The School of Computing and Information’s Sara Fine Institute and the Research, Ethics and Society Initiative are starting the Social Justice and Tech Reading Group.

Each semester, the group will engage with a recently published text that explores technology and implications on society, health and well-being. This semester, the reading is Matthew Rafalow’s “Digital Divisions: How Schools Create Inequality in the Digital Age” (University of Chicago, 2020), which explores racial and socio-economic dimensions of access to digital technologies in schools.

The inaugural virtual meeting, which is open to Pitt staff, faculty and students, will be from noon to 1 p.m. Oct. 27 and will include a facilitated discussion of the introduction and Chapters 1 and 2 of Rafalow’s text. Register here.

This virtual gathering will be followed with a Nov. 13 discussion of the remainder of the text and a Nov. 17 lecture by Rafalow, who is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society and a social scientist at Google.

Rafalow’s text is available for free as an eBook through the University Library System and students can enter a drawing for a free print copy of the book by registering.

Ruha Benjamin’s “Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code” (Polity Press, 2019) will be the book selection for the spring 2020 semester.