Demonstrators deploy a " Black Lives Matter" banner near the White House during a demonstration against racism

Credit: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty

On 10 June, Nature is joining #ShutDownSTEM #ShutDownAcademia #Strike4BlackLives, an initiative of STEM academics and organizations pausing their standard activities to focus on actions to eliminate anti-Black racism.

As we wrote earlier this week, Nature stands against all forms of racism. We also recognize that Nature is one of the white institutions that is responsible for bias in research and scholarship, and that we must strive harder to correct those injustices and amplify marginalized voices.

During the day, we will therefore be stopping business as usual to focus on what we can do better. This includes the following:

• We will delay online publication of this week’s issue by one day, to Thursday 11 June.

• We will almost exclusively work on and publish content about supporting Black people in academia and STEM. The sole exception is content related to the global pandemic of COVID-19.

• We will meet to discuss and begin planning how we can help eradicate racism from Nature, from academia and from STEM, and help support Black people in academia and STEM.

• We will spend time listening, reading, reflecting and educating ourselves on racism in STEM and how to address it.

Thank you for your support on this day. We hope you will join us.