Ruha Benjamin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ruha Benjamin
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| Born | 1978 (age 47–48) Wai, Maharashtra, India
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| Education | Spelman College (BA) University of California, Berkeley (MA, PhD) |
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| Institutions | Princeton University |
Ruha Benjamin (born in 1978) is a professor at Princeton University. She studies how new ideas and technologies affect fairness and equality. Her work often looks at how race, justice, and technology are connected.
Professor Benjamin has written several important books. These include People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (2013), Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), and Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022).
In 2024, she received a special award called the MacArthur Fellowship.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Ruha Benjamin was born in Wai, Maharashtra, India. Her father was African-American, and her mother had Indian and Persian roots. Growing up, she lived in many different places, including South Central Los Angeles, California, and countries like Eswatini in Southern Africa. These experiences helped her become interested in how science, technology, and medicine affect people's lives.
She earned her first degree, a Bachelor of Arts, in sociology and anthropology from Spelman College. Later, she completed her PhD in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley in 2008.
Career and Research
After finishing her studies, Professor Benjamin worked at several universities. She was a research fellow at UCLA and Harvard Kennedy School. From 2010 to 2014, she was a professor at Boston University.
Understanding Technology and Fairness
In 2013, her first book, People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier, was published. In this book, she explored how new scientific ideas and designs can sometimes make existing inequalities worse. She looked at how ideas about race and gender were used in the study of genetics.
Her 2019 book, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, became very well-known. In this book, she explains how social unfairness, especially racism, can be built into the way internet technologies work. She created the idea of the "New Jim Code." This term helps us understand how computer programs and apps, even if they seem fair, can accidentally repeat or increase unfairness based on race.
Race After Technology won several awards. These include the Oliver Cox Cromwell Book Prize in 2020 and the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Award for Nonfiction in 2020.
Work at Princeton University
Today, Professor Benjamin is a professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her research focuses on how science, technology, and medicine connect with ideas about race, citizenship, knowledge, and power.
In 2018, she started the JUST DATA Lab. This is a special place where activists, technologists, and artists can work together. They explore how data can be used to create more justice in the world. She also helps lead programs at Princeton that focus on global health and digital humanities.
In September 2020, Professor Benjamin was chosen as one of the 25 members of the "Real Facebook Oversight Board." This is a group that watches over Facebook to make sure it is fair and responsible.
Awards and Recognition
Professor Benjamin has received many awards and fellowships for her important work. These include awards from the Marguerite Casey Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.
In 2017, she received the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, which recognized her excellent teaching skills. In 2024, she was named a MacArthur Fellow. This is a very prestigious award given to talented individuals who show exceptional creativity.
On April 11, 2024, her former college, Spelman College, gave her an honorary Doctor of Science degree.
