Past Events

Jan 18 | TEACH! ORGANIZE! RESIST!

Posted on by

The SJRC will be following along and participating in the many January 18th campus happenings at: http://teachorganizeresist.net/ActionList with keeping a keen eye on the first discussion:

Climate Change: Scientists Speak Out

10:30AM–11:30AM

Graduate Student Commons (above Cafe Iveta @ Quarry)

Panelist includes Prof. John Pearse, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department; Prof. Lindsey Dillon, Sociology Department; and Prof. Gary Griggs, Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Other sessions include: Islamophobia: Racializing Religious Identities, Participatory Budgeting and Democratizing the UC, What to do at a Protest?, Economic Inequality is About All of Us, Building Power: the role of students, immigrants, and workers in reclaiming democracy, “Know Your Rights: Everyone’s Basic Rights” with CARECEN SF, Queer Margins: LGBTQ Resistance in the Trump Era.

S&J Professors Karen Barad and Donna Haraway will present a co-initiated UCSC Values Statement at the closing event T.O.R.C.H. Townhall Closing Event (Teach. Organize. Resist. Change. Hope) from 4-6pm.

Please take the time to read, sign, and share the UCSC Values Statement!

About #J18 and Beyond

January 18, 2017, is a day to Teach, Organize, Resist. Poised between Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the presidential inauguration, J18 is an opportunity to affirm the role of critical thinking and academic knowledge in challenging Trumpism. On that day, we intend to teach about the agendas and policies of the new administration, be it the proposed dismantling of economic and environmental regulations or the threatened rollback of the hard-won rights that form the fragile scaffolding of American democracy. On that day, we intend to organize against the proposed expansion of state violence targeting people of color, undocumented people, queer communities, women, Muslims, and many others. On that day, we intend to resist the institutionalization of ideologies of separation and subordination, including white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, and virulent nationalism.

#J18 is a call issued by departments, centers, and collectives at UCLA, including The Institute on Inequality and Democracy, RAVE or Resistance Against Violence through Education, African-American Studies, Chicana/o Studies, Institute of American Cultures, Justice Work Group, LGBTQ Studies, UCLA Labor Center, and The Undercommons.

Let it be known that on #J18 and beyond, universities, colleges, and high schools refused to bear silent witness to the politics of hate and fear; that in these times, these places of teaching and learning not only served as a sanctuary for its students and workers but also stood up to proclaim the power of knowledge on the frontlines of social justice.

Share your #J18 activity here:#J18 Event Registration

Twitter: @J18UCSC and @SciJust using #TorUCSC #J18 #J18UCSC #UCSCvalues

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/J18UCSC/

Information and Press Inquires: TeachOrganizeResist@gmail.com

UCSC information: j18ucsc@gmail.com

 

 

Science & Justice Training Program Certificate Reception

Posted on by

4:00-5:30 PM | SJRC Common Room, Oakes 231

Please join us in congratulating the graduate fellows on their achievements in completing the Science & Justice Training Program. This certificate provides recognition to current graduate students who have developed collaborative research methods for exploring the meeting of questions of science and knowledge with questions of ethics and justice. For more pedagogical information on the nationally and internationally recognized Science & Justice Training Program, please read Experiments in Collaboration: Interdisciplinary Graduate Education in Science and Justice originally published in PLOS Biology.

Graduate students interested in the Science & Justice Training Program, please visit: Science & Justice Training Program.

Faculty interested in supporting the Science & Justice Training Program or for more information on our Broader Impacts Initiative, please read: Broader Impacts.

The Genomic Open: Then and Now

Posted on by

The story of the Bermuda Principles and their codification of genome scientists’ commitment to save the human genome from private enclosure is the dominant story of the Human Genome Project. Twenty years after the first historic Bermuda meeting, this seminar will gather together at UC Santa Cruz key players in the creation of an ‘open’ approach to genomics with historians of genomics and allied fields to critically reprise this iconic story. UC Santa Cruz played an important role in ensuring that genomic data remained in the public domain. Today it continues this commitment, but the times have changed. First, genomics is no longer primarily funded by public funds, and a line between public and private efforts can no longer easily be drawn. Second, human genomics is marked by a desire to gain data from private persons who have privacy rights that do not easily articulate to an ethos of open access. Third, genomics is a global science that requires working across nations that have diverse approaches to questions of privacy and private/public ‘partnerships.’ Finally, the number of people producing genomic data and the amount of data itself has grown exponentially, creating new challenges for creating data sharing rules and norms. Participants in this workshop will return to the forging of the Bermuda Principles in 1996 both to generate new insights about the emergence of the genomic open in the 1990s, and to understand what a richer understanding of this history might offer to contemporary efforts to enact public genomics.

Admission is free, however seating is limited, please register here.

This event is sponsored in part by: The UCSC QB3 Genomics Institute

10:30-5:00pm | BioMed 200

 

Rachel Ankeny, Professor of History, The University of Adelaide, Australia

Jenny Bangham, Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin

Scott Edmunds, Executive Editor of GigaScience

David Haussler, Scientific Director of the Genomics Institute, UCSC

Stephen Hilgartner, Professor of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University

Kathryn Maxson, PhD candidate, History of Science, Princeton University

Jenny Reardon, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Science and Justice Research Center, UCSC

Beth Shapiro, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCSC

Hallam Stevens, Assistant Professor of History, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Michael Troncoso, Chief Campus Counsel, UCSC

Robert Waterston, Professor and Chair, Genome Sciences, University of Washington

 

Agenda

Welcome and Introductions

10:30 – 10:45AM   Jenny Reardon (Sociology, Science & Justice Research Center, UCSC)

 

Historical perspectives

10:45 – 11:10AM   Bob Waterston (Genome Sciences, University of Washington)

11:10 – 11:40AM   Rachel Ankeny (History, The University of Adelaide, Australia)

Kathryn Maxson (History of Science, Princeton)

11:40 – 11:55PM   Jenny Bangham (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin)

11:55 – 12:10PM   Steve Hilgartner (Science & Technology Studies, Cornell)

12:10 – 12:45PM   Discussion

 

Genomic Open meets the Biomedical Enclosure

1:45 – 2:00PM   David Haussler (Genomics Institute, UCSC)

2:00 – 2:15PM   Jenny Reardon (Sociology, Science & Justice Research Center, UCSC)

2:15 – 2:20PM   Michael Troncoso (Chief Campus Counsel, UCSC)

2:20 – 3:00PM   Discussion

 

Where are we now?  Emerging Problems and Innovations

3:30 – 3:45PM   Scott Edmunds (Executive Editor of GigaScience)

3:45 – 4:00PM   Beth Shapiro (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCSC)

4:00 – 4:15PM   Hallam Stevens (History, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

4:15 – 5:00PM   Discussion

Big Data: The Promises and Problematics of Prediction

Posted on by

_DSC1315

By virtue of big data, we are being offered a dizzying array of predictive possibilities unimaginable a generation ago. If a crime has occurred in such and such a place, it is probable that others will be committed in the same area (predictive policing). If a student presents with a given profile, it is likely that she will run into trouble within a year at university (educational data analytics). If an infant displays a particular genetic disposition, it is likely that he will become antisocial. In a world where correlation is cast as causation, a core political and philosophical task is to understand what it means to put our faith in the prophets of big data. In this talk, from the Council for Big Data, Ethics and Society, Geoffrey Bowker and Jacob Metcalf will explore with us the landscape of prediction in big data.

Geoffrey Bowker, Professor of Informatics, University of California, Irvine

Jacob Metcalf, Researcher, Data & Society Research Institute

November 4, 2015 | 4:00-6:00 PM | Physical Sciences Building 305

It’s About Time: how perceptions of time influence environmental action

Posted on by

How do conceptions of time inform our perceptions of anthropogenic climate change and influence the political and societal will to respond? How can an appreciation for the timescales of civic policy help scientists to frame their findings for effective social change? How can we render scientific data actionable while retaining the depth of temporal knowledge? This presentation and panel discussion will provide an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the effects of human behavior on different timescales. By bringing together these different perspectives, we aim to theorize how perceptions of time can help communities, such as UCSC, implement both long- and short-range environmental goals and allow for more active engagement with environmental issues.

Elida Erickson, Sustainability Programs Manager and Interim Director, UCSC Office of Sustainability

Zoey Kroll, Internet Communications Coordinator, San Francisco Department of the Environment

Adina Paytan, Research Professor, Institute of Marine Sciences, UCSC

Organized by Science & Justice Training Program Fellows Carolyn Branecky (Earth and Planetary Sciences) and Samuael Topiary (Film + Digital Media)

Read Rap Report > It’s About Time

October 7, 2015 | Physical Sciences Building, Room 305 |   4:00-6:00 PM 

Kim TallBear – Cultivating Indigenous Scientists

Posted on by

Kim TallBear (University of Texas, Austin) discusses how genomics forms along with notions of race and indigeneity (the topic of her 2013 monograph, Native American DNA) and the novel roles that Native geneticists are playing in intervening in these processes to create a more just and democratic approach to genomics.

Co-Sponsored by the UCSC Genomics Institute and the Center for Biomolecular Sciences and Engineering.

To view the video documentation of this event, click this link.  Or — listen to the event below:

Good Science/People’s Science: An Exploration of Science and Justice

Posted on by

C-Thompson-2As part of the Science and Justice Research Center’s efforts to develop analytics for understanding and enacting ‘science and justice,’ we hosted a half-day long symposium that features the work of Charis Thompson (Chancellor’s Professor and Chair of Gender & Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley) and Ruha Benjamin (Assistant Professor in the Center for African American Studies, Princeton University).  In their respective works (Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Science, University of California Press; People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier, Stanford University Press), Thompson and Benjamin provided us with an excellent starting point for our collective efforts to conceptualize and enact ‘science and justice.’

This event included a morning reading group and an afternoon presentation by the two speakers, followed by discussion with a response from Julie Harris-Wai (Assistant Professor, UC San Francisco and Associate Director of CT2G).

Part 1: Introductions by Jenny Reardon & Tala Khanmalek
Part 2: Charis Thompson
Part 3: Ruha Benjamin
Part 4: Julie Harris-Wai, respondant
Part 5: Q/A session
 
Audio of Full Event:

Speakers:
Ruha Benjamin (Assistant Professor, Center for African American Studies and Faculty Associate in the History of Science Program, Princeton)
Charis Thompson (Chancellor’s Professor and Chair of Gender & Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley; Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics)
Respondent: Julie Harris-Wai (Assistant Professor, UC San Francisco; Associate Director, Center for Transdisciplinary ELSI Research in Translational Genomics | CT2G)P1000020

This event was co-sponsored by UCSC Departments of Politics, History of Consciousness, Feminist Studies, WiSE, and Sociology.

The event is also sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender, Politics of Biology and Race Working Group, and Gender and Women’s Studies Department as well as UCSF’s Center for Transdisciplinary ELSI Research in Translational Genomics (CT2G).

Organized in part by Visiting Scholar Tala Khanmalek.

 

Fixing the Pathological Body

Posted on by

fixing-the-pathological-body-potserThe medical industry leans heavily upon a distinction between the “normal” and the “pathological.” How and why do we continue to define this distinction, and for whom are these categories useful?  What are some alternative ways to organize the lived experiences of human bodies and/or minds?

A Panel Discussion with Janette Dinishak (Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UCSC) Kelly Ormond (Professor of Genetics and Genetic Counselor at Stanford University) Matthew Wolf-Meyer (Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCSC and author of The Sleeping Masses).Organized by Science & Justice Training Program Fellows Sandra Harvey (Politics), Linda Dayem (Philosophy) and Jessica Neasbitt (History of Consciousness). Co-Sponsored by UCSC Departments of History of Consciousness, Literature, and Philosophy, as well as the Institute for Humanities Research.

Read Rap Report > Fixing the Pathological Body – Report by Jess Neasbitt 

Janette Dinishak is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests include philosophy and history of psychology and psychiatry (especially autism), Wittgenstein, philosophy of mind, disability, and ethical theory.

Kelly Ormond is a Professor of Genetics at the Stanford School of Medicine. While Ormond’s primary role is to direct the MS in Human Genetics and Genetic Counseling program, her research focuses on the intersection between genetics and ethics, particularly around the translation of new genetic technologies (such as genome sequencing or non-invasive prenatal diagnosis) into clinical practice. She is especially interested in patient decision making, informed consent, and the interface between genetics and disability.

Matthew Wolf-Meyer is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, specializing in medical anthropology, the social study of science and technology, and neuroscience. He is author of The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine and Modern American Life (UMN Press, 2012), which focuses on sleep in American culture and its historical and contemporary relations to capitalism. His second book, What Matters: The Politics of American Brains, focuses on the ethical and epistemological practices in contemporary neuroscience, cybernetics, disability activism, and psychoanalysis in American society. Currently he is in the early stage of a new project focused on the neurological turn to the gut as an extension of the nervous system, the history of shit in the United States, and the therapeutic uses of human excrement in modern medicine.

April 22, 2015

Working Against Female Genital Mutilation in Khartoum, Sudan

Posted on by

Female Genital Mutilation is prevalent across many parts of Africa, with a wide variety of approaches advocated to help prevent this practice.  Dr. Atif Fazari, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at University of Medical Sciences & Technology, Khartoum- Sudan, will discuss his work as a reconstructive surgeon and opponent of FGM.  He will talk about various strategies for reducing this practice, and discuss these with Dr. Carolyn Martin-Shaw, emerita Professor of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz, who has published and taught about African women, social theory, and sexuality.

 

Hosted by Professor of Anthropology, Nancy Chen.

Organized by Associate Professor of Anthropology: Andrew Mathews

Respondent: Anthropology Professor Emeritus Carolyn Martin Shaw

Coordinated by: Dr. Jordann Loehr, MD, MPH

Engineering 2, 399 | 4:00-6:00pm | April 1, 2015

The H+ Film Festival: Cyborg Fictions and Futures

Posted on by

SFCnewlogo

Rapporteur Report > The H+ Film Festival: An Exploration of Cyborg Fictions and Futures

Organized by Science & Justice Training Program Fellows Jeff Sherman (Politics) and Jen Trinh (Physics), together with the Crown Social Fiction Conference, the Science & Justice Research Center presents:

Thursday, March 5th: 8:00 pm Ghost in the Shell | UCSC Merrill Cultural Center

Friday, March 6th:
Midnight screening of Robocop (1987) | Del Mar Theatre, Santa Cruz, Reception and Introduction by Ed Neumeier

Saturday, March 7th:
10:00 am: Registration & breakfast
10:30 am: Transcendent Man | Crown/Merrill Dining Hall
12 Noon: H+ Panel Discussion
1:00 pm: Lunch & Student Poster Session

What kind of future are we moving towards with advances in robotics, prosthetics, artificial intelligence, and body augmentation? The idea of transhumanism (H+) suggests that the future is bright, with extended human lifetimes coupled with higher quality of life. However, in popular science fiction, the future is often not so bright. Will humans eventually transcend their bodies and become higher beings, or will technology reduce humans into mere machines? What is the outlook for “humanity,” how does our popular culture shape our visions of that future, and what ethical questions should we consider today rather than in a transhuman tomorrow?

This film festival (part of the Crown Social Fiction Conference) seeks to create an opportunity for conversations with screenings of the science fiction classics RoboCop (1987) and Ghost in the Shell (1995), as well as the documentary Transcendent Man (2009). Following Transcendent Man, we will have a guided discussion, featuring panelists Ed Neumeier (cowriter of the original RoboCop and UCSC alumnus), Dr. Vivienne Ming (theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and visiting scholar at UC Berkeley), and UCSC’s Dr. Chris Gray (lecturer at Crown College and author of the book Cyborg Citizen). They will explore these questions and examine the relationship between the fictions that awe us and the realities that face us.

Ed Neumeier is a screenwriter, producer, and director, who studied Journalism at UCSC before going on to complete his bachelor’s at UCLA at the School of Motion Picture & Television. Ed is best known for his work on the Robocop and Starship Troopers franchises.

Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. Her research focuses on developing models for the neurobiological processes involved in cognition, perception, learning, and motor function.

Dr. Chris Gray is a lecturer at UCSC’s Crown College, as well as the author of Cyborg Citizen and Peace, War and Computers, two books that explore the political implications of our increasing dependence on electronics. Dr. Gray’s research interests include postmodern politics, information theory, the implications (political, artistic, and ethical) of cyborgs, and more.