We at GCRI oppose racism, full stop. We previously expressed this in our Statement on Racism published in June 2020 amidst protests over the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor. As that explains, racism is important in its own right and also has significant implications for global catastrophic risk. Now, a troubling new incident within the field of global catastrophic risk motivates us to comment further.

The incident involves the very harmful and scientifically dubious idea of a genetic basis of racial differences …

Over the past month, GCRI has lost two team members: Deputy Director McKenna Fitzgerald and Research Associate Andrea Owe. As a consequence, the current GCRI team consists exclusively of White males from very similar backgrounds.

We wish to state for the record that we are aware of our current lack of demographic diversity and we are not happy about it. We believe that demographic diversity is important for a multitude of reasons, including to benefit the GCRI team from the infusion of different and complementary perspectives, …

Like many of you, we at GCRI are appalled by the tragic killings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor over the past few months. We are awed by the massive response to these events in the US and around the world, and we are hopeful about their potential to spur meaningful change to address long-standing issues caused by racism in the US and other countries. This is a rare moment in history, and so we feel compelled to comment in our capacity as …