Ruha Benjamin

If the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is that something almost undetectable can be deadly, and that we can transmit it without even knowing. Doesn’t this imply that small things, seemingly minor actions, decisions, and habits could have exponential effects in the other direction, tipping the scales toward justice: affirming life, fostering well-being, and invigorating society? In this talk, Ruha Benjamin introduces a micro-vision of change—a way of looking at the everyday ways people are working to combat unjust systems and build alternatives to the oppressive status quo. Born of a stubborn hopefulness and grounded in social analysis, she offers a pragmatic and poetic approach to fostering a more just and joyful world.

From automated decision systems in healthcare, policing, education and more, technologies have the potential to deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to harmful practices of a previous era. In this talk, Ruha Benjamin takes us into the world of biased bots, altruistic algorithms, and their many entanglements, and provides conceptual tools to decode tech predictions with historical and sociological insight. When it comes to AI, Ruha shifts our focus from the dystopian and utopian narratives we are sold, to a sober reckoning with the way these tools are already a part of our lives. Whereas dystopias are the stuff of nightmares, and utopias the stuff of dreams… ustopias are what we create together when we are wide awake.

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, technology has the potential to hide, speed, and even deepen discrimination, while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to racist practices of a previous era. In this talk, Ruha presents the concept of the “New Jim Code" to explore a range of discriminatory designs that encode inequity: by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies, by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions, or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Ruha will help the audience consider how race itself is a kind of tool designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice and discuss how technology is and can be used toward liberatory ends. This presentation takes us into the world of biased bots, altruistic algorithms, and their many entanglements, and provides conceptual tools to decode tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold, but also the ones we manufacture ourselves.

From precision medicine to predictive algorithms, science and technology seek to address a variety of human problems by producing data and tools to help us understand our world and ourselves. But without careful consideration of the social dimensions of innovation, we risk reinforcing longstanding forms of inequality and injustice, and even producing new forms of discrimination that are hidden behind a veneer of technological neutrality. In this talk, Ruha Benjamin examines a range of contemporary issues at the nexus of data and democracy—from national DNA databases across the globe to online targeted advertisements on your computer screen—so that we can think together about the social values embedded in these platforms and systems. Ruha aims to expand our collective imagination around what counts as relevant and meaningful to scholarship and public debate on Big Data so that a greater array of scholars and publics contribute to the design of the world we inhabit.

In this talk, Ruha discusses how and why racism persists as a form of vision and division. By putting academic scholarship in conversation with the latest headlines, she offers a wide-ranging toolkit to understand how racism distorts our relationships, communities, and institutions, and what we can do about it.

A world without prisons? Ridiculous. Schools that foster the genius of every child? Impossible. A society where everyone has food, shelter, love? In your dreams. Exactly. In this keynote, Ruha Benjamin takes us into the liberating power of the imagination. Deadly systems shaped by the school to prison pipeline, ableism, digital surveillance, and eugenics emerged from the human imagination, and have real-world impacts. To fight oppressive systems and create a world that works for all of us, we will have to imagine things differently. Ruha Benjamin will show us how educators, artists, technologists, and more are experimenting with new ways of thinking and tackling seemingly intractable problems. Let’s explore the possibilities and practices required to imagine and create more just and habitable worlds of learning and being.