The Science History Institute’s Distillations, Innate: “The Vampire Project”

Posted on February 28, 2023February 28, 2023 by Colleen Stone

Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon, founding director of the Science & Justice Research Center at UC Santa Cruz, was featured in podcast episode 4 of the ‘Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race’ a project exploring the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine.

podcast episode 4 of the Innate series on "How Science Invented the Myth of Race"

Episode 4 of ‘Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race’ podcast.

Listen to or read the transcript

Episode 4: “The Vampire Project”at, https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/podcast/the-vampire-project.

Resource List

Basically, We Are All the Same, by Paul Salopek

The Human Genome Diversity Project, by Luca Cavalli-Sforza

The Human Genome Diversity Project and Its Implications For Indigenous Peoples, by Debra Harry

Human Genome Project

Patent Nonsense, by Philip L. Bereano

Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics, by Jenny Reardon

Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini

Call for Undergraduate Individual Study (apply by March 8)

Posted on February 23, 2023February 23, 2023 by Colleen Stone

The Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC) invites undergraduate students to apply as researchers for the Spring 2023 term. The SJRC will host up to 2 Individual Study students to collaborate on the LEED research project. The Individual Study course, can range from 2-5 units, be independent or group and will include directed readings, guided independent and collaborative research and project planning.

Available Spring 2023

Leadership in the Ethical and Equitable Design (LEED) of STEM Research: Up to 2 students will work directly with Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon’s team of researchers and collaborators at Columbia University, University of Washington, and Stanford to facilitate the creation of a cross-sector, cross-national effort to reformulate the meaning of good science in ways that center diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), the ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) of research, and the goals of advancing equity and justice. Specifically, students will work with the LEED Team to identify existing guidelines and best practices in a STEM area of interest to the student, and help to complete a systematic document review using qualitative research methods (including coding with MAXQDA software). This research will inform the development of LEED principles and practices.

Learn more in this campus news article: National Science Foundation grant will help establish ethics and equity best practices for emerging forms of science and technology and in this CellPress publication, “Trustworthiness matters: Building equitable and ethical science” that announces the collaborative project.

To Apply:

By Wednesday, March 8, 2023 at 12 noon, students should email (scijust@ucsc.edu) with their resume/CV and a very brief letter of interest. We’re excited to learn about you and teach you what we’ve learned from each other! Please let us know the following:

your name, major(s), any faculty advisors.
any experiences with related research, why you are interested in being involved, and how your curriculum, research, or career goals would benefit from the independent study.

February 21, 2023 | “Why Is Publishing So White?” An Evening with Richard Jean So

Posted on February 21, 2023February 22, 2023 by Colleen Stone

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

5:00-6:30 PM

Humanities 1, 210

On Tuesday, February 21 at 5:00pm, Kresge’s Media & Society Series speaker, Richard Jean So, will present on “Why is Publishing so White?” (RJS flier PDF)

More on Kresge’s Media & Society Series can be found on the series website.

Richard Jean So is associate professor of English and Digital Humanities at McGill University. He uses computational and data-driven methods to study contemporary culture, from the novel to Netflix to social media. He has published academic articles in PMLA and Critical Inquiry and public-facing pieces in The New York Times and Atlantic. His most recent book is Redlining Culture: A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction (Columbia UP, 2021) and he is currently working on Fast Culture, Slow Justice: Race and Writing in the Digital Age.

Co-sponsored by Computational Media, Literature, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Science & Justice Research Center, and the Center for Cultural Studies.

Published in CellPress: Trustworthiness matters: Building equitable and ethical science

Posted on February 2, 2023June 21, 2023 by Colleen Stone

A new CellPress publication, “Trustworthiness matters: Building equitable and ethical science,” is out by Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon, founding director of the Science & Justice Research Center and collaborators Sandra Soo-Jin Lee (Columbia), Sara Goering (University of Washington, Seattle), Stephanie M. Fullerton (University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle), Mildred K. Cho (Stanford), Aaron Panofsky (UC Los Angeles), and Evelynn M. Hammonds (Harvard, Spelman) on their collaborative project LEED. LEED seeks to establish ethics and equity best practices for emerging forms of science and technology.

The article can also be accessed at Science Direct.

Learn more about LEED in this campus news article and on the project webpage.