Launching a public relations campaign in the world’s most prestigious scientific journal, the world’s most prestigious chancellor of the world’s most prestigious STEM university demands the decolonization of the global scientific enterprise. Scientists must repent their racist ways, science publishing must shed its structural racism, and restorative justice must prevail. This is the only way that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that categorize and reward people based on race can expunge meritocracies based on the false illusion of color blindness.

The powerful chancellor acknowledges that this will be difficult because it is hard to be held accountable by those with less power. Only racists refuse to acknowledge that race is a social construct, falsely believing it is a biological phenomenon. Therefore, it is critical to continue categorizing people by the color of their skin because how else can we distinguish the oppressed from the oppressors? And while the Jim Crow “one drop rule” is heinous, we must continue to use it to achieve identity equity because science.

Every other institution has bowed to such principles. STEM cannot hold out much longer.