Explore the intersection of science and citizenship
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity in her latest book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs 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. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life.
“Ruha Benjamin was the very best keynote speaker I have ever heard in my 40 years in education. The response from the conference attendees was unprecedented.”
- The Rowland Foundation
Ruha Benjamin is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (Stanford University Press). She has spoken at numerous associations related to education, technology and sociology as well as non-profits, foundations and organizations on leadership, racial inequity, technology and justice including ISTE, Toigo Foundation, University of Toronto, California School Boards Association, ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership, and Johns Hopkins Medicine.