Author Archives: Colleen Stone

April 04, 2025 | BME80G Series: Jonathan LoTempio on Nuremberg moments: bioethics pasts and futures

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Friday, April 04, 2025

1:20 – 2:25 pm 

J. Baskin Aud 101 (flyer)

On Friday, April 04 at 1:20 pm, you are invited to join S&J affiliate and Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Karen Miga’s BME 80G Bioethics course for a talk by Jonathan LoTempio on the foundational aspects of bioethics as it developed in the last 80 years.

A zoom option or recording may be available for members of the campus community who cannot attend in person. Contact Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu) to request access.

Nuremberg moments: bioethics pasts and futures

Bioethics as we understand it today is a product of the rules-based international order. It is a unique field of study because it has been sanctioned or supported at the highest level of government, rather than devolved to specialist agencies. However, this position is changing, offering time for stock-taking and consideration of new futures. In this seminar, we will discuss some pre-World War II antecedents of 20th-century bioethics, the bioethical wilderness from the War and Nuremberg up until the Belmont Report, and the Commission Era from 1974-2016. With this foundation, we will consider the futures of bioethics, public health ethics, and data ethics in light of our newly fractured rules-based order.

Dr. Jonathan LoTiempo Jr, Fellow in Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Genetics and Genomics at Penn Medical Ethics & Health Policy.

Dr. Jonathan LoTempio Jr. is a globally engaged researcher working at the intersection of genomics, bioethics, and international policy. As a postdoctoral fellow in bioethics and human data at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, he studies the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging genomic technologies within an international framework.

LoTempio’s contributions to the field span bioinformatics, science diplomacy, global health, and bioethics initiatives. During his doctoral work, he expanded an extant medical collaboration between researchers in Washington, DC and Kinshasa, DR Congo to include reference genomics projects to enhance diagnostic rates for rare and inherited conditions in sub–Saharan Africa. As a Fulbright Schuman Fellow, he conducted research at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, Austria, and United Nations University-CRIS in Bruges, Belgium, where he examined the role of science and technology in international governance with a focus on data sharing. He spent the summer after his Fulbright doing archival research at the UN Office at Geneva in search of the postwar antecedents of open science. Woven through each of these has been a commitment to enhancing ethical research and fundamental study of bioethics.

He has been funded by the US National Institutes of Health, the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the US Department of State and the EU Directorate General for Education and Culture through the Belgium-Luxembourg Fulbright Commission, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, San Francisco, California, the Clark Family Foundation of Bethesda, Maryland, and the Cosmos Club of Washington, DC.

He holds a BS in biochemistry (University of Rochester) and a PhD in genomics and bioinformatics (George Washington University). Before his academic career, he spent three years working in program management and policy evaluation at the US National Institutes of Health and the Obama White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Readings

Required: bioethical primary sources
  1. Nuremberg Doctor’s Trial PDF (get from instructor)
    1. Section: Judgment – Permissible Medical Experiments (pages 11-14 only, charges on pages 6-11 may be disturbing but instructive)
  2. Obama’s apology to the Guatemalan president 
    1. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2010/10/01/read-out-presidents-call-with-guatemalan-president-colom

Required papers:

  1. The Nuremberg Code at 70 (free online): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2649074
Optional, but very good:
  1. Wikipedia on the rules-based order:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order
  3. Elenor Roosevelt speech on the struggle for human rights at Sorbonne, 1948: https://erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu/struggle-human-rights-1948
  4. Nature article, “Overcoming challenges associated with broad sharing of human genomic data,” bibliography is very good for genomics / data / engineers.

Co-hosted by the UCSC Department of Biomolecular Engineering, the Genomics Institute, and the Science & Justice Research Center.

March 11, 2025 | Critical Imagination in Crisis Times

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March 11, 2025

2:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Cultural Center at Merrill

Registration

Join The UCSC Humanities Institute for a one-day conference, “Critical Imagination in Crisis Times,” featuring presentations by:

  • Iain Chambers, Former Professor of the Sociology of Cultural Processes, Oriental University, Naples
  • Paul Gilroy, Emeritus Professor of Humanities, University College, London
  • Vron Ware, Visiting Professor at the Gender Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science

UC Santa Cruz faculty participants include: Jim Clifford (Emeritus Professor, History of Consciousness) Chris Connery (Professor, Literature), Vilashini Cooppan (Professor, Literature and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies), Isaac Julien (Distinguished Professor, Arts and History of Consciousness), Mark Nash (Professor, Arts and History of Consciousness), María Puig de la Bellacasa (Professor, History of Consciousness).

Conference Program:

2:00-2:15 pm          Conference Introduction:  Isaac Julien and Mark Nash

2:15-3:15 pm           Iain Chambers, “From Kassel to Gaza: Art and Critical Testimony” (Moderator, Chris Connery)

3:30-4:30 pm         Vron Ware, “Letting the Land Speak” (Moderator, María Puig de la Bellacasa)

4:45-5:45 pm         Paul Gilroy, “Political Eschatologies of Mismanaged Decline” (Moderator, Jim Clifford)

5:45-6:30 pm         Plenary Discussion:  Moderators, Isaac Julien and Mark Nash

Light refreshments will be served throughout the afternoon. The conference will also be live-streamed. Follow this link to join online. Conference presented by Moving Image Lab, The Humanities Institute, and the Center for Cultural Studies. Co-sponsored by the History of Consciousness Department.

Iain Chambers

Iain Chambers has taught cultural, postcolonial, and Mediterranean studies for many years at the University of Naples, Orientale, and is now an independent researcher. Amongst his recent publications are Postcolonial Interruptions, Unauthorised Modernities (2017), and, with Marta Cariello, The Mediterranean Question (2025). In 2022, he was a member of the artistic collective Jimmie Durham & A Stick in the Forest by the Side of the Road at documenta 15. He writes regularly for the Italian daily il Manifesto.

Paul Gilroy

Paul Gilroy was born in the East End of London in 1956. He is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at University College London where he was founding director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the study of racism and racialisation. Gilroy was previously Professor of American and English at King’s College London, Giddens Professor of Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2005-2012), Charlotte Marian Saden Professor of African American Studies and Sociology at Yale (1999-2005) and Professor of Cultural Studies and Sociology at Goldsmiths College London (1995-1999). He holds honorary doctorates from Goldsmiths College, Sussex University, the University of Liege, the University of Copenhagen, Oxford University and the University of St. Andrews. He is an honorary Fellow of Sussex University and of King’s College, London. In 2014, he was made a Fellow of the British Academy and in 2018 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded Norway’s Holberg Prize in 2019. He writes widely on Art, Music, Literature and Politics. His publications include: Darker than Blue: On The Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Cultures (2010), Black Britain: A Pictorial History (2007), After Empire:Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (2005).

Vron Ware

Vron Ware is a London-based writer and photographer, having previously taught geography, sociology and gender studies at universities in the UK and the US. She has written several books on the politics of gender and race, colonial history, national identity, ecological thought and the cultural heritage of war. She gave her first book talk for Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History at UC Santa Cruz in 1992. More recently she has published Return of a Native: Learning from the Land (2022) and co-authored England’s Military Heartland: Preparing for War on Salisbury Plain (2025).

THI Image Credit: Isaac Julien, Western Union Series no. 1 (Cast No Shadow), 2007, Duratrans image in lightbox, Courtesy the artist.

March 07, 2025 | Stand Up for Science

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March 07, 2025

12:00 pm

Across the Nation

Motivated by the attacks on sciences and scientists that we are seeing daily across fields of research and care for health, environment, climate, and more, we will gather in a pop-up event outside the Science and Engineering Library at noon, Friday, March 7, for a half hour of sharing information and experiences of damage to sciences and scientists across the country and here at UCSC. Spread the word among students and colleagues! Invite our administrators!

Donna Haraway and another speaker currently being arranged will briefly summarize some of the attacks and responses, and there will be time for others to share information and experiences. Bring home-made signs and lots of energy.
We will meet on Red Square just outside the Science and Engineering Library, a big, centrally located plaza. Organizing is taking off, and folks in PBSci are enthusiastic.
Another UCSC Stand Up for Science event is also being planned on the Coastal Science Campus, to raise awareness about the dismantling of federal science and especially to support the people of NOAA and the USGS, who are also on the CSC campus and who are losing jobs and labs right now. Ingrid Parker (imparker@ucsc.edu) can provide more information for anyone who wants to go to that event on the coast.
Having actions on both campuses makes it possible for everyone to come easily!
Stand Up for Science is a national day of actions on March 7 in dozens of cities and dozens of other locations. Learn more at: https://standupforscience2025.org/our-policy-goals/
Donna Haraway with her dog Shindychew. Photo credit: Clara Mokri.

Donna Haraway awarded the 2025 Erasmus Prize

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Donna Haraway, distinguished professor emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California Santa Cruz, has been awarded the 2025 Erasmus Prize, one of Europe’s most prestigious recognitions for contributions to culture, society, and social thought.

More information about the achievement can be found in this campus news article: Donna Haraway, Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department, receives international honors.

An event is planned for June 3rd to honor, Donna Haraway, who received two international honors for her impact not just within academia, but across disciplines, borders, and possible futures.

On Tuesday, June 3rd at 3:30pm, the McHenry Library Special Collections & Archives will host “THICK, SLIMY, SQUISHY, SQUIGGLY & GENERATIVE: A Conversation with Donna Haraway,” featuring Haraway in conversation with three of her former graduate students——Chela Sandoval (Chicana Studies, UCSB), Katie King (Women’s Studies, UMD), and Caren Kaplan (American Studies, UC Davis).

Together with Haraway, these History of Consciousness alums will revisit the collaborative, interdisciplinary, and transformative modes of thinking that shaped their time at UCSC in the 1980s and ’90s—and that continue to animate their work today. Reflecting on this shared historical moment, the conversation will trace the intersections, evolutions, and generative entanglements of their ideas over time—and consider why collectivity, friendship, integrity, and humor remain vital tools for navigating what Haraway has called the “thick and slimy” urgencies of our present.

This event also marks the opening of an exhibition that showcases select materials from the Donna Haraway Papers, newly processed and available for research at UCSC’s McHenry Library.

Organized by the University Library’s Elisabeth Remak-Honnef Center for Archival Research and Training (CART) and 2024-2025 CART Fellow Annika Berry.

More information about the event is on the campus event calendar: https://calendar.ucsc.edu/event/thick-slimy-squishy-squiggly-generative-a-conversation-with-donna-haraway

Donna smiling looking at the camera while sitting in a garden with a black dog.

Donna Haraway awarded Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

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Donna Haraway, distinguished professor emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California Santa Cruz, has been awarded the ‘Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement’ in Memoriam to the Italian architect and designer Italo Rota (1953-2024), of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.

More information about the achievement and ceremony can be found here.

Book cover fo Unmaking Botany: Science and Vernacular Knowledge in the Colonial Philippines (Duke University Press, 2025)

Book release! Unmaking Botany: Science and Vernacular Knowledge in the Colonial Philippines (Duke University Press, 2025)

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About the Book

Book cover fo Unmaking Botany: Science and Vernacular Knowledge in the Colonial Philippines (Duke University Press, 2025)

Unmaking Botany: Science and Vernacular Knowledge in the Colonial Philippines (Duke University Press, 2025)

In Anglo-European botany, it is customary to think of the vernacular as that which is not a Latin or Latinized scientific plant name. In Unmaking Botany, Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez traces a history of botany in the Philippines during the last decades of Spanish rule and the first decades of US colonization. Through this history, she redefines the vernacular, expanding it to include embodied, cosmological, artistic, and varied taxonomic practices. From the culinary textures of rice and the lyrics crooned to honor a flower to the touch of a skirt woven from banana fiber, she illuminates how vernaculars of plant knowing in the Philippines exposed the philosophical and practical limits of botany. Such vernaculars remained as sovereign forms of knowledge production. Yet, at the same time, they fueled botany’s dominance over other ways of knowing plants. Revealing this tension allows Gutierrez to theorize “sovereign vernaculars,” or insight into plants that made and unmade the science, which serves as a methodological provocation to examine the interplay of different knowledge systems and to study the history of science from multiple vantage points.

More information can be found at: https://dukeupress.edu/unmaking-botany

About the Author

Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Science and Social Justice: Jenny Reardon featured on Digital Science

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Posted from Digital Science.

As the Aaron Sorkin global political drama that is 2024 reaches its season finale in the USA today, we are thrilled to share an interview about the problem of the politicization of science with Professor Jenny Reardon, Professor of Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz, and the Founding Director of Science and Justice Research Center. Jenny and I [Suze] met back in June [2024] when we both attended a workshop on Science at Social Justice at the Lorenz Center in Leiden, The Netherlands, as a result of a session at Sci Foo 2023 where like-minded people gathered to talk about the state of research and its impact on all of society.

Read more and watch the interview on YouTube.

January 27, 2025 | SNU in the World Program Visit

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The SNU in the World Program, administered by the Office of International Affairs (OIA) at Seoul National University is a university-led and government-funded initiative to train undergraduate students to be globally engaged scholars and leaders. The SNU in the World Program with the Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC) at UC Santa Cruz is coordinated through the Science & Justice Research Center’s Visiting Scholar Program with Doogab Yi, Associate Professor of Science Studies at Seoul National University (https://bit.ly/2P9b7Wi). The SNU in the World Program at UC Santa Cruz is one of five other programs selected for funding and focuses on Innovation, Science and Justice. Other SNU Programs include visits to Washington DC (public policy), Japan (sustainable development), and Australia (climate crisis).

From January 27 through February 07, 2025, the SJRC will host Professor Doogab Yi, graduate students and undergraduate students for two weeks.

Select in-person lectures and activities will allow for a few additional guests to join. Please express interest in these events in this Google Form. As you fill this out, you can refer to the Winter 2025 Schedule and Participant Biographies.

For additional information or to get involved, contact Jenny Reardon (reardon1@ucsc.edu) and Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu).

Doogab Yi currently works on several projects related to the development of science and technology within the context of capitalism, such as the history of biotechnology, the relationship between science and the law, and the emergence of the technologies of the 24/7 self. He teaches courses in the history of modern science, science and the law, and environmental history.