book, Antiracist by Design, as a call to action for behavioral scientists to help address structural racism in our systems and institutions. Our goal was to give behavioral scientists specific strategies for embedding antiracist practices into all stages of the research process—treating equity and antiracism not as a separate agenda, but as a core design feature.
Since the book was released, hostility toward equity work has reached new extremes. The concept of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) has been weaponized to thwart efforts that attempt to address long-standing racial disparities in our social systems, recasting empirically grounded work as ideological rather than scientific.
But authentic engagement with principles of diversity, antiracism, and inclusion is still vital and progress is still possible. As behavioral scientists, failing to engage with a race-aware perspective will make us less effective, from a theoretical and practical standpoint.
As behavioral scientists, failing to engage with a race-aware perspective will make us less effective, from a theoretical and practical standpoint.
Doing this work has become more difficult. Since the inauguration of President Trump, we’ve watched with dismay as federal agencies have faced increasing pressure to abandon or reframe equity-focused initiatives. Research grants containing DEI-adjacent keywords have come under more scrutiny, and, in many cases, funding streams have been paused or abandoned. The effect is chilling: Scholars are left to consider the professional risk in explicitly naming inequity in their research.
Additionally, many companies and universities have backed away from DEI. On more than 400 college campuses, programs promoting DEI have either been cut or refocused in response to executive orders that now label these programs as discriminatory and illegal. When institutions narrow their commitment to equity, they also restrict the pipeline that creates future generations of diverse scholars, the partnerships that sustain authentic community-engaged research, and the funding of institutional infrastructure that makes this work possible. This will quickly reshape the field—who remains in it and what they prioritize in their work.
The current political moment makes doing this work harder. But that’s precisely the reason we need to keep doing it.
First, as scholars, we have a moral imperative to consider how the choices we make in our research influence how policies and programs are interpreted, implemented, and evaluated. This often comes with the greatest consequences for those who are already the most vulnerable.
Second, there is a strong technical argument. As behavioral scientists, we ought to double down on the reality that a consideration of (often racist) systems and structures in our work isn’t about being “woke.” It’s about being realistic and mindful of the fact that a failure to engage these ideas has real costs. Such a failure means our theories and application of principles can fall short, wasting effort and resources.
What should scholars who want to continue equity-grounded research and practice do now?
Three ideas from Antiracist by Design stand out: collaborating with individuals with relevant lived experience, expanding the range of methods that we use, and sharing findings in ways that are inclusive and accessible to all audiences.
In the world of applied behavioral science, research teams can be quite large—and this can be good. A large team increases the likelihood that a diverse set of perspectives and skill sets is represented in the work. In the interest of antiracist science, it is critical that research teams also represent the lived experience of the populations of interest. When researchers lack lived experience in the areas they study, they may overlook critical context, misinterpret behavior, or design interventions that fail to reflect community realities. Anthony Barrows describes the concept of “intersectional professionals”—individuals who have a combination of lived and professional experience that is often ignored, rather than valued, in the work striving toward social change. Another way to ensure that lived experience is represented is by building formal structures (advisory boards or co-design partnerships) that institutionalize community input.
A second suggestion is to expand our research toolkit. Rigorous qualitative methods should complement quantitative approaches. Many behavioral scientists were trained under the assumption that randomized controlled trials are the “gold standard” of research, but relying exclusively on randomized controlled trials poses two risks. First, we risk missing important knowledge and nuance in how policies and programs are experienced, implemented, and interpreted across diverse communities. Second, randomized controlled trials often require significant resources. At a time when funding is being cut, if we rely exclusively on this method, we’ll fail to investigate important questions simply because they are too expensive to study experimentally. For example, qualitative and mixed-methods approaches can document implementation barriers and other practical policy challenges even when larger scale funding is unavailable.
The current political moment makes doing this work harder. But that’s precisely the reason we need to keep doing it.
Third, in our current political climate, we also must communicate clearly and transparently about how diversity, equity, and inclusion factor in to our research. This includes engaging communities through public scholarship such as op-eds, public talks, and other forms of public knowledge sharing. The way that scholars frame and disseminate their work has enormous implications for preserving the credibility and legitimacy of equity-centered research. When researchers fail to communicate this work openly and accessibly, the public is more vulnerable to misinformation and false narratives that can minimize its importance and erode trust in science more broadly.
Many of us, myself included, still can safely engage these ideas in our scholarship, practice, and activism (whether it occurs inside or outside of the lab). Those of us with tenure and other leadership positions have a responsibility to leverage that privilege to safeguard this work, support colleagues who face greater professional risk, and work to ensure that commitments to equity do not erode from external pressure.
When we operate as if race and other minoritized identities are not relevant, we risk not only wasting valuable resources, but also reinforcing existing inequities and perpetuating harm to vulnerable communities. This has always been the case, but as our public and private institutions face unprecedented challenges, it should be even more top of mind. As Mindy and I have said, this is urgent, and achievable.
Despite the clouds, remember that the blue sky is always there.
