Ruha Benjamin

Ruha Benjamin is a sociologist and a professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University.[1] The primary focus of her work is the relationship between innovation and equity, particularly focusing on the intersection of race, justice and technology. Benjamin is the author of numerous publications, including the books People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (2013), Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019) and Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022).

Ruha Benjamin
Born1978
Wai, Maharashtra, India
Academic background
EducationSpelman College (BA)
University of California, Berkeley (MA, PhD)
Academic work
DisciplineSociology
InstitutionsPrinceton University
Main interestsScience, Medicine, and Technology; Race-Ethnicity and Gender; Knowledge and Power
Websitewww.ruhabenjamin.com

Benjamin is also a prominent public intellectual, having spoken to audiences across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, delivering presentations to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination[2] and NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund,[3][4] a 2021 AAAS keynote,[5] 2020 ICLR keynote[6] and the 8th Annual Patrusky Lecture.[7]

Benjamin's work has been featured in popular outlets that include, among others, Essence Magazine,[8] LA Times,[9] Washington Post,[10] New York Times,[11] San Francisco Chronicle,[12] The Root,[13] Motherboard,[14] Guardian,[15] Vox,[16] Teen Vogue,[17] National Geographic,[18] STAT,[19] CNN,[20] New Statesman,[21] Slate,[22] Jezebel,[23] Boston Review[24] and The Huffington Post.[25]

Early life
Ruha Benjamin and her book, Race After Technology at the 2019 Black in AI event

Benjamin was born to an African-American father and a mother of Indian and Persian descent.[26] She describes her interest in the relationship between science, technology and medicine as being prompted by her early life. She was born in a clinic in Wai, Maharashtra, India. Hearing her parents' stories about the interaction of human bodies with medical technology in the clinic sparked her interest.[27] She has lived and spent time in many different places, including "many Souths": South Central Los Angeles; Conway, South Carolina; Majuro, South Pacific, and Swaziland, Southern Africa, and cites these different experiences and cultures as being influential in her way of looking at the world.[27]

Career

Benjamin received her Bachelor of Arts in sociology and anthropology from Spelman College, before going on to complete her PhD in sociology at the University of California Berkeley in 2008. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA's Institute for Society and Genetics in 2010, before taking a faculty fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School's Science, Technology, and Society Program. From 2010-2014, Benjamin was Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Sociology at Boston University.[28]

In 2013, Benjamin's first book, People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier was published by Stanford University Press.[29] In it, she critically investigates how innovation and design often builds upon or reinforces inequalities. In particular, Benjamin investigates how and why scientific, commercial, and popular discourses and practices around genomics have incorporated racial-ethnic and gendered categories. In People's Science, Benjamin also argues for a more inclusive, responsible, and public scientific community.[30]

In 2019, her book, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code was published by Polity.[31] In it, Benjamin expands upon her previous research and analysis by focusing on a range of ways in which social hierarchies, particularly racism, are embedded in the logical layer of internet-based technologies. She develops her concept of the "New Jim Code," which references Michelle Alexander's work The New Jim Crow, to analyze how seemingly "neutral" algorithms and applications can replicate or worsen racial bias.[32]

Race After Technology won the 2020 Oliver Cox Cromwell Book Prize awarded by the American Sociological Association Section on Race & Ethnic Relations, 2020 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Award for Nonfiction,[33] and Honorable Mention for the 2020 Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Book Award.[34] It was also selected by Fast Company as one of “8 Books on Technology You Should Read in 2020.”[35]

A review in The Nation noted that, “What’s ultimately distinctive about Race After Technology is that its withering critiques of the present are so galvanizing. The field Benjamin maps is treacherous and phantasmic, full of obstacles and trip wires whose strength lies in their invisibility. But each time she pries open a black box, linking the present to some horrific past, the future feels more open-ended, more mutable…This is perhaps Benjamin’s greatest feat in the book: Her inventive and wide-ranging analyses remind us that as much as we try to purge ourselves from our tools and view them as external to our flaws, they are always extensions of us. As exacting a worldview as that is, it is also inclusive and hopeful.”[36]

In 2019, a book she edited, Captivating Technology: Reimagining Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life was released by Duke University Press,[37] examining how carceral logics shape social life well beyond prisons and police.

Currently, Benjamin is Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University where her work focuses on dimensions of science, technology, and medicine, race and citizenship, knowledge and power. In 2018, she founded the JUST DATA Lab,[38] a space for activists, technologists and artists to reassess how data can be used for justice. She also serves on the Executive Committees for the Program in Global Health and Health Policy[39] and Center for Digital Humanities at the University of Princeton.

On 25 September 2020, Benjamin was named as one of the 25 members of the "Real Facebook Oversight Board", an independent monitoring group over Facebook.[40]

Honors and awards

Benjamin is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including Marguerite Casey Foundation and Group Health Fund Freedom Scholar Award,[41] fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies,[42] National Science Foundation, and Institute for Advanced Study, among others.[43] In 2017 she received the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton.[44]

Publications
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2022). Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691222882[45]
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity. ISBN 9781509526390.
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-1-4780-0381-6.
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2019). "Assessing Risk, Automating Racism." Science Vol. 366, Issue 6464, pp. 421–422.[46]
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2018). "Prophets and Profits of Racial Science." Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies Vol. 5, Issue 1: 41–53.[47]
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2018). "Black Afterlives Matter: Cultivating Kinfulness as Reproductive Justice." In Making Kin Not Population, edited by Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway. Prickly Paradigm Press.[48] (Republished in Boston Review[24])
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2017). "Cultura Obscura: Race, Power, and ‘Culture Talk’ in the Health Sciences." American Journal of Law and Medicine, Invited special issue, edited by Bridges, Keel, and Obasogie, Vol. 43, Issue 2-3: 225-238.[49]
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2016). "Catching Our Breath: Critical Race STS and the Carceral Imagination." Engaging Science, Technology and Society, Vol. 2: 145–156.[50]
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2016). "Informed Refusal: Toward a Justice-based Bioethics." Science, Technology, and Human Values, Vol. 4, Issue 6: 967–990.[51]
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2016). "Racial Fictions, Biological Facts: Expanding the Sociological Imagination through Speculative Methods." Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience Vol. 2, Issue 2: 1-28.[52]
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2015). "The Emperor’s New Genes: Science, Public Policy, and the Allure of Objectivity." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 661: 130–142.
  • Benjamin, Ruha (2013). People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804782975.
  • "Genetics and Global Public Health: Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia", Simon Dyson and Karl Atkin (eds), Ch11, Organized Ambivalence: When Stem Cell Research & Sickle Cell Disease Converge. (Routledge, 2012)
  • "Organized Ambivalence: When Stem Cell Research & Sickle Cell Disease Converge". Ethnicity & Health, 2011 Vol. 16, Issue 4-5: 447–463.
  • "A Lab of Their Own: Genomic Sovereignty as Postcolonial Science Policy". Policy & Society 2009 Vol. 28, Issue 4: 3

References
  1. "Ruha Benjamin | Department of African American Studies". aas.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  2. "Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. General recommendation No. 36. Preventing and Combating Racial Profiling by Law Enforcement Officials" (PDF).
  3. "Benjamin's 'Race After Technology' speaks to a growing concern among many of tech bias". Princeton University. Retrieved 2021-02-24.
  4. DiSilvestro, Adriana. "Brennan Center for Justice: Policing Race & Technology". MediaWell. Retrieved 2021-02-24.
  5. "Plenary Lectures". AAAS 2021 Annual Meeting. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  6. "ICLR: 2020 Vision: Reimagining the Default Settings of Technology & Society". iclr.cc. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  7. "The Patrusky Lectures | Council for the Advancement of Science Writing". casw.org. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  8. Dorsey, Sherrell. "These Black Women Are Fighting For Justice In A World Of Biased Algorithms". Essence. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  9. "When computers make biased health decisions, black patients pay the price, study says". Los Angeles Times. 2019-10-24. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  10. Johnson, Carolyn Y. "Racial bias in a medical algorithm favors white patients over sicker black patients". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  11. Preston, Jennifer; Moynihan, Colin (2012-03-21). "Death of Florida Teen Spurs Outcry and Action". The Lede. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  12. Benjamin, Ruha (2013-04-04). "Should researchers pay for women's eggs?". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  13. "Bot Bias: Study Finds a Medical Algorithm Favors White Patients Over Sicker Black Ones". The Root. 25 October 2019. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  14. "'Significant Racial Bias' Found in National Healthcare Algorithm Affecting Millions of People". www.vice.com. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  15. "Ruha Benjamin: 'We definitely can't wait for Silicon Valley to become more diverse'". The Guardian. 2019-06-29. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  16. Katz, Lauren (2019-10-17). ""I sold my face to Google for $5": Why Google's attempt to make facial recognition tech more inclusive failed". Vox. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  17. "Why I'm Fighting the Tech-to-Prison Pipeline". Teen Vogue. 2021-02-03. Retrieved 2022-01-13.
  18. "5 Reasons Gene Editing Is Both Terrific and Terrifying". Science. 2015-12-04. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  19. "Scientists endorse research on gene-editing in human embryos". STAT. 2015-12-03. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  20. Enayati, Amanda (2014-02-06). "The power of prejudice -- and why you should speak up". CNN. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  21. ""The New Jim Code" – Ruha Benjamin on racial discrimination by algorithm". www.newstatesman.com. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  22. Selinger, Evan (2019-03-01). "Tech Critics Create a Powerful Response to IBM's Oscars Ad". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  23. "Kim Kardashian and Sophie Lewis's Surrogacy Now". Jezebel. 2 July 2019. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  24. Benjamin, Ruha (2018-07-11). "Black AfterLives Matter". Boston Review. Retrieved 2021-02-24.
  25. "Ruha Benjamin, Ph.D. | The Huffington Post". www.huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  26. https://socialwork.columbia.edu/news/ruha-benjamin-princeton-sociologist-and-leading-thinker-on-science-technology-and-the-social-world-will-be-2020-graduation-speaker/#:~:text=Born%20in%20Wai%2C%20India%2C%20to,World%20College%20of%20Southern%20Africa.
  27. "About". Ruha Benjamin. Retrieved 2020-03-15.
  28. "New Faculty Members to Join Department", Department of Sociology, Boston University, January 30, 2010.
  29. Press, Stanford University (5 June 2013). People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier | Ruha Benjamin. ISBN 9780804782968. Retrieved 2017-03-11. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  30. "CGS : Talking Biopolitics with Ruha Benjamin". www.geneticsandsociety.org. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
  31. "Book Detail". Polity. 14 March 2016. Retrieved 2020-03-15.
  32. Varghese, Sanjana (2019-06-29). "Ruha Benjamin: 'We definitely can't wait for Silicon Valley to become more diverse'". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2020-03-15.
  33. "The Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize". www.bklynlibrary.org. 2017-03-20. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  34. "Awards". CITAMS | Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology. 2018-08-04. Retrieved 2021-02-24.
  35. Reader, Ruth (2020-01-04). "8 books on technology you should read in 2020". Fast Company. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  36. Kearse, Stephen (2020-06-15). "The Racist Roots of New Technology". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  37. "Captivating Technology Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life". Duke University Press.
  38. "The JUST DATA Lab". The JUST DATA Lab. Retrieved 2020-03-15.
  39. "Program in Global Health and Health Policy | Undergraduate Announcement". ua.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-15.
  40. "While Facebook works to create an oversight board, industry experts formed their own". NBC News.
  41. "Introducing the 2020 Freedom Scholars". Marguerite Casey Foundation. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  42. "PROF. RUHA BENJAMIN WINS ACLS FELLOWSHIP » Sociology | Blog Archive | Boston University". www.bu.edu. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
  43. "Ruha Benjamin | Center for Health and Wellbeing". chw.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-15.
  44. "Four faculty members recognized for outstanding teaching". Princeton University. Retrieved 2020-03-15.
  45. Benjamin, Ruha (2022-10-11). Viral Justice. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-22288-2.
  46. Benjamin, Ruha (2019-10-25). "Assessing risk, automating racism". Science. 366 (6464): 421–422. Bibcode:2019Sci...366..421B. doi:10.1126/science.aaz3873. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 31649182. S2CID 204881864.
  47. Benjamin, Ruha (2018-06-28). "Prophets and Profits of Racial Science". Kalfou. 5 (1). doi:10.15367/kf.v5i1.198. ISSN 2372-0751. S2CID 149650720.
  48. Making kin not population. Adele E. Clarke, Donna Jeanne Haraway. Chicago, IL. 2018. ISBN 978-0-9966355-6-1. OCLC 1019611298.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  49. Benjamin, Ruha (2017). "Cultura Obscura: Race, Power, and "Culture Talk" in the Health Sciences". American Journal of Law & Medicine. 43 (2–3): 225–238. doi:10.1177/0098858817723661. ISSN 0098-8588. PMID 29254467. S2CID 40857476.
  50. Benjamin, Ruha (2016-07-01). "Catching Our Breath: Critical Race STS and the Carceral Imagination". Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. 2: 145–156. doi:10.17351/ests2016.70. ISSN 2413-8053.
  51. Benjamin, Ruha (2016-06-23). "Informed Refusal: Toward a Justice-based Bioethics". Science, Technology, & Human Values. 41 (6): 967–990. doi:10.1177/0162243916656059. S2CID 148172468.
  52. Benjamin, Ruha (2016-06-17). "Racial Fictions, Biological Facts: Expanding the Sociological Imagination through Speculative Methods". Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. 2 (2): 1–28. doi:10.28968/cftt.v2i2.28798. ISSN 2380-3312.
  1. Official website
  2. Introducing the 2020 Freedom Scholars
  3. 2021 AAAS Plenary Lecture
  4. 8th Annual Patrusky Lecture
  5. ICLR (International Conference on Learning Representations) Keynote
  6. Dr. Ruha Benjamin is featured in the documentary focused on Black women, entitled “(In)visible Portraits;” directed by Oge Egbuonu, to debut on OWN Network
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