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The RIOS (for a Racially-just Inclusive Open STEM Education) Institute presents an interview podcast where Dr. Bryan Dewsbury of the Science Education And Society (SEAS) lab converses with individuals who do social justice work in science education and education in general. We hope people enjoy the conversation itself, and consider new ways in which education can be transformative whatever your situation may be.
Welcome back everyone. Time to do this rodeo again. Segev, are you tired of us yet? This is the third season. I I feel like I have to graduate you by now.
Bryan Dewsbery:I don't think I will be, Brian. I've enjoyed producing the podcast ever since its inception. I I want to let I want to let people know that thankfully for us, Sega will be starting his master's degree in engineering, computer science engineering. Computer engineering, this coming 2026. So so that means contrary to what you might think, I didn't, you know, I didn't sabotage his graduation so we can remain my producer.
Bryan Dewsbery:He's actually doing great and he's gonna be here at FIU and thankfully with us. Welcome back to Knowledge Unbound season three. I I I can I'm humbled by the people who say yes to join us. I mean every conversation I've learned from and I I am I'm very excited to kick off this season with today's guest. Doctor Asia Eaton tell us hi.
Bryan Dewsbery:Tell us something. I don't care what you say. Just tell us something.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Well, it's a privilege to be here. Like I said, I was perusing the work that you have published in the last looks like twelve months on the wall outside of this office, and I was just impressed and and grateful to be here. My name is Asia, and I'm a feminist social psychologist. I'm a professor of psychology at Florida International University. I'm the head of research for the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, and I'm actually on leave at the moment, to serve as
Bryan Dewsbery:Do I have to pay your time to be here? That's what you're trying to hint Did
Dr. Asia Eaton:you say the day already? Don't say it. No, I'm on leave to serve as executive director of MindBridge right now, which is the nation's leading nonprofit using brain and behavioral science to support human rights work.
Bryan Dewsbery:Okay.
Dr. Asia Eaton:So it's a real fun break from what I normally do.
Bryan Dewsbery:Well, mean, it's really a break because, you know, you're still working, and that's how these things blend. But I think it's a good thing. Right? And, you know, I just want to listen to one of the reasons why okay. Let me back up a little bit.
Bryan Dewsbery:People ask me, you know, how do you choose your guests? Well, first of all, I'm blessed to have a fairly large network. I'm blessed to know a lot of people who do really special things around the globe and I humbly ask them for their time and they give it to me. Right? But of of those people sometimes when you read through people's work, you get to know them, you get an insight into the way they think.
Bryan Dewsbery:Maybe my bias here with Doctor. Eaton is, we are academic, Right? We we understand the the the latter pathway that we went through. But the questions that we pursue aren't just questions for the sake of writing papers. Right?
Bryan Dewsbery:There's kind of a fundamental love of wanting a better world that is really driving all of this. Right? And so that's that's the energy I wanna share over the next hour with you. Welcome to knowledge unbound. I'll see you for the conversation.
Bryan Dewsbery:So, doctor Eaton, I I I gonna continue this tradition from all my other seasons where my guests tell me their story, right? I I I know you you did was it two degrees from University University of Chicago?
Dr. Asia Eaton:Well, I got the masters on the way to the PHD. D. It's package deal.
Bryan Dewsbery:You make it sound like Wendy's. Anyway, you get fries with that. So so you you did, you know, the two middle degree there. Tell us a little bit about where your interest began in in feminist psychology. Was it before the PhD?
Bryan Dewsbery:Was there something that attracted you to that program in particular? And did your interest shape and evolve as you went through the the PhD process before you even got to FIU?
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah. I I went to University of Chicago to work with a professor named Cindy Pickett who did intergroup relations. And I loved all of social psychology. I had the privilege of working with Peggy Clark at Carnegie Mellon University as an undergrad in her lab, taking her classes on emotions and intimate partner relationships. And I really got into social psych then.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And went to UChicago because it was a small program headed by a couple of superstar faculty. And I think they told me explicitly that we had the opportunity to kind of shape and mold the program and our degree trajectories, which was exciting to me. And, you know, of course I loved Chicago. I just got a good feeling from being there. As I progressed in the program, my interests changed because my advisor changed.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Cindy actually left UChicago, and I started working with someone named Penny Visser.
Bryan Dewsbery:Mhmm. And just real quick, the intergroup relations that Cindy researched, is that the same area that spawned intergroup dialogue?
Dr. Asia Eaton:You know, I think intergroup dialogue might be more of an applied Okay. Like sociological or even social work type
Bryan Dewsbery:Okay.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Okay. Phenomenon. The work that I did with Cindy and even Penny at UChicago was very basic science. Like it's the equivalent of bench science for you all, where we're running experiments in a lab in a controlled environment and trying to assess causality.
Bryan Dewsbery:And,
Dr. Asia Eaton:you know, I did that the whole time at UChicago. I got very little training in mixed methods or qualitative research. And it wasn't until I left UChicago and came to FIU and got more interested in feminist science that I learned about a greater diversity of approaches to epistemology. And it's been a nonstop learning journey since then.
Bryan Dewsbery:What got you interested in feminist science?
Dr. Asia Eaton:So I had been looking at issues of gender and power as an undergraduate and a graduate student, but I hadn't really been looking from a feminist lens.
Bryan Dewsbery:Okay. And So so tell us a little bit what you mean by that. Because I feel like the f word and by the f word, I mean feminist. Right? It is is I've it used, and I'm not always convinced everyone I hear say it means the same thing.
Bryan Dewsbery:And and just for your listeners who themselves, I'm sure, would have heard it in different ways. What do you mean when you say that a feminist lens?
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah. I I appreciate you asking because I think it is easily misconstrued and it comes with so many stereotypes and there's so much mis and disinformation about it, but it's so simple ultimately. It's a movement to end sexism and sexist discrimination. It's movement to free people from the harms that come with rigid gender roles and expectations. And it is intersectional in that you can't have freedom from gender roles and expectations without having freedom from sexual identity roles and expectations.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And you have to acknowledge that the experiences of black women and white women are not the same and that the experiences of queer men and heterosexual men are not the same. And so it looks at how different forms of social inequality also intersect and interact to produce unique experiences for people with emergent effects. So it's also about racial justice. It's also about class justice. It's also about justice based on ability.
Dr. Asia Eaton:So it started the first and second waves centering women and girls and even white women and girls originally. But it's become a broader movement for liberation.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right. Right. My assumption is you probably somewhere in your studies and maybe in the early days of learning about this, would have run into and I think her name is Phyllis Schlafly. She was not on my radar. Didn't know anything until I read these truths by Jill Lapouri.
Bryan Dewsbery:I don't know if you've known of that book. It's it's it's fairly, like, five years old, maybe six years old. Wonderful history. Essentially, it's a retelling of US history through the lens of minorities minoritized peoples. Right?
Bryan Dewsbery:And so she spends a lot of time on on on this woman. And her what apparently was fairly successful, campaign to kind of maintain that subservient view of of gender roles oh, sorry, of women in particular. Do you know more about that period and and how, say, the feminist movement responded to that or what has happened since then, or what's the sort of state of that dichotomy right now? I hope I'm answering that question.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah. I know you are. What you're saying is making me think of the current trad wife movement.
Bryan Dewsbery:Yeah, yeah, good point.
Dr. Asia Eaton:You know, as far as connecting it
Bryan Dewsbery:to modern
Dr. Asia Eaton:day. And I see the trad wife movement in no small part as a response to neoliberal feminism, which was sort of capitalistic feminism that said you can have it all. You can be a ideal mother. You can be an ideal worker, you can be involved in your community, you can do it all.
Bryan Dewsbery:Wasn't lean in basically that?
Dr. Asia Eaton:Lean in absolutely was sort of a neoliberal contribution and it's not true. You can't do it all without structural support. Nobody can. Structural support is what white and men and neurotypical people have. They have the structural supports.
Dr. Asia Eaton:The STEM world was created for them and the academic world was created for them. The Olympics were created for them. So we need to change the structures to better support a diversity of learners and talents. But anyway, you know, trad wife ideology, I think, is in a way saying, you know, I can't do all this. This is impossible.
Dr. Asia Eaton:So you know what? I'm going to throw myself wholeheartedly into an idealized version of womanhood that did seem to work because this is unmanageable doing
Bryan Dewsbery:it all.
Dr. Asia Eaton:But, you know, unfortunately, Schlafly I can I never say
Bryan Dewsbery:I I think it's Schlafly, and the only reason I I could say that fairly fluently is there's a famous St? Louis Beer by the same name. I know that's a really sad way to remember that, but that I think I'm pretty sure it's the same spelling, Strathly.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Well, I think she pulled on the same strings as the trad wife movement, which is to say activated and encouraged people to think in benevolently sexist ways.
Bryan Dewsbery:That's an interesting term.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah, well, it's it's a it's a fascinating term. So sexism has two components, a hostile component and a benevolent component. And they work in combination to maintain patriarchy. The benevolent component is more appetitive. It's one that both men and women agree with more.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And it basically says that, you know, women need to be protected. Women are delicate. Women need the chair pulled out for them and the door open for them and they need to be catered to. And also they have their strengths. Women are moral and virtuous and they're really good with kids.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And so it's not an entirely negative view.
Bryan Dewsbery:And
Dr. Asia Eaton:so, you know, in a world that also has hostile sexism, which is like women are asking for too many rights and women need to be quiet and get back to the kitchen. In that world, benevolent sexism is very appealing.
Bryan Dewsbery:Yeah.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah. And I think the idea of being taken care of and and having a circumscribed area that you take care of in a world where the structures are not in place for you to do at all is appealing. Mhmm. Does that make sense?
Bryan Dewsbery:Yeah. No. It makes sense. And and and what it ties back to for me, because I'm not sure if you know is I was I was raised in a Christian household. My dad was a pastor.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right? So I I don't I think it's in the New Testament, right, where they talk about the the demand as they had in the household. Right? So it is sort of clear hierarchy between god, the male, right, and then what a woman's role is in dynamic. And depending on what denomination you're with, people lean into that more deeply than others.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right? And so there's some benevolence in there in that sense that that's sort of the expectation of what good good Christianity should look like. So I I saw some similarities there. Without cracking this can of worms open too wide, how has the the kind of rising discussion around the manosphere, men being left behind, men rebelling inside, you know, all of that stuff that has been you know, you and I both know this has been a long discussion. How has that tied into to some of the discussions around feminism that you've had?
Dr. Asia Eaton:Well, part of it is that, you know, men in today's world also are oppressed by rigid gender role norms. And that includes things like men not being able to express feelings of tenderness sympathy and only being rewarded for anger and thoughtful analysis. As a result, we have made it more difficult for men to develop close friendships and relationships. Ever since COVID in particular, people are more on their phones. They're more isolated.
Dr. Asia Eaton:We're losing social connections and men in particular are losing social connections and they also feel like they're losing status because we have described power and status as a zero sum game in
Bryan Dewsbery:this
Dr. Asia Eaton:country where if someone has more, others have to have less. Can't all have rights and opportunities. Right? So you know, combining this, like this, this social isolation and loneliness with a feeling that your rights are under attack. You know, naturally, folks are looking for meaning and status in other places.
Dr. Asia Eaton:That includes extremist places like the manosphere.
Bryan Dewsbery:And
Dr. Asia Eaton:part of the manosphere too also uses gender roles insofar as it promotes men's entitlement to relationships, romantic friendships and says, you're not getting these and you deserve these. But the truth is, and people who are more communal and who are very relationship oriented will tell you this, relationships take time and effort. You don't just stumble across a great marriage. This is so much effort and you gotta put in the work. Community takes time and energy.
Dr. Asia Eaton:It doesn't just show up at your front door. So there's entitlement there, too, which is related to the male gender role.
Bryan Dewsbery:So is that what you just said about because I 100% agree, maybe I'm disappointed that I don't hear that articulated enough when conversations come up about genders in general, right, whether it's the manosphere or feminism, whatever, you know, host hostility. Is that you think might be kind of the undercurrent that we all really need to be attending to? Right? Like, what does it what does it take to build and maintain loving community? Right?
Bryan Dewsbery:So, of course, all of us in 2025 were not alive in, you know, two thousand years ago when we were hunting and killing each other. Like, you know, nobody lives past 20. You know? Mhmm. That kind of stuff.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right? And and so we take for granted that that we have the lives we live now because we've learned over century, call it social evolution if you want to, but we learned that for us to to enjoy this thing called life more, right, we we have to find ways to be in bonding in in bondage in a good way Mhmm. With each other. And so sometimes it feels like we need to relearn that lesson or maybe we've forgotten that lesson. I I don't know what your thoughts on that are.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Oh, I have so many thoughts. That's the main insight from my field of expertise, social psychology, that we are like deeply, fundamentally social creatures. We need meaningful, lasting bonds in order to be psychologically well and physically well.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Right. Being lonely affects your physiology and that's beyond the effects of things like not having a spouse to tell you to go to the doctor.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right, right, right.
Dr. Asia Eaton:It's damaging. We evolved even back when people only lived twenty, thirty years, We evolved to be social insofar as, you know, our children are dependent on us for a long time. A long time. You see a baby
Bryan Dewsbery:You dear want be parent.
Dr. Asia Eaton:I know. I know. I
Bryan Dewsbery:don't want to. I get it.
Dr. Asia Eaton:I mean, they don't know where their heads are half the time. When you see a baby deer being born, comes out and it's like walking and prancing around almost immediately. And we are useless to ourselves or others for years and years and years. And so the way that So we require each other to live. And we live in an independent culture as opposed to a collectivistic culture where individual achievement is prioritized, Picking yourself up by your bootstraps is prioritized.
Dr. Asia Eaton:You know, the whole American dream is that anyone can do it, and and you can do it essentially by yourself, which there's just no evidence to support that that's ever been the case.
Bryan Dewsbery:Mhmm. Or or you could choose to ignore the evidence that that contradicts your mental thesis that you did it by yourself. So it sounds like in in in grad school, you were almost like the basic sense, equivalent of social psychology, but then when you transitioned into faculty life, that's when you got into a more feminist space. Was there like a driver of that? Was there something that that led to that decision?
Bryan Dewsbery:Because it felt very much like a decision.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah. It it I was already doing work on gender and power and looking at the fact that, like, we have gender stereotypes and gender stereotypes are really about power and about who gets power, who gets to exercise power and and authority. And so I was already kinda looking at that, but I I came here and I got acquainted with Susannah Rose and Dionne Stevens.
Bryan Dewsbery:Mhmm.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And Dionne was already practicing anti racist feminist psychology. She was a big part of what introduced me to that. And I started going to conferences where that was you know, a common lens. And it just felt right. It felt like, oh, this is how I can make a difference with my science.
Dr. Asia Eaton:It was not clear to me with basic science how it could make a difference. And it does, to be fair, we have lasers thanks to basic science, right?
Bryan Dewsbery:But
Dr. Asia Eaton:I could see the connect the dots between what I was doing and human health and well-being.
Bryan Dewsbery:And it
Dr. Asia Eaton:was so gratifying. And I really liked other social justice scholars. I just enjoyed being around them. And they were less hierarchical. It felt more natural.
Dr. Asia Eaton:I could be myself. So I just got in with that crowd and never looked back.
Bryan Dewsbery:Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about a space where it's not benevolent sexist. Right? So I know you do a lot of work around image abuse.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbery:I believe I believe you sat in a couple of committees at United Nations
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbery:Around this topic. So to tell us a little bit about what that what that work started, what that work involves, what image abuse is. I mean, I think intuitively, know what it is, but I would love to hear you kind of talk through it.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah, I'm so privileged to be able to do work on intimate image abuse because it wasn't my idea. A lot of my academic successes, history path has been like me stumbling upon things.
Bryan Dewsbery:That's always missed a lot of times, right?
Dr. Asia Eaton:I mean, privilege, you know. I have a direction now, but it's really the result of so many coincidences and fortunate opportunities. With image based sexual abuse, the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative based here in Miami essentially reached out to me because I was doing work on heteronormativity and intimate partner violence. And they said, can you help us develop a literature base for what we are trying to make happen at the policy level? Because we're trying to explain to these politicians and these legal scholars that this phenomenon is extremely harmful, should be criminalized, and we don't have the data to back that up.
Dr. Asia Eaton:We have our survivors' stories, we have folks on our hotline, but we need numbers to convince people.
Bryan Dewsbery:Does that include things like revenge pornography?
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah, that is a media generated term that is fallen out of favor because as it turns out, the motive is not always revenge. So intimate image abuse is when someone's images are disseminated, threatened to be disseminated without their consent. Or these days, you can create
Bryan Dewsbery:Deep fakes.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Deep fakes of people that are sexualized from nothing but a face photo.
Bryan Dewsbery:So the motive may not be because I want to get back at you. It might just be, don't see this as a wrong thing to do.
Dr. Asia Eaton:There is a lot of failure to understand the lasting and severe harms that come to victims from this form of abuse. There's people who just share it for fun. There's people who share it because it's someone that they've been with intimately and they want to brag. There's people who share it for money. There's people who share it for the likes, for the upvotes, especially on the manosphere.
Dr. Asia Eaton:People trade, you know, in in these sort of deviant male peer networks, images of people like like their baseball cards. And, you got that. Well, I got this.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right.
Dr. Asia Eaton:So there's a million reasons people do it in addition to intending to harm. But that's just one.
Bryan Dewsbery:Yeah. Well, let me ask you a question on that because I have an education question to follow this one. Where I get really worried, and you and I, you know, I think, in the similar age bracket in that when you and I were growing up, we had all the VHS tapes, it's plugged in, you know, your phone was a rotary dial phone at home. Right? But my my kids, right, when they're negotiating with me right now to get an iPhone.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right? The elder one. Right? And so now this generation is being exposed to high speed Internet all the time. Social media apps, and we don't have to get into to that space as to those algorithms, etcetera, etcetera.
Bryan Dewsbery:And so it's it's very easy for for for kids below our age where they should even have an awareness of this level of sexuality to share images of themselves, probably not even knowing kind of gravity of what they're sharing. If there is some social pressure to look a particular way and generate like, etcetera, etcetera, you and I would even say I'm a college professor. Right? I even looked at some you know, I have some students who follow me on Instagram or I looked at LinkedIn profiles, and I'm thinking, you you sure you want this Mhmm. On the Internet forever?
Bryan Dewsbery:And and I I'm not even, like, blaming the student per se. I I think, again, when it's so easy to do it and if there isn't education about its its its penetrance, right, of how long it could be out there. I the question I really wanna ask is in that in that image abuse space, what what kind of education is happening? Whether it's at the primary and secondary level, whether it's at the parent level, you know, I know Hite has that book out. You know?
Bryan Dewsbery:I mean, so I feel like, yes, there's the the dark side of it when people get arrested and charged, but then it has to be also be an awareness piece to it. Can you speak to that?
Dr. Asia Eaton:Oh, I wish I could tell you that we have sex positive sex education in high schools and elementary schools that addresses online sexual violence. We don't. In many states, there's no sex education of any kind. I can tell you that I have worked with a company called Catharsis that does Title IX training for university students. And I worked with them very intentionally along with Doctor.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Randy Spiker, a former student of mine, to adjust their curricula to include technology facilitated sexual violence. But that's at the university level. And when we first worked with them, they weren't including it
Bryan Dewsbery:really. So
Dr. Asia Eaton:there's a very serious lack of public education around this issue. I'm thinking about how hard it is to convince a young person about the permanency of the Internet and how something really never goes away. What else in our lives follows us forever and ever and ever? Most things, you you move cities, you can start fresh. Yeah.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah. Not true with this. Yeah. It never goes away. Once it's posted, once it's there forever.
Bryan Dewsbery:Privacy is an illusion. Right? Yeah.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And and that's even hard for me to wrap my mind around. Let's be honest.
Bryan Dewsbery:Well, because this is new. Right? I mean, again, like, this this sort of unlimited speeds Internet thing is might be like a fifteen, twenty years ago kinda thing. You know, my first Hotmail account was done in a cyber cafe with dial up. Right?
Bryan Dewsbery:So Yeah. It it I I'm I'm not surprised because I think I struggle too with just the pace at which the technology is advancing. Right? And that includes things like deepfakes and stuff like that. And so how do you design educational systems to match that speed?
Bryan Dewsbery:How do you design educating people in ways that you're not just always behind the eight ball?
Dr. Asia Eaton:I think from a technological standpoint, you are. But from a sex positive standpoint, you can always do things like not blame the victim. Whatever it is, it's not the victim's fault. And you can always do things like offer trauma informed services. And what that looks like when it comes to new technology facilitated forms of violence might change.
Dr. Asia Eaton:But we know the basics about how to make something trauma informed. So there are some general best practices we could be doing that we're not.
Bryan Dewsbery:What do you think is preventing that from happening?
Dr. Asia Eaton:Lack of political will and fear and mis and disinformation. I can't tell you how many victim survivors of image based sexual abuse were told by law enforcement, by friends and family that they never should have sent that image in the first place. And the analogy I like to use is, well, I trust my husband with our kids. Surely I'm going to trust him with a photo of me. I trust him with the lives of my children.
Dr. Asia Eaton:If he He died handle a picture. I think he could handle a picture. Right? You know? And this is an intimate relationship.
Dr. Asia Eaton:That's the kind of thing you share in that relationship. Just like your relationship with your banker, you share your social security number. You don't think they're gonna go screaming it all over Facebook. So, you know, we It's a system justifying type problem that we have where people people don't want to be victims. And so we tend to portray victims in a way that distances them from us.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Well, that's not going to happen to me because I would never do that. I would never walk there. I would never talk to that kind of person. I would never send that. I would never share that.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And that that protects us from thinking we're gonna get victimized.
Bryan Dewsbery:That that's a that's an interesting way to to put that because it it reminds me of I'm sorry to use this very dark analogy, but it reminds me of that famous World War two poem. First, they came for the communist because it did the same thing. Right? It uttered the victims. And, no, I'm not that.
Bryan Dewsbery:So, you know, they I mean, there's a reason why they probably went after them. It's not good, but, you know, I'm not that, so I'm good. Right. And then slowly but surely, it sort of comes down until you're the target. Or in this case, if you end up in a situation where, you know, something happened.
Bryan Dewsbery:It's only then you begin to have, like, empathy for what it means to be in that space. And so I guess the the question I I'm maybe just thinking out loud here is for those of us or maybe those like you who do this kind of education work, what what does it look like to convince people or to help people to cultivate that kind of empathy even if they've never unfortunately been in that space. That feels like that's the activation energy that we have to claim here.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah, I agree. And I think actually numbers and quantitative data is not so useful as qualitative data at that point. Is, you know, reading a book and perspective taking and imagining your life as another character. Know, hearing victim survivors testify and being in community with people who have these experiences and listening deeply to their stories. Lawmakers may be convinced by percentages and significance levels, but I think individuals are convinced by, you know, through their hearts, through contact with folks that they can relate to who have had these experiences.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And then, of course, having folks like that in your family or friend group.
Bryan Dewsbery:Yeah. Well, let me use that to segue to your latest project, Mind Bridge, which I'm thoroughly fascinated by selfishly because, you know, I have a podcast. Right? I do keynotes. I do workshops.
Bryan Dewsbery:I I I have been a big advocate of of academia being much more public facing than we are. Right? And I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole, but but I'm always excited when I see efforts to to bridge those two worlds together. Right? Ultimately, and I think maybe this is where you and I are kindred spirit.
Bryan Dewsbery:Like, yes, we do this stuff because we like the basic principles of our discipline, but but also at the core of this is we want people to live better lives and have the opportunity to do that. What was the the the rationale? What was the history of Mindbridge? How did you cross paths with it? And what what is sort of your plan for the next year?
Bryan Dewsbery:I don't know what's
Dr. Asia Eaton:your question. Mind Bridge, it's coming up on its ten year anniversary. It was founded and was directed its whole life by Laura Liguri up until recently. She's finishing her Ph. D.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And she needed to take a year to do that. And Mindbridge put out an advertisement for an interim executive director. And I was familiar with Laura and Mindbridge from a few years previous when we were on a panel together. And I remember her being so selfless and firm and using terms that had an intuitive appeal, but I wasn't quite sure what they meant and like human rights defender. You know, she it's her brainchild.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And the whole point was to bridge, mind bridge, the scientific community and the human rights community. And we do that through three main efforts. One is through programming, where we use psychological science to teach human rights defenders how to persuade people, how to build coalitions, how to you know, heal from racial trauma. Because we have the science for these things. Mhmm.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And you know who's
Bryan Dewsbery:Sorry to interrupt, but what were some of the challenges that the human rights people had in persuading people? What were some of the challenges that you all noticed that you then try to remedy or work with them on?
Dr. Asia Eaton:For example, they might activate empathic distress in communications rather than empathic concern.
Bryan Dewsbery:Okay.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Right? Or they might use fear based appeals that don't have lasting value for changing behavior.
Bryan Dewsbery:Differentiate distress and concern for me.
Dr. Asia Eaton:So empathic distress is when you are stressed out by seeing someone in a precarious, dangerous, problematic situation. Empathic concern is when you want to help and you want to engage in a way that is, you know, hope based. And you feel there is something that can be done and
Bryan Dewsbery:you can make a difference.
Dr. Asia Eaton:There's a path to change. But those are just some examples. So, you know, we we do programming. We also have a bunch of communications where we directly connect human rights defenders and psychological scientists like this podcast that we've started. Just last night, I had the pleasure of having Darren Hodgetz and Audrey Aradonis on there talking about the experience of homelessness and housing insecurity.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And Doctor. Hodgetz does that work from New Zealand, and Dre does that here in Miami at Miami Homes For All. And they taught and learned from each other, and it was a really beautiful exchange. So then the third thing that we do is we do our own research connecting science and human rights. And we've actually been writing a proposal to examine the manosphere and why individuals get involved in the manosphere and how to interrupt that pattern.
Dr. Asia Eaton:We have some research on trad wives, other forms of extremism. So it's the coolest organization I've ever been involved in, and it's so necessary. It's so timely. Know, Pepsi Cola and McDonald's have been using psychological science to make money and do their work for a long time. It's about time human rights defenders have access to those tools to get their work done.
Bryan Dewsbery:So what has been the response of some people from the human rights community in terms of changing behaviors, changing approaches, changing programming to raise awareness?
Dr. Asia Eaton:I think at first they are sceptical of what science has to contribute. And let's be fair, science has a history of using and harming marginalised communities. Psychological science in particular. So they're wary and for good reason. But eventually, when they see that they can save money and time and be more impactful, they're on board.
Dr. Asia Eaton:But it takes time.
Bryan Dewsbery:Do you feel like they've started to see it already?
Dr. Asia Eaton:I have. We have started to see that. And I desperately want to amplify our message because, you know, we've been doing a lot of work in Maine, but our message is something that has international value. So we're trying to do a lot of outreach right now.
Bryan Dewsbery:Tell me about the Maine work.
Dr. Asia Eaton:The work in Maine has been with all kind of different organizations. Boys to Men, they've worked with. They've worked with
Bryan Dewsbery:I'm assuming that's a nonprofit and not the R and B band. Yeah. From the I'm just I mean, this is your audience right now. So literally Fair. Of this CD cover.
Bryan Dewsbery:I already said it.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Boys to men.
Bryan Dewsbery:Yeah. Yeah. You know what time is.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah. Yeah. No, we're in the same generation. Yeah. No, that's that's a different organization.
Dr. Asia Eaton:It is time, which is run by Dustin Ward. We've worked with all kind of nonprofits, nonprofits aimed at doing work on gender and reproductive equity. We have a fabulous project going on right now with the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity, CGRE, in which we are partnering with reproductive justice organizations and helping them to do their own research, scaffolding them and learning research techniques so that they can they can do more of that work independently.
Bryan Dewsbery:Yeah. So, yeah. This this fascinates me because there's the there's the kind of the ethics of your work, the ethics of the work and, you know, ultimately, right? What you want is human rights. Right?
Bryan Dewsbery:Like, all that's what everybody at the table wants. But but it it seems like what you're describing is a very clear process to embed the the accepted methodological research process that is a currency of you and I, right, into spaces that might typically be skeptical of it or at least not versed in it. I think I can fairly see, right? Or they might see their work as sufficiently downstream from that. And they don't need to really think about it.
Bryan Dewsbery:Like, so we do the research and then, you know, we publish papers that turns it into maybe an op ed sometime and then then, you know, three years later, it turns into a process, right? And so I'm wondering, is that kind of infrastructural rearrangement? Is that part of the plan here, like, by embedding the research process in in nonprofits, in, you know, policy boards and p you know, having them think in that way. Is almost like a reorganization of what we might think a nonprofit to be doing and thinking.
Dr. Asia Eaton:100%. The problem is that academia remains in many ways closed off to those kinds of collaborations. So our articles are in paywalled journals. Our conferences are in exotic locations. Man, for the
Bryan Dewsbery:registration fees, right.
Dr. Asia Eaton:We use language and terminology that's not accessible. And and, you know, we don't have great science education in this community.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right.
Dr. Asia Eaton:In this in this country. So, you know, it's it's that's the long long term goal. Yeah. But you gotta take it a step at a time. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbery:Because I I even a colleague of mine who does a lot of well, he's an academic. He does a lot of nonprofit work. He runs a center within a university. And he was telling me that he was he was bugging his provost to take the name take the word research out of his center's name because he he still wanted to do research. Right?
Bryan Dewsbery:He still plan to do it. But he said he was getting a lot of negative reaction from donors because in their mind, when they hear research, they're thinking, oh, you're in a lab doing some obscure thing nobody cares about, and I wanna see solutions like tonight. Right? I mean, not tonight. Right?
Bryan Dewsbery:But but, basically, they they wanna put money towards applied things. So there's almost like an epistemological shift here of what do people think of when they hear they would research. Right? Is this this esoteric, you know, the few and the proud do it versus no, but this is just a way of doing things that I'm trying to attach to how nonprofits think.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah, you know, the podcast that I did last night, one of the major insights for me was something Doctor. Hodgett said about rethinking his role as a researcher as being that of a scribe. He has a method. He has a process for accumulating and documenting information. He's not the expert, he's the scribe.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And we can make more scribes. There's a method of cultivating, analyzing data that's useful to so many people, especially those who have on the ground experience and already know so many times in science, we are publishing papers that people in these nonprofits, people on the ground, they already know this is true.
Bryan Dewsbery:CCRI There's some arrogance, right, to sometimes how we do our work.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah, CCRI came to me and said, Victim survivors are experiencing long term and compounded forms of trauma. Can you prove that? And yeah, yeah, I can do that. They already knew.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right. Right. They're seeing it firsthand. Between MindBridge and the the many other nonprofits you've worked with, and, you know, I I don't wanna do, like, a greatest hits list here, but can you recall, like, any really touching success stories or impacts. I'm not sure what to even call it.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right? But when you do applied work, you know, a lot of what drives it is is seeing the fruits of that labor. Any anything you could sort of point to as, like, you know what? This is why I get up and do this.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah, I'll tell you what got me interested in public facing scholarship to begin with. So I was an assistant professor, untenured, and had talked to a couple of journalists. I had three or four media sort of things under my belt, one of which was an article that I helped write on when children know their sexual orientation and how it's younger than we might think. And the research supports that. I got an email from someone who had read that article and thanked me and said, You're helping me to understand my son better.
Dr. Asia Eaton:I didn't think this was possible, but now I can see that he knows himself. And it was I didn't think anything of that article when I put it out into the universe. It was just sort of like, yeah, I guess I could speak on this topic. If you need someone with initials behind their name, I'll be the one. But someone actually read that and it helped them in their relationship with their child.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And then I was off to the races.
Bryan Dewsbery:I mean, I I should have asked this probably you probably at the start, but I'm just thinking about the work you do now. And I wonder if any of it is informed by your life pre academia. And how much of this speaks to that? And if yes, in what way?
Dr. Asia Eaton:You know, have a very typical upbringing in many ways. I came from a household with a mom and dad who were married. I have one brother. It was a upper middle class household, a white family in a suburban area. Both my parents are college educated.
Dr. Asia Eaton:I have had so many privileges throughout my life that I was just born into. I'm cisgender. I'm mostly able-bodied. But I always had empathy. I really don't know how else to say that.
Dr. Asia Eaton:I was always very concerned with fairness growing up. I think a lot of kids are. I think a lot of kids are naturally tuned into fairness and justice issues when they say like, you know, my brother got a bigger slice of pie than me. They're watching. They care about those things.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And I just didn't have that natural instinct squashed. I was in an environment where that was allowed to persist and grow. And I went to a high school for performing arts, and it was a magnet high school. And I had previously been in a basically all white private school. And I went to this public high school where kids were busted from all over the county and I met such a diversity of kids.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And I learned that I had class privilege, which I didn't know. And I learned that I had white privilege, which I didn't know. And I just held on to that. I always also was sensitive to the fact that as a woman, I didn't have the same privileges and opportunities as the men in my world.
Bryan Dewsbery:Mhmm. What what and your world be in the world in general or you're the performing arts world?
Dr. Asia Eaton:And the world in general. Mhmm. The world in general.
Bryan Dewsbery:What did you perform?
Dr. Asia Eaton:I did vocal music. Okay. Very nice. I can believe it. Mhmm.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Back in the day. But yeah, you know, I also having that one dimension of marginalization helped me to relate to other people. And I had other experiences, you know, with oppression and marginalization too growing up. But really, I was so privileged. And I just thank the people around me for being honest with me about their experiences and their needs.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And I'm so grateful for public school.
Bryan Dewsbery:Mhmm. Yeah. I I pause because, you know, there's a part of me sadly wonder how how much longer it'll last.
Dr. Asia Eaton:I know.
Bryan Dewsbery:But there's there's a just great benefit to to having the opportunity to be among diverse people. I'm I'm kind of I'm hooking on to that that theme of lifelong empathy, right? And one of the things a psychologist had said to me once, a colleague, is, you know, that empathy is great, you know, bringing that into your teaching and your classrooms, your curriculum, teaching students to listen, you being a listener yourself, it's all great. He's like, but what comes with that is you are now opening the door to have to process, like, new things. Right?
Bryan Dewsbery:So if I was the kind of professor who I just came, summarized textbook, this is what you have to learn, see you in three weeks for an exam. Right? Then, I mean, not only it's, I guess, technically easier because I'm just recapitulating the slides. But but also, I don't have to deal with your not feeling like you belong. I don't have to deal with you feeling like you're not listened to.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right? This is not I don't have to use any brainpower for that. Right? So when the brands of the world walk into professional development meetings and say, you know, our call is to listen to our students, our call is to understand where they're coming from, What comes with saying yes to that call is now having to find the bandwidth to do that. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbery:And I feel like in your case, that is true times a 100. Right? Because we're not just talking about a we're not just talking about a classroom or grad students. Right? We're talking about whole organizations dealing with highly distressful matters.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right? And and, you know, I I I know I have my reasons why I do what I do, and I have my ways of of keeping my myself whole and drawing my boundaries. I I just wonder about you and how you can navigate that in your space. Like, how do you give up yourself and and create space to do that processing, but not so much in a way that you yourself kind of dwarfed into a dark place as well.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna be very honest here because I think it's such a a rich question. It deserves, you know, a vulnerable and honest response. I have a I'm in a recovery program that provides me with spiritual and social nourishment.
Dr. Asia Eaton:Going back to what we were saying about the importance of social connections, you need community care. Mhmm. You've gotta have community care. You need to have people in your network who will catch you when you fall.
Bryan Dewsbery:Right.
Dr. Asia Eaton:And I do. I am blessed to have incredible friends that I've had for decades.
Bryan Dewsbery:Mhmm.
Dr. Asia Eaton:I am blessed to have a relationship with a higher power that makes sense to me and a relationship with nature that keeps me grounded and grateful. So I think it's a combination of social and psychological and spiritual resources that I have. I would wish it for everyone.
Bryan Dewsbery:Do you still sing? No. Why?
Dr. Asia Eaton:You know, that's a that's a whole another story, but life's not over yet.
Bryan Dewsbery:It's not. It's not. It's not. And and and, you know, to be fair, I think, I feel like in your own way, what you're doing right now is a form of singing. And I'm I'm glad that everybody else gets a chance to share to hear your voice, and I'm glad you shared it with us today.
Bryan Dewsbery:Thank you so much. Knowledge unbound is brought to you by the Rios Institute based at Bates College in Maine. We are generously funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Special thanks to our guest today Doctor. Asia Eaton as always sending love our producer as always the indefinite, the invaluable mister Segev Amasai.
Bryan Dewsbery:Segev begged me to not cum on Mike Segev is sick. We hope you feel better, brother. You don't have to. You don't have to. Thank you, Brian.
Bryan Dewsbery:How you doing? I'm hanging in there. You didn't have to. You didn't have to. But I thanks for sticking with us for this for our launch episode for season three.
Bryan Dewsbery:I I I really love what what doctor Eaton's doing. And I think part of my bias is we are academics so we get up every morning and we obsess about finding answers to difficult questions. We obsess about bringing together different disciplines, subjects, different patterns of thought to to to get those questions answered. But but ultimately, I guess there's some of us who we aren't just interested in the questions. Right?
Bryan Dewsbery:We are interested in how the answers to those questions help make humanity a a better place to be. Help the world a more peaceful, more loving, a less war torn place. And the ways in which she's been able to kind of bring together that sharp mind, but also that everyday empathy that hopefully and she already has. Right? We're making such an incredible impact.
Bryan Dewsbery:I hope. I sincerely hope that's the lesson that you take away from today's episode. We have nine more of these to go and would be a lot of fun. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Knowledge on Bong season three.
Dr. Asia Eaton:We live in an independent culture Mhmm. As opposed to a collectivistic culture where individual achievement is prioritized, picking yourself up by your bootstraps is prioritized. You know, the whole American dream is that anyone can do it, and you can do it essentially by yourself, which there's just no evidence to support that that's ever been the case. Know, people who are more communal and who are very relationship oriented will tell you this, relationships take time and effort. You don't just stumble across a great marriage.
Dr. Asia Eaton:This is so much effort, and you gotta put in the work. Community takes time and energy. It just it doesn't just show up at your front door.
Bryan Dewsbery:And as always, be excellent to each other. Good. Make sure that Listen. Make sure that's in be sick, but I will never forget that one for the last two seasons, Brian. And, yes, this is making it in the final cut.
Bryan Dewsbery:It is making it in final cut. Yeah.