Lower Level Theater, Barnard Hall
From the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW): Why AI Needs Feminism brings together feminist critical technologists Lauren Klein (Emory University) and Meredith Broussard (NYU) with Barnard’s Saima Akhtar (Vagelos Computational Science Center) and Gabrielle Gutierrez (Neuroscience) to examine how algorithmic surveillance is reshaping everyday life—from predictive policing in New York neighborhoods of color to the data infrastructures sustaining global conflicts and occupations. This conversation challenges the myth of “data-driven decision-making” as neutral progress and asks how feminist approaches grounded in care and accountability can offer paths toward refusal and repair.
Across higher education, including at Barnard, the rapid adoption of AI reflects wider struggles over power and control. “Smart” campus security systems and learning analytics promise efficiency and personalization while quietly expanding surveillance of movement, behavior, and intellectual labor. While AI can support learning and connection, it is also worth discussing how it reinforces existing hierarchies or privileges efficiency over care, trust, and human judgment.
The feminism AI needs, we insist, is not the mainstream feminism of representation or inclusion alone, but one that confronts how race, class, gender, and colonial power are built into technological systems. We ask: Who designs and benefits from these systems? Who bears their risks? And what would it mean to build technologies guided by care rather than oversight and control?
This event invites collective critique and imagination—toward technologies and institutions that center people, not just data.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. A light reception will follow the conversation.
