Academics face empty classrooms during the current coronavirus pandemic.

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A s universities examine faculty diversity amid global protests against institutional racism, they might want to consider that many Black and minority-ethnic academics are routinely asked to undertake extra, uncompensated work to address the issue at their institutions. The phenomenon is known as 'cultural taxation', a term coined in 1994 by Amado Padilla 1 , a psychology researcher at Stanford University in California. Academics from minority ethnic groups are targeted to serve on diversity, equity and inclusivity committees, as mentors to junior colleagues from minority ethnic groups and to participate in other schemes that take time away from their research 2. This burden falls disproportionately on their shoulders because there are so few of them on campus. According to 2020 data from the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency, just 140 (0.7%) of 21,000 UK academics with the rank of professor are Black, yet Black people comprise 3% of the population. In the United States, Black academics account for 6% of all faculty members, yet Black people represent 13% of the population. Cultural taxation could be a reason why African American scientists are 10% less likely than their white colleagues to receive funding from the US National Institutes of Health. According to a 2018 study 3 , the most important reasons for this disparity were the number of publications to their name and the impact factors of the journals in which they publish.