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Course Information

Lectures: 2:30-4:00pm MW in 306 Soda

Discussion Sections:

Sections start the second week of classes on Zoom (Mondays & Fridays). Here are the times:
Friday 3-4pm: Zoom link
Monday 1-2pm: Zoom link

Office Hours

Logistics

Course Numbers: CS 194-100/294-100 Spring 2023, UC Berkeley
Class Numbers:
Instructor: John Canny Links to an external site.
GSI: Giselle Mendoza Rocha (gisellemendoza@berkeley.edu) -please include [CS 194-100] in the subject line-
Reader: Karthika Baiju (karthika_baiju@berkeley.edu) -email her for grading inquiries-
Time: 2:30-4pm, M & W
Location: 306 Soda

Discussions

Use the "Ed Discussions" link on the left.

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:

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 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
Module 1: A brief history of Race, STEM Education and Silicon Valley
W 1/18	Introduction and class overview zoom link. Slides.	Ruha Benjamin "Race After Technology" Introduction Recommended: Take an implicit bias test	Section preferences form Module 1 Assignment out
M 1/23	The Construction of Race. Slides.	Race: The Power of an Illusion: The Story We Tell, Episode #2 on this page. Narrative background here. Recommended: Omi and Winant: Racial Formation in the United States (ch 4) G. Fredrickson: The Rise of Modern Racism in the 18th and 19th Centuries.	Reading Response 2 (for lecture 2) due Reading Response 3 (for lecture 3) due
W 1/25	The Legacy of Eugenics. Slides.	The Eugenics Crusade: PBS “American Experience” - Kanopy second hour. Recommended: Osagie K. Obasogie: More Than Love: Eugenics and the Future of Loving v. Virginia Erika Lee: The Making of Asian America, CH 4
M 1/30	The Civil Rights Movement - Prof. Ula Taylor. Video under Media Gallery.	Freedom Summer : PBS video - Kanopy Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past”	Reading Response 4 due Reading Response 5 due
W 2/1	The Affirmative Action Debate. Slides	Video: "Beyond Black and White: Affirmative Action in America" in Media Gallery at left Recommended: Ira Katznelson - "When Affirmative Action Was White": Ch 1
M 2/6	Racial and Geographic Evolution of Silicon Valley. Slides	Kim-Mai Cutler “East of Palo Alto’s Eden” Joel N. Shurkin "Broken Genius: The rise and fall of William Shockley" Chapter 9 Recommended: Park and Pellow: "Racial formation, environmental racism, and the emergence of Silicon Valley."	Reading Response 6 due Reading Response 7 due
Module 2: Technology Co-Creation
W 2/8	Social Justice in the Design Process: CoCreation. Slides	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 Recommended: Sasha Costanza-Chock, "Design Justice" Introduction	Module Assignment 2 out
F 2/10			Module Assignment 1 due
M 2/13	Technological Co-Creation. Slides.	Lilly Irani et al. Postcolonial computing: a lens on design and development Lilly Irani et al. Turkopticon: interrupting worker invisibility in amazon mechanical turk	Reading Response 8 due Reading Response 9 due
W 2/15	STS (Science and Technology Studies) Framework. Slides	HCE Overview Video Fairness and Abstraction in Sociotechnical Systems, Selbst et al.
W 2/22	Caste and Class Slides	Joan C Williams, Chapter 8 of “White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America” Recommended: Tobin Smith: Introduction to "Foxocracy: Inside the Networks playbook on tribal warefare" Isabel Wilkerson, "Caste": the 8 pillars of Caste	Reading Response 10 due
F 2/24			Module Assignment 2 due
Module 3: Organizational/Societal Change and Barriers
M 2/27	Danielle Cummings	No readings	No Reading response due Module Assignment 3 out
W 3/1	Technology and Labor Adrienne Williams	The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence, Williams et al. Surveillance Nation_Costa Rica
M 3/6	Disability Rights Synge Tyson	Defiant Lives Links to an external site. (Kanopy) This Georgetown sophomore wants to change how we view and talk about disabilities Links to an external site. Recommended: Charlton: Nothing About Us Without Us, Chapter 1 User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play - November 19, 2019 – by: Cliff Kuang, Robert Fabricant Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong - Jul 17, 2018 – by: James W. Loewen Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Third Edition - Oct 26, 2021 – by: Joseph Grenny , Kerry Patterson, et al.	Reading Response 13 due Reading Response 14 due
W 3/8	Indigenous Perspectives on Society and Healing Slides	Russell Means "I Am Not a Leader" Thomas DeWolf "The Little Book on Racial Healing" Chapter 3 Recommended: Howard Zehr: "The Little Book of Restorative Justice" Chapter 2 Restorative Justice Video
M 3/13	Anti-Racist Interventions and Barriers Slides	Layla Saad: Me and White Supremacy Part II: week 1: The Basics Recommended: Ibram X Kendi: How to be an Anti-Racist	Reading Response 15 due Reading Response 16 due
W 3/15	AANHPI Experiences Slides	Jane Hyun: The Bamboo Ceiling, CH 1 and Video M. Chin: Stuck: Why Asian Americans don't reach the top of the Corporate Ladder, CH 2 and Video Recommended: Chou/Feagin: The Myth of the Model Minority, CH 1
F 3/17			Module Assignment 3 due
Module 4: Technologies of Oppression
M 3/20	Biases in Data Slides	Deb Raji How our data encodes systematic racism Deb Raji Actionable Auditing: Investigating the Impact of Publicly Naming Biased Performance Results of Commercial AI Products	Reading Response 17 due Reading Response 18 due Module Assignment 4 out
W 3/22	Bias in Algorithms Slides	Barocas, Hardt, Narayanan: FairML Book, CH1 Introduction Recommended: FairML Book, CH2 Classification
M 4/3	Polarization and Social Media Slides	W. Brady et al. "How social learning amplifies moral outrage expression in online social networks" Kelly et. al "Social Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health" Recommended: Voelkel et al. Megastudy identifying successful interventions to strengthen Americans’ democratic attitudes	Reading Response 19 due Reading Response 20 due
W 4/5	Injustice in Health Care Rosario Robinson	Lyles et al., Focusing on Digital Health Equity Newkirk, “A Generation of bad blood” the Atlantic Recommended: Amy Moran-Thomas, “How a Popular Medical Device Encodes Racial Bias,” Boston Review, August 5, 2020.
M 4/10	Injustice in Housing Slides	Reading: Watch the documentary "Boom! Sound of an Eviction" in full: https://youtu.be/9FfOHVu_noY Evictor Structures: Erin McElroy and Azad Amir-Ghassemi on Fighting Displacement Recommended: Jones and Jackson“You Just Don’t Go Down There”: Learning to Avoid the Ghetto in San Francisco	Reading Response 21 due
W 4/12	Surveillance Slides	Simone Browne: Dark Matters: Chapter 3, pages 19-38. Recommended: Simone Browne: Dark Matters: Sousveillance Race, Surveillance and Resistance	Reading Response 22 due
F 4/14			Module Assignment 4 due
Module 5: Technologies of Liberation
M 4/17	Policing and Alternatives Slides	Berkeley's SCU Program: An alternative to police mental health crisis response How San Francisco police surveillance closed in on Black Lives Matter protests Recommended: Task force on Policing Report	Reading Response 23 due Reading Response 24 due
W 4/19	Injustice in Law Enforcement Slides	Dangers of Risk Prediction in Criminal Justice The accuracy, fairness, and limits of predicting recidivism Do predictive algorithms have a place in public policy	Project Poster out
M 4/24	From the Beginning: Whole Child Equity Slides	Edley & Kimner Getting Down to Facts II: Education Equity in California Opportunity Institute Overview Recommended: National Academies Report: Monitoring Educational Equity Engage for Education Equity Toolkit	Reading Response 25 due
W 4/26	Take-aways from the course Slides	Please come prepared to share your own take-aways from the course.	Internal Course Survey
F 4/28			Project Poster due
Tu 5/2	1-3pm Soda 5th Floor Atrium	Project Poster Presentations	Scheduling Link
M 5/8			Project report due