Events

Past Event

Ruha Benjamin - The New Jim Code? Technological Innovation, Inequity, and Imagination in the Age of Covid-19

February 12, 2021
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
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Online

Event Description

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, technology has the potential to hide, speed, and deepen discrimination, while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to racist practices of a previous era.

In this talk, Ruha Benjamin explores a range of discriminatory designs that encode inequity — what she terms the “New Jim Code.” 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 historical and sociological insight. She will also 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.

Event Speaker

Ruha Benjamin, Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University

Event Information

Free and open to the public; registration is required. 

Part of the Sophie & Alex Rosner Seminar on Health, History and Social Justice Seminar Series hosted by the Department of Sociomedical Sciences and the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University. Co-hosted by the Data Science Institute at Columbia University.