Scientific American
The American Physical Society’s new criteria for conference venues seem to be unique among scientific societies
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Protesters clash with police in Chicago, on May 30, 2020 during a protest against the death of George Floyd. Credit: Jim Vondruska
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Days after police killed George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, last May, physicist Philip Phillips was in his garden in Champaign, Illinois, incensed and racking his brain over how his scientific community could respond. Scientific institutions had not done enough to acknowledge previous deaths of Black people in police encounters, and this time should be different, he thought. “The outrage should have been there a long time ago,” he says.