UVA Public Interest Data Lab

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Project site for UVA's Spring 2020 Public Interest Data Lab, a core project of the CommPAS Lab

View the Project on GitHub datafordemocracy/public-interest-data-2020

Schedule

There are no books to purchase for this class. All readings are either freely available or will be shared on slack. For each week, you should complete the assigned reading before coming to class; these will frame our discussion and inform our work. There are three types of reading: (1) research about the child welfare system and racial disparity, (2) scholarship on data and methods, primarily with a focus on using data responsibly and ethically, (3) resources on using R, included as additional support, but not a focus of discussion. We will spend time in class – about an hour each in weeks 1-3, and 30-45 minutes in weeks 4-7 – demonstrating multiple ways of using R for our work.

2/17 The Child Welfare System, Learning by Doing, Data as Power

For apart from inquiry apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry, human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. - Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Readings:

Reference/Resource:

Assignment (due by noon 2/24):

2/24 Local Context/Past Work, Understanding our Data, Data Provenance and Processing

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. - Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Readings:

Reference/Resource:

Assignment (due by noon 3/2):

3/2 Local Context/Past Work, Understanding our Data, Algorithms and Data Science

If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. - Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s

Readings:

Reference/Resource:

Assignment (due by noon 3/23):

3/9 Happy Spring Break!

3/16 No class, transition to online

3/23 Measuring Race, Race as Technology

The oppressor is in solidarity with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor - when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, in its existentiality in its praxis. To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce. - Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Readings:

Reference/Resource:

What’s Due?

3/30 Digging into the Literature, Building Models

Demanding more data on subjects that we already know much about is, in my estimation, a perversion of knowledge. The datafication of injustice… in which the hunt for more and more data is a barrier to acting on what we already know. - Ruha Benjamin, Race after Technology

Readings:

Reference/Resource:

What’s Due?

4/6 Digging into the Literature, Representing Populations

But simply punishing the broken–walking away from them or hiding them from sight–only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity. - Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

Readings:

What’s Due?

4/13 Digging into the Literature, Interpreting Models

… I was gradually able to make a natural connection between this intellectual penetration at Oxford and the moral perception which is always necessary for the discovery of new methods by which to minister to human needs. In the unceasing ebb and flow of justice and oppression we must all dig channels as best we may, that at the propitious moment somewhat of the swelling tide may be conducted to the barren places of life. - Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House

Readings:

What’s Due?

4/20 Beginning our Final Report

Readings:

What’s Due?

4/27 Revisions and Next Steps

Readings:

What’s Due?

4/30 Report Revisions

What’s Due?