DEI Resources

The SRL is dedicated to educating the next generation of roboticists and engineers about the role their work can play in society — for good or bad. A critical part of this is understanding the existing system, with its biases and challenges. The following materials are great places to start in educating oneself about our current society.

Books

  • Nonfiction
    • A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes. This book is a good intro to the history of systemic racism in the USA.
    • High Price by Carl Hart. This book covers the fundamental biases in the war on drugs and society at large. It also speaks to the importance of mentorship and having people with social power believe in and support people from underprivileged backgrounds.
    • Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin. This book details race as a technology in and of itself, and reveals the extremely subtle and counterintuitive ways that racism pervades widely-deployed technologies.
    • The Inequality Machine by Paul Tough. This book unveils the systemic biases within undergraduate education, from admissions to graduation rates. There are some really positive and inspiring stories to balance out the intense and sad ones. For a more academic take, read Equity in Science by Julie Posselt.
    • How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. This book should be no surprise on this list. Much like White Fragility, it can be hard to swallow — but, after careful reading, and thinking, one can see how the book illustrates the causes and effects of racism in the USA.
    • The First Idea by Stanley Greenspan and Stuart Shanker. This book is a fascinating story about neurological development, with ramifications for neurodiversity and artificial intelligence.
    • Equity in Science by Julie Posselt. This book covers several studies that reveal biases, inequities, and their causes throughout academia. Excitingly, Posselt’s studies also identify core ways in which universities and departments can actively identify and fight bias and inequity.
  • Fiction

Also check out Shreyas’ blog.

Articles

  • Abad-Santos, Al. “How science fiction is getting more diverse.” Vox, 2014. [link].
  • Yaszek, L. “The history of women in sci-fi isn’t what you think.” WiReD, 2019. [link].
  • Yaszek, L. “Afrofuturism, science fiction, and the history of the future.” Socialism & Democracy, 2006. [link].
  • Perez, A. “Tokenism in writing and how to avoid it.” Rowan Writing Arts, 2021. [link].

Facilitating Difficult Conversations

One of the key challenges in academia is finding ways to have productive conversations about privilege, equity, and inclusion. It is often possible to find oneself feeling progressive-minded while subconsciously taking actions that further entrench systemic bias. This is more pernicious type of bias than the overt racism or prejudice that makes for flashy media pieces — how do we get people to recognize that they are part of a biased system, when their socialization within that system creates emotional response that prevent them from such recognition? By building a community that is open to directly discussing these challenges, we can hopefully make an impact.