Subject: Dismantling the New Jim Code:Towards a Black Centered Technological
Design Ethos in Engineering Education

Description:
The University of Maryland Clark School of Engineering has invited, Dr.
Woodrow Winchester, III, to give a talk entitled "Dismantling the New Jim
Code: Towards a Black Centered Technological Design Ethos in Engineering
Education" for the first event in our Engineering Education Speakers series
on Friday, February 26, 2021 at 1-2pm Eastern Time. For more information,
see, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/138005695751

Abstract:
  From recent controversies surrounding the implementation and deployment of
artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to studies finding pulse oximeters
more error-prone in people with darker skin, the role and relevance of race
and anti-Black racism in engineering design is clear. In her book Race After
Technology, author Ruha Benjamin describes “the employment of new
technologies that reflect and reproduce existing inequities but that are
promoted and perceived as more objective or progressive than the
discriminatory systems of a previous era.” She calls this phenomenon the
“New Jim Code”. As the Academy can be considered ground zero for the
dominant technological design and deployment paradigms, engineering education
is complicit. Dismantling the New Jim Code requires new design perspectives
and power paradigms. Black-Centered Design is needed.

Black-Centered Design represents a framework by which the diverse and nuanced
complexities of Black identity can act as an ethos for creating more
inclusive, equitable, and accountable technological solutions. This talk
introduces Black-Centered Design and offers pedagogical and epistemological
strategies such as Afrofuturism that afford an explicit foregrounding of
Black lives and bodies in technological design. The engagement of this way of
thinking and acting in engineering education clearly represents a cultural
transformation and requires systemic change. This talk concludes with
thoughts on barriers in implementation and possible countermeasures in
enacting the needed philosophical and methodological changes.

Please contact Logan Williams  with questions.

Contact Person: Logan Williams
Contact Email: [log in to unmask]

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