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Zoom Lectures

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Course Information

Lectures: 10:00am-11:30am MW virtual (listed in 306 Soda)

Discussions:

Sections starting the week of 3/8/21:

Mon: 12.10 pm - 1pm Meeting ID: 993 1010 3641 (Links to an external site.) Passcode: forall
Mon: 1.10 pm - 2 pm Meeting ID: 993 7268 7798 (Links to an external site.) Passcode: forall
Tue: 1:10 pm - 2 pm Meeting ID: 451 600 6075 Passcode: BLM2021
Wed: 3:10 pm - 4 pm Meeting ID: 922 2447 9299 Passcode: 052770

Office Hours

John Canny 3-4pm Mondays on Zoom
Pop: Thursday at noon - 1 pm (Please email me a day before if you are planning to stop by)
- Meeting ID: 912 7568 0937
- Passcode: popcorn
Alexander, Mondays at 9am - 10am PST
- Zoom Link: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/96403743954?pwd=RUk5WWR3Q0pkUGVUeTcxMytJdHcrQT09
- Meeting ID: 964 0374 3954
- Passcode: BLM2021
Kerby L , Wed from 4-5pm PST or by appointment.
- Join Zoom Meeting
  https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/93323004789?pwd=SEs1c1UzQ2RjalU3M05qdm9Eb0R6QT09
  
  Meeting ID: 933 2300 4789
  Passcode: 704118

Logistics

Course Numbers: CS 194-100/294-100 Spring 2021, UC Berkeley
Class Numbers: 33332, 33793
Instructor: John Canny Links to an external site.
GSIs:
- Pop Dejanipont: bunyong.dejanipont@berkeley.edu If you are in my discussion section, please include the following in your email's subject, depending on your section (you will receive a faster response): "[CS: Mon 12pm]" or "[CS: Mon 1pm]"
- Alexander Alvara: engineer_alvara@berkeley.edu
- Kerby Lynch: kerbylynch@berkeley.edu
Time: 10am-11:30am, M-W
Location: Virtual (306 Soda)

Piazza

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Course Background

Computer Science, and its sub-fields like AI, have incredible impact on society these days. The potential benefits are great but so are its risks, especially if not enough attention is paid to its impacts on everyone, irrespective of race, class, gender, religion, geographic location etc. Discrimination is both a technical and an organizational challenge. The technical challenge includes fairness in algorithm design, and environmental impacts of hardware manufacturing and e-waste. We will cover those topics in the course, and you will work on a course project which for many (but not all) groups will be a technical project.

Organizational challenges include recognizing and pro-actively addressing racism, gender discrimination and other forms of inequity in work and academic environments. Many aspects of discrimination have long and deep histories. They have become structural, or part of a self-reproducing cycle. But its important to recognize that they are not "normal" or "natural", but instead the result of a history of injustice. In this course we take an action-oriented approach, focusing on identifying and addressing discrimination in its many realizations. We will draw from history and social science perspectives to better understand the forces and structures that support racism and other forms of discrimination, and the kinds of actions that are most effective against them.

Course Grade Breakdown (updated 3/8/21):

Lecture attendance and participation: 10%
Discussion attendance 10%
Reading responses: 10%
Module assignments: 40%
Final project: 30%

To get a 100% participation grade, you should aim to attend at least 70% of that medium (lecture/remaining discussion)

Reading Responses

Each reading response should be a few sentences to a paragraph that addresses the question raised in the assignment.

Schedule

Date	Lecture Topic	Reading	Assignments/Section Notes
W 1/20	Introduction and class overview zoom link slides (pptx) (pdf). video under Media Gallery. John Canny and Kerby Lynch	No readings first week
M 1/25	The Construction of Race. video under Media Gallery. Kerby Lynch	Race: The Power of an Illusion: The Story We Tell Part two (documentary) videos on Kanopy (the first ten to fifteen minutes) Sarah Lewis, The Racial Bias Built Into Photography New York Times
W 1/27	The Legacy of Eugenics, slides (pptx) and (pdf) video under Media Gallery. John Canny	The Eugenics Crusade: PBS “American Experience” - Kanopy second hour. Newkirk, “A Generation of bad blood” the Atlantic
M 2/1	The Civil Rights Movement Prof. Ula Taylor	Freedom Summer : PBS video - Kanopy Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past”
W 2/3	The Affirmative Action Debate / Racial Resentment pdf slides John Canny	Video: Be yond Black and White: Affirmative Action in America Joan C Williams, Chapter 8 of “White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America”	Reading Response 6
M 2/8	Health risks of Migrant Day Laborers - Prof. Kurt Organista	La desesperación in Latino migrant day laborers and its role in alcohol and substance-related sexual risk A Structural-Environmental Model of Alcohol and Substance-Related Sexual HIV Risk in Latino Migrant Day Laborers
W 2/10	Biases in Data Deborah Raji	How our data encodes systematic racism Actionable Auditing: Investigating the Impact of Publicly Naming Biased Performance Results of Commercial AI Products
M 2/15	Holiday
W 2/17	Categorization and its Impacts Prof. Aimee Medeiros	The Origin of Race in the USA, “What is The Origin of Race,” Season 1, Episode 26. Amy Moran-Thomas, “How a Popular Medical Device Encodes Racial Bias,” Boston Review, August 5, 2020. Thomas Jefferson. Notes on the State of Virginia. Philadelphia, Richard and Hall, 1787.	Discussion 1 first post due
M 2/22	Technologies for Surveillance Prof. Michel Laguerre	Minoritized Space: An inquiry into the spatial order of things: Chapter 6 Technologies of Minoritized Space Michel Laguerre (click "Login" to access)
W 2/24	Oppressive Impacts of Technology- Xiaowei Wang	Surveillance in china Made in China excerpt AI farming pigs	Discussion 1 due Project Proposal out
M 3/1	Biases in Algorithms pdf slides Sarah Dean	Fair ML Book: Introduction Algorithms of oppression video
W 3/3	Racial and Geographic Evolution of Silicon Valley pdf slides John Canny	Kim-Mai Cutler “East of Palo Alto’s Eden” Joel N. Shurkin "Broken Genius: The rise and fall of William Shockley" Chapter 9
F 3/5			Project Proposal due
M 3/8	Inequities in STEM Education Pop Dejanipont	Education: The New Whiz Kids (p. 1-5) The Real Problem When It Comes to Diversity and Asian-Americans	Weekly discussion sections start this week. (See the announcement) Reading Response 13
W 3/10	Boom and Bust: Economic Growth and Unaffordable Housing. Azad Amir-Ghassemi	Reading: Watch the documentary "Boom! Sound of an Eviction" in full: https://youtu.be/9FfOHVu_noY Optional: Evictor Structures: Erin McElroy and Azad Amir-Ghassemi on Fighting Displacement (logicmag.io)	Reading Response 13 due Reading Response 14 out Module Assignment 1 out
F 3/12	Module 1 Tutorial	Module Assignment Tutorial
F 3/12			Reading Response 14 due
M 3/15	Impacts of Chip Manufacturing and e-Waste Prof. Kate O'Neill	How We Think about E-Waste Is in Need of Repair	Reading Response 15 out
W 3/17	Workforce inequity in Silicon Valley Prof. Karen Hossfeld	Their Logic Against Them: Contradictions in Sex, Race and Class in Silicon Valley - Karen Hossfeld	Reading Response 15 due Reading Response 16 out
F 3/19			Module Assignment 1 due Reading Response 16 due
3/22-26	Spring Break
M 3/29	Social Justice in the Design Process pdf slides Prof. Eric Paulos	Ihudiya Finda Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al. Critical Race Theory for HCI.pdf Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders et al. Co-creation and the new landscapes of design	Reading Response 17 out
W 3/31	STS (Science and Technology Studies) Frame.work for understanding Social Systems pdf slides Dr. Margarita Boenig-Liptsin	HCE Overview Video Fairness and Abstraction in Sociotechnical Systems, Selbst et al.	Module Assignment 2 out Reading Response 18 out Reading Response 19 out
F 4/2			Reading Response 17 due Reading Response 19 due
M 4/5	Technological Co-Creation Prof. Lilly Irani	Postcolonial computing: a lens on design and development, Lilly Irani et al. Turkopticon: interrupting worker invisibility in amazon mechanical turk, Lilly Irani et al.	Reading Response 18 due Required group project check in with GSI project advisor
W 4/7	Co-Creation in Practice Prof. Josh Blumenstock	Using Mobile Phone and Satellite Data to Target Emergency Cash Transfers	Reading Response 20 out
F 4/9			Reading Response 20 due Module Assignment 2 due
M 4/12	Social Movements: Approaches to Action James Burch	“You Just Don’t Go Down There”: Learning to Avoid the Ghetto in San Francisco By Nikki Jones, Christina Jackson	Reading Response 21 out
W 4/14	The Accuracy, Fairness, and Limits of Predicting Recidivism Prof. Hany Farid	Dangers of Risk Prediction in Criminal Justice The accuracy, fairness, and limits of predicting recidivism Do predictive algorithms have a place in public policy	Module Assignment 3 out Reading Response 22 out
F 4/16			Reading Response 21 due Reading Response 22 due
M 4/19	The Black Lives Matter Movement Kerby Lynch (PhD Candidate in Geography)	Have Black Lives Ever Mattered by Mumia Abu-Jamal (p.1-35)	Reading Response 23 out
W 4/21	Digital Protest and Labor Pop Dejanipont	Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted Do Protests Even Work?	Reading Response 24 out
F 4/23			Module assignment 3 due Reading Response 23 due Reading Response 24 due
M 4/26	Technologies for Social Change pdf slides Rediet Abebe talk John Canny	Roles for Computing in Social Change R. Abebe et al.	Reading Response 25 out Required 2nd group project check in with GSI project advisor
W 4/28	Bringing it home to EECS: Computing and Social Change	No readings	Social Justice course internal survey out
F 4/30			Reading Response 25 due Social Justice course internal survey due (soft deadline)
5/3-7	RRR week
5/11			Project report due