In recent years, the issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace have been a major concern in the United States, and a growing focus in other countries as well. New requirements are popping up all over the place, from the diversity activity/learning experience now required in my campus annual report to diversity statements required for faculty searches and even grad student applications. I overheard a student saying he did not apply to one grad school in part because the school required a lengthy DEI statement with the application. He is not against DEI, but he thought that was a bit excessive.

DEI is probably here to stay even though the term itself is not yet standardized. In my department, we started with calling it EDI and then decided to add “justice” to the focus so now we have a “JEDI” committee—shades of an old movie. Some places add an A at the end for accessibility, DEIA. Regardless of what they are called, these programs are generally seen as critical for the advancement of society, a mission that is important for our journal as well. IFT, as a whole, has a clear focus on DEI issues. You can find the IFT position at this website (https://www.ift.org/about-ift/diversity-and-inclusion), including a definition of each term.

Not everyone, however, buys into the need for DEI programs. The movement to eradicate minority programs at campuses across the country is just one example. In fact, in the University of Wisconsin System this past year, raises were tied to a DEI issue. In the state legislature, which oversees state university funding, one bloc refused to approve a budget that contained the raises because they were upset that too much money had been spent on DEI positions within the system. It was not until campus leaders compromised to shift some of the DEI positions to more clearly help all students that the legislators finally approved the bill.

There are numerous, and complex, reasons people give for resistance to DEI initiatives (https://hbr.org/2023/03/to-overcome-resistance-to-dei-understand-whats-driving-it; https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/20/us/dei-woke-claremont-institute.html). One explanation that people use is that the ideology behind DEI programs “conflicts with America's Founding principles, constitutional government and equality under the law,” according to a recent article in the New York Times. Sometimes, it appears to be flat-out prejudice. For example, I heard several times that people would not vote for a woman president during the 2016 presidential election between Trump and Clinton. My point is, there are many complicated aspects of the DEI story.

At JFS, we are acutely aware of the needs to be inclusive, to enhance diversity among our editorial members. Every decision we make to add new members to the editorial group is now considered in terms of diversity. While our primary concern is to bring on capable people who can cover a wide range of topics in food science, we also now look at a wide range of diversity factors when we make decisions. These include gender, ethnicity, geographical representation, and more. I will focus here on gender and focus on other categories next month.

Although we have been making strides this past few years, there is still somewhat of a gender gap in the JFS editorial group. After our latest round of retirements and new hires, we stand at only 36% women, slightly down from 38% last year. Even though Food Science as a discipline has more women than men, it is now made up of approximately 50% women according to IFT's recent Academic Knowledge Base report, and because academia traditionally had more men than women, senior positions are more likely to be held by men. Despite efforts to recruit more women, our editorial groups are still almost two-thirds male. Of our Scientific Editors (SE), 3 out of 10 are women—I appointed another woman SE this past year. Of the Associate Editors (AE), 8 of 35 are women and on the Editorial Board (EB), 26 of 55 are female. We strive to bring that to a better balance.

In the past, EB members were often chosen simply because an existing editor knew someone who would be good. This was sort of a “good old boys” system, which naturally leads to a less diverse group. DEI issues are now on a par with making sure we have experts who can cover our wide range of topics as we make decisions. This has added another challenge to identifying appropriate additions to the EB. Here is a brief overview of the approach we are using to invite new editors.

As we were looking to replace several AE and EB positions this past December, we looked long and hard at a wide range of candidates. As always, of primary importance was finding well-qualified people with expertise in the topic areas of need, while also factoring in the diversity of our EB. For AE positions, we like to promote from the EB, so we looked at the EB members with the desired expertise, then evaluated their performance as reviewers. We looked at how many invitations they accepted and declined as well as the reviewer rating scores—we ask AEs to rate all reviews so we can use these values to evaluate performance. We looked for the best candidates although all the other related factors that make a diverse EB were considered as well.

To choose new EB members, we went through a somewhat similar process, but we first looked at our general pool of reviewers. After identifying people with the appropriate expertise, we looked at how many assignments they accepted and declined as well as the reviewer ratings. We also looked at a long list of candidates who were either nominated by a current editorial member or self-nominated. Again, we targeted the best candidates while keeping DEI in mind as well.

The end result of this search was that we promoted three AEs from the EB based on their area of expertise and reviewer performance, all males. Another male was appointed to AE last year, also based on his area of expertise and performance as a reviewer. We also added five new EB members, three of whom were female. We are still looking for two potential EB members, with specialization in heat maps and/or AI. If you know of potential candidates, please send my way.

Clearly, there are many factors that go into selecting our EB members, including the DEI concerns. For next month, I will talk about other elements of diversity important to our editorial group and plans we have for the future.

Sincerely,

Rich Hartel, PhD

Department of Food Science

Editor in Chief, Journal of Food

Science

Professor, University of

Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Email: rwhartel@wisc.edu

近年来，工作场所的多样性、公平性和包容性（DEI）问题一直是美国的主要关注点，其他国家也日益受到关注。新的要求不断涌现，从校园年度报告中现在要求的多样性活动/学习经验到教师搜索甚至研究生申请所需的多样性声明。我无意中听到一名学生说他没有申请研究生院，部分原因是该学校要求在申请中附上一份冗长的 DEI 声明。他并不反对DEI，但他认为这有点过分了。

尽管 DEI 一词本身尚未标准化，但它可能会继续存在。在我的部门，我们一开始将其称为 EDI，然后决定在焦点上添加“正义”，所以现在我们有一个“JEDI”委员会——老电影的影子。有些地方在末尾添加 A 以方便访问，DEIA。不管它们被称为什么，这些项目通常被视为对社会进步至关重要，这对我们期刊来说也很重要。整体而言，IFT 明确关注 DEI 问题。您可以在此网站 (https://www.ift.org/about-ift/diversity-and-inclusion) 上找到 IFT 立场，包括每个术语的定义。

然而，并非所有人都认同 DEI 计划的必要性。全国范围内消除校园少数族裔项目的运动只是一个例子。事实上，威斯康星大学系统去年的加薪与 DEI 问题有关。在负责监督州立大学经费的州立法机构中，一个集团拒绝批准包含加薪的预算，因为他们对系统内的 DEI 职位花费了太多资金感到不安。直到校园领导妥协，改变了 DEI 的一些立场，以更明确地帮助所有学生，立法者才最终批准了该法案。

人们对 DEI 倡议的抵制有许多复杂的原因 (https://hbr.org/2023/03/to-overcome-resistance-to-dei-understand-whats-driven-it; https:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/20/us/dei-woke-claremont-institute.html）。根据《纽约时报》最近的一篇文章，人们使用的一种解释是 DEI 计划背后的意识形态“与美国的建国原则、宪政和法律平等相冲突”。有时，这似乎是彻头彻尾的偏见。例如，我多次听说，在2016年特朗普和克林顿之间的总统选举中，人们不会投票给女总统。我的观点是，DEI 的故事有很多复杂的方面。

在JFS，我们敏锐地意识到需要包容性，以增强编辑成员的多样性。现在，我们做出的每一个向编辑组添加新成员的决定都会考虑多样性。虽然我们最关心的是培养能够涵盖食品科学广泛主题的有能力的人才，但我们现在在做出决策时也会考虑广泛的多样性因素。其中包括性别、种族、地域代表性等。我将在这里重点关注性别，并在下个月重点关注其他类别。

尽管我们在过去几年中取得了长足的进步，但 JFS 编辑团队中仍然存在一定程度的性别差距。在最新一轮的退休和新员工招聘之后，女性员工比例仅为 36%，略低于去年的 38%。尽管食品科学作为一门学科，女性人数多于男性，但根据 IFT 最近的学术知识库报告，目前该学科由大约 50% 的女性组成，而且由于学术界传统上男性多于女性，因此更有可能担任高级职位由男人。尽管我们努力招募更多女性，但我们的编辑团队仍然几乎三分之二是男性。在我们的科学编辑 (SE) 中，十分之三是女性——去年我任命了另一位女性 SE。在副主编 (AE) 中，35 名成员中有 8 名是女性，而在编辑委员会 (EB) 中，55 名成员中有 26 名是女性。我们努力使其达到更好的平衡。

过去，选择 EB 成员往往只是因为现有编辑认识一个优秀的人。这是一种“好老男孩”系统，自然会导致群体多元化程度降低。DEI 问题现在与确保我们拥有能够在我们做出决策时涵盖广泛主题的专家同等重要。这给确定 EB 的适当补充增加了另一个挑战。以下是我们邀请新编辑的方法的简要概述。

去年 12 月，当我们寻求替换多个 AE 和 EB 职位时，我们对广泛的候选人进行了长期而严格的考察。与往常一样，最重要的是找到在所需主题领域拥有专业知识的高素质人才，同时还要考虑到我们 EB 的多样性。对于 AE 职位，我们喜欢从 EB 晋升，因此我们会考察具有所需专业知识的 EB 成员，然后评估他们作为审稿人的表现。我们查看了他们接受和拒绝的邀请数量以及审稿人评分——我们要求 AE 对所有审稿进行评分，以便我们可以使用这些值来评估绩效。我们寻找最佳候选人，同时也考虑了构成多样化 EB 的所有其他相关因素。

为了选择新的 EB 成员，我们经历了一些类似的过程，但我们首先查看了我们的总体审稿人库。在确定具有适当专业知识的人员后，我们查看了他们接受和拒绝的作业数量以及审稿人的评分。我们还查看了一长串候选人名单，这些候选人要么是由现任编辑成员提名，要么是自我提名。同样，我们瞄准了最好的候选人，同时也牢记 DEI。

此次搜索的最终结果是，我们根据 EB 的专业领域和审稿人表现从 EB 中晋升了 3 名 AE，全部为男性。去年，另一名男性被任命为 AE，也是基于他的专业领域和作为审稿人的表现。我们还增加了五名新的 EB 成员，其中三名是女性。我们仍在寻找两名潜在的 EB 成员，专门从事热图和/或人工智能。如果您知道潜在的候选人，请发送给我。

显然，选择我们的 EB 成员有很多因素，包括 DEI 问题。下个月，我将讨论对我们编辑小组很重要的其他多样性元素以及我们未来的计划。

真挚地，

里奇·哈特尔博士

食品科学系

《食品杂志》主编

科学

教授，大学

美国威斯康星-麦迪逊

电子邮件：rwhartel@wisc.edu