Race + Data Science: Ali Alkhatib, University of San Francisco
Tuesday, March 8, 2022 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
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The Race + Data Science Lecture Series aims to celebrate and advance research in the areas of race and data, engineering, and computational science. With this series of events, our goal is to improve how we as data scientists and data-adjacent researchers speak about race.
Guest Speaker
Ali Alkhatib, Director, Center for Applied Data Ethics, University of San Francisco
Desmond Upton Patton, Associate Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, The Data Science Institute, Columbia University. Patton is also Associate Professor of Social Work; Associate Dean of Curriculum Innovation and Academic Affairs; and Courtesy Appointment in Department of Sociology, Columbia University School of Social Work.
Abstract & Biography
In this talk, I’ll take us through how we can use social theories and frameworks to bring some clarity to phenomena that have been difficult to make sense of, and what those frameworks tell us about where we as researchers and as people should go next.
We’ll talk about gig work and crowd work as a modern formulation of a work practice called piecework, and we’ll explore how street-level bureaucracies can bring complex, at-times nebulous algorithmic harms into sharp focus as forms of administrative violence that people routinely experience and deeply know.
But these cases are just starting points. I hope to move us – researchers, data scientists, and system designers – to think more deeply about the roles we are increasingly occupying as arbiters of legitimate (or at least legible) knowledge. I’ll end with a call to study and understand these dynamics, and work to undermine and dismantle coercive and oppressive structures of power.
