An update by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) to its vision and mission statement has spurred a broader conversation about language, inclusivity and room for growth.
Writing in Forensic Science International: Synergy, seven active AAFS members are calling on current leadership to revise the statements to include more meaningful guidance about the Academy's vision and mission. The authors—Allysha Winburn, Chaunesey Clemmons, Thomas Delgado, Stephanie Hartley, Krista Latham, Marin Pilloud and Sean Tallman—include Anthropology Section student affiliates, trainee affiliates, and fellows.
“We all belong to other professional organizations and these groups have really committed to serving the discipline and their members,” Pilloud, associated professor at University of Nevado, Reno, told Forensic. “We see room for growth for the AAFS to be more inclusive and to better serve members and our communities.”
AAFS’s current vision statement includes the following sentence: “To promote integrity for all and justice through forensic science.” The anthropology team argues that “integrity” is too broad, giving it a meaning no one truly understands.
“The lack of clarity and absence of explicitly articulated values shared across the disciplines result in a statement with little resonance,” reads the Perspectives Piece. “Instead, the AAFS vision statement would better serve membership in stressing the development of professional skills, promoting high standards, facilitating research and publishing, bringing members together, and promoting disciplinary collaborations.”
In terms of mission, the AAFS describes itself as follows: a global, multidisciplinary membership community that provides collaborative research, quality education, and recognized leadership to advance forensic science and to inform its application to the law.
The authors believe this statement lacks a clearly defined mission, and opens itself up to the following questions:
- To whom does the AAFS provide “collaborative research, quality education, and recognized leadership,” and who is providing these services?
- What are the goals of the AAFS?
- What constitutes “recognized leadership,” and who defines it?
- How are the forensic sciences advanced within the Academy?
- How does the Academy facilitate collaborative research?
- Where are these research, educational, and leadership services provided?
The published editorial calls out six specific values published by AAFS: integrity, leadership and public awareness, scientific rigor, collaboration and excellence, diversity and inclusion, engagement and connectivity. While they laud many of the values as “unimpeachable,” they give further scrutiny to others. The scope of this Forensic article examines the published diversity and inclusion value, which reads, “The Academy serves all and is committed to providing an objective, unbiased framework for individuals through forensic science application, teaching, and research.”
The authors say, as worded, it is unclear how that value actually serves practitioners with diverse backgrounds and perspectives since it lacks proactive, actionable steps. Additionally, the authors find fault with two specific words in the value: “all” and “objectively.”
“The Academy, like any professional organization, does not ‘serve all’ due to the inequitable structures that limit the participation of underrepresented individuals in the forensic sciences,” reads the letter. “Using this language…further marginalizes and belittles the lived experiences of underrepresented individuals.”
At least two of the authors acknowledge negative lived experiences as members of AAFS.
“The Academy has not been and is not currently an inclusive space for individuals who look like me,” says Chaunesey Clemmons, who describes herself as an early career professional of color. “I believe in our discipline and hope to encourage and be part of enacting a positive shift in our current rhetoric.”
“I have been consistently disappointed in the way that myself, friends, colleagues and strangers have been treated by the Academy,” says Thomas Delgado, who identifies as a queer, trans, Latinx anthropologist. “In fact, discussions such as this have connected me with people across the country and I’ve formed some great relationships out of it. That is great but sad, especially since almost all of those people are either BIPOC, queer or both. I know several people that withdrew their membership a couple of years ago because of the environment within the Academy.”
The first problem with including objectivity in value statements, say the authors, is that that makes it sound like pure scientific objectivity is desirable and attain—something the authors do not believe is true in the face of cognitive bias.
The second problem is the possible negative consequences of objectivity on underrepresented forensic scientists.
“How are we to commit to equity and inclusion in the forensic sciences if we must remain ‘objective’ in our interactions with BIPOC, disabled, neurodivergent, and other underrepresented practitioners, rather than hearing their perspectives on issues of socio-cultural inequity, recognizing those perspectives, and acting to change the systems that have caused and maintained that inequity?,” reads the editorial.
Moving Forward
The authors say they chose to publish an editorial rather than directly reach out to AAFS and its Board of Directors (BoD) to enable a public, transparent discussion in a format that is widely readable, citable and shareable.
Donna Grogan, the Executive Director of AAFS, confirmed to Forensic that AAFS plans to “review and address any valid concerns in the article.”
“The Diversity Outreach Committee (DOC) has been expanded to include representation from all sections of the AAFS in an effort to provide a unified response to the needs of the membership,” she said. “[Additionally, DOC has created] subcommittees to focus on specific initiatives, such as the inclusivity of proposed site locations, section-specific diversity and inclusion forums, and DOC-led panel discussions to promote awareness of issues.”
Clemmons says she hopes the AAFS will respond formally, in public, with goals and action items.
Pilloud agrees. “The best-case scenario is that the AAFS engages with this discussion to enact change for the better. We call for committees of diverse membership to be involved in crafting a new vision for the Academy—one that is forward thinking, service-oriented, and charts a path for a more inclusive professional organization.”
Editor’s Note: The perspectives expressed in the article and interviews with Forensic are solely those of the authors, not any of the institutions with which they are affiliated.