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Just Science

The lives and legacies of trailblazing BIPOC scientists such as Ernest Everett Just remind us that the pursuit of knowledge and the act of knowing are political acts that animate our moral frameworks and value systems, while broadening our vision of who the knowledge seekers can be. Just Science is a public lecture series of the E.E. Just Program that illuminates the intersection between the expansion of scientific understanding and the pursuit of notions of justice, including social justice, environmental justice, educational justice and racial justice.

Science, Slave Trading, and 'Making' Race

Carolyn Roberts '93 (Yale University)

January 21, 2026
5:00 - 6:30PM
Haldeman 041

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Headshot of Carolyn Roberts '93

The scientific enterprise is an invigorating and inspiring space in which to create knowledge that can transform the world. At its best, science is forward-thinking and visionary in a way that allows us to imagine and bring into being that which doesn't yet exist. However, while scientists build, dream, and seek to improve our world, it can be helpful to pause and gaze at that which came before.  In this lecture, we turn our gaze backwards, peering into our collective past. We will explore some of the hidden figures who contributed to the fund of scientific knowledge and reflect upon foundational moments that shaped the sciences. Our focus will be on Africa and the African diaspora in the context of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. We will consider the ways in which slavery and slave trading contributed to scientific knowledge, including contributions made by enslaved African and African-descended people. This aspect of our scientific inheritance, while often hidden from view, allows us to query the complicated relationship between science, culture, and race.
 

About the Speaker

Dr. Carolyn Roberts is a historian of science and medicine at Yale University, where she holds joint appointments in the Department of History of Science and Medicine, Department of History, and Department of Black Studies. She also has a secondary appointment in the History of Medicine Program at the Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Roberts is currently completing her book To Heal and to Harm: An Origin Story of Predatory Medicine in the Western World, which is under contract with Harvard University Press. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College (BA), Andover Newton Theological School (MA) and Harvard University (PhD).'

 

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Poster for Just Science Talk by Carolyn Roberts Jan 21 2026