Associate Professor Anita Say Chan will present research drawn from her new book, Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future, at two named lectures this month. The lectures, which celebrate Women's History Month, will be held at the University of Minnesota and Carnegie Mellon University.
On March 6, Chan will present "Predatory Data: Feminist Resistance to Eugenics in Big Tech" at the International Women's Day Event co-hosted by the Center on Women, Gender, and Public Policy and the Charles Babbage Institute of Computing, Information, and Culture at the University of Minnesota. In her talk, she will analyze how rapid growth in contemporary Big Tech sectors relies on data methods advanced by Western eugenic researchers, who were fueled by their ambitions to destroy democratic institutions, and reengineer societies—including in the US—with their "science" of inequality over a century ago. Chan will explore how feminist and immigrant researchers at the turn of the century, however, also developed data solidarities to resist exploitative data practices and seed alternatives that continue to inspire today's data-justice activists.
On March 19, Chan will deliver the Annual Margaret Morrison Distinguished Lecture in Women's History at Carnegie Mellon University. Hosted by the Department of History, the lecture brings leading scholars to the CMU campus for dialogue with faculty, students, and the broader community, showcasing their work and encouraging innovative new research. In her talk, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech & Feminist Solidarities," Chan will discuss the "insidious legacy of eugenics" in the techno-surveillance, algorithmic authoritarianism, and data-driven discrimination of Big Tech.
Chan is an associate professor in the iSchool and also holds an appointment in the Department of Media and Cinema Studies in the College of Media. She directs the Community Data Clinic at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and iSchool and co-leads the Just Infrastructures Initiative with faculty in the Grainger College of Engineering. She has served as a Fiddler Innovation Faculty Fellow at the NCSA, Provost Fellow for International Affairs and Global Strategies at the University of Illinois, and Faculty Affiliate at the Data & Society Research Institute in New York City. Chan received her PhD from MIT in the history and anthropology of science and technology studies.