 Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Shobita Parthasarathi. I'm Professor of Public Policy and the Director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program known as STPP here at the Ford School of Public Policy. And I should say, of course, we're not virtually at the, we're not actually at the Ford School of Public Policy today. We are virtually at the Ford School of Public Policy today. STPP is an interdisciplinary university-wide program dedicated to training students conducting cutting-edge research and informing the public and policymakers on issues at the intersection of technology, science, ethics, society and public policy. One of the pandemic silver linings is that we have a large and international audience joining us today. So for those of you who are interested in learning more about the STPP program, you can do so at our website, which is stpp.fordschool.umich.edu. Before I introduce today's speaker, I want to make a couple of announcements. First, for those of you who are interested in the STPP Graduate Certificate Program, the next application deadline is in the new year on March 1st. Second, our next STPP webinar will be on Monday, December 7th at 4 p.m. Aaron Simpson, the Associate Director for Technology Policy at the Center for American Progress, will be in conversation with Ford School and STPP Professor Ben Green about digital contact tracing and unlikely policy story. If you're interested in attending, you can register at the link in the chat. I'm very interested and excited about today's event, which is a conversation on race, science and policy with Professor Osagi Obasogi. We've learned that in this Zoom age, this conversational format is much more fun. Professor Obasogi is the Haas Distinguished Chair and Professor of Bioethics at the University of California Berkeley. He's in the joint medical program and the School of Public Health. A graduate of Columbia Law School and a PhD from Berkeley. Mr. Obasogi's, I should say Dr. Obasogi's scholarly interests include constitutional law, policing and police use of force, sociology of law, bioethics, race and inequality in law and medicine and reproductive and genetic technologies. In addition to numerous articles that span this breadth of topics, he's the author of two books, Blinded by Sight, Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind, which was published by Stanford University Press and awarded the Herbert Jacob Book Prize by the Law and Society Association. And recently with Marcy Darnofsky, he co-edited Beyond Bioethics Towards a New Biopolitics, which was published by University of California Press. This afternoon, Professor Obasogi and I will talk for about 30 minutes, and then we will open the floor to questions. Please submit your questions through the Q&A function, and then we will get to them. Professor Obasogi Osage, welcome, welcome virtually to STPP. Great, thank you. It's so great to be here. It's really wonderful to have you. So I thought maybe we would start with the immediate present and the most recent efforts that you were involved in at Berkeley in terms of discovering and addressing the Eugenics Fund that had been going on for a long time and you were recently involved in both identifying it and dealing with it. So I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about the story, its history, the fund itself, how you challenged it, and what the status of it is now. Maybe we can start there. I have lots of questions about how there could be a Eugenics Fund in the 21st century, but maybe we'll start there and then we can talk more about it. Yeah, so that was my initial reaction. So back in November of 2018, the faculty at the School of Public Health received an email from an administrator about the availability of funding for faculty members who were doing research along the lines of Eugenics. So it kind of described this Eugenics Fund that had been at the School of Public Health and that faculty could apply to have funding to support their research. And I received that email and I was just blown away. I didn't know how to respond. I was just kind of shocked and dismayed. So at this point I had been at the School of Public Health for two years, so relatively new. And so I started talking to my colleague just saying, hey, you know about this, what's going on here? And not many people knew about this. So I then talked to the interim dean at the time. And voiced some of my concerns and a few of my other colleagues were also concerned. So we met with the dean and we decided to suspend the fund in order for us to have a kind of an investigation, kind of understand what's going on. And so that was a long process two years ago, but it was a very productive process. What we worked with the administration to basically figure out what's going on. And once we kind of learned more about the fund, we decided that it was inappropriate. And the school and the campus decided to then start in the process of both acknowledging it as an inappropriate fund and start the process of apologizing for it. So that led up to the most recent article that came out in the LA Times about a couple of weeks ago that was a full disclosure of kind of what we know to this point about the fund. And publicly acknowledging its existence and starting the process of renaming and re-purposing the fund. So right now we have a new dean who started in July 2019, Michael Lu. He's really been an important leader in all this. And he's in the, he began a process a few weeks ago of kind of connecting with the public health community, both students, faculty and alumni, and receiving their feedback on what they think is the most appropriate use of the funds. And so that period is about the close. And so the dean will kind of assess what people's thoughts are, and we'll make a decision in the next few weeks about how to move forward. But, you know, we, at the very least we plan to have, you know, a series of conversations, you know, I think it's important here to not only acknowledge the existence of this fund that's been at the School of Public Health for 40 years, but also engage in some level of kind of education, both for the community of folks in public health and medicine. So we, so that as professionals, we understand the role of eugenics and its legacies in these fields, but also to have some community conversations and education that is for folks who are not necessarily in the Academy to really educate folks on the history, history of eugenics. And we don't really talk about eugenics. And we, and when we do talk about it, we tend to think of it as kind of this, this odd idea that people in Germany had in the 1930s, and they kind of went too far with it. And once you realize exactly what they're doing, everyone moved away from it. And that history is just quite inaccurate. You know, you know, eugenics was as was a deeply American idea as well. The world's first eugenics law was in Indiana in 1907. American philanthropists, politicians, academics were remarkably engaged in eugenics and promoted these ideas and in fact, a lot of folks from Germany in the 1920s and 30s. In the 1940s actually looked to the United States for intellectual leadership on the idea. So this, this tendency that we have to kind of frame eugenics as a Nazi idea. It doesn't fully acknowledge the role that America played in promoting these ideas. And so we really need to have that public conversation. And to really make sure that we have a full understanding as we move forward and try to tackle some of the current practices and ideas that in some regards can align with some of these old eugenic practices. Yeah, I mean, so I think it's worth just emphasizing what you just said, which is, you know, we tend to think about eugenics as being far away and yet 40 years is 1980. It wasn't that long ago. And so I'm wondering why, you know, and presumably this is not the first time that an email was sent out about it. You said you only joined the faculty two years ago. So, presumably people were sending out these emails so I'm just wondering why, why you think it was sort of under the radar or quiet why nobody blew the whistle before this. That's a great question. You know, it's a bit unclear about who knew what when, you know, from what we can understand now there was, you know, one faculty member who had access to the funds for a large period of time so that one person obviously knew about it but at the same time other people on campus knew about it as well so your question is a good one. Why did it take 40 years for someone to realize that this is not the best way to go about go about this. I don't have a good answer for you all I can say is that when I saw it I knew it was not something that we should be a part of and that we need to move in a different direction so I'm quite thankful that you know the dean, the current dean has really committed to using these funds for anti eugenic and anti racist purposes. I really want to see this money be used to educate both folks on campus and in the community but also, you know, across the nation like this is a really, really big problem. And as we've seen over the past few months, we've seen various examples where eugenics has become part of the public conversation right so when we see folks arguing that the best way to approach the COVID-19 crisis is simply to let it spread and search or look forward to some idea of herd immunity. You know what's underneath the idea of herd immunity when used in that context is a eugenic sensibility that we just let this virus spread. Those who are weak will die those who are strong will survive, and then we'll just go from there will pick up the pieces go from there so that is when we think that the answer to these type of public crisis is to simply allow the the virus to move forward and those who are weak to simply perish know that idea in practice is connected to this eugenic sensibility. And so we have to understand that these ideas that we're dealing with now have a history and understand where that comes from as a way to think about what's the most appropriate way to actually deal with these type of problems. I think you're obviously we kind of started off with a very serious bang. And, and I'm, I'm, I'm glad we did. I think for me the question is how, how do we, what are, what are the steps by which we ensure that conversations like herd immunity and the implicit message of survival of the fittest and the connection to the legacy of eugenics is made clear in public and policy conversation what, you know, do we, is it about, you know, obviously my go to and probably yours too is you need to train more, train more students to think about these connections but I'm wondering how do we make sure that when we are talking about public health interventions or policy interventions that these kinds of legacies are our top of mind or at least part of the calculation in a significant serious way. Do you have any thought about this. Unfortunately, I think way too much about this. So, this idea has been at the center of my, what I think of my career, in terms of how do we make sure that the history eugenics and its legacies are central to these public conversations that we have in law and policy in particular. For me, it starts with what I can control which is education so I have the educator, I have to have the both the honor and privilege to teach students from a whole from different types of background so I teach medical students, law students, PC students from various departments of public health students and what I find interesting is that when I'm teaching my class on bioethics for example I start with the eugenics movement, which is, you know, an unusual way to start the conversation around the history of bioethics but you know I think it's appropriate place to start. And I always ask how many of you have heard of the idea of eugenics or heard about it in the context in which I teach it which is the American eugenics movement. And you know, it's always only a handful of students have heard about it in this context the vast majority of students have not heard about it and so these are graduate students at an amazing university who have had amazing education opportunities, and they are not familiar with it so if these folks are you can imagine what the rest of our country thinks about or understand about eugenics, in particular our policymakers and lawmakers right so we have to have a very aggressive and large campaign of education. And this is connected to the general education we have to have around science and science policy in this country, but we have to understand the historical context and in these type of legacies and how this particular moment and in American history has been unbelievably influential, and not only for public health and medicine but we think about things such as social welfare. We think about other aspects of the social sciences you know these were all deeply affected by eugenic thinking, and in order for us to truly understand the damage that has been done. We have to both expose that history and understand the continuity of thoughts between past and present, so that we can have a better future. But in addition to the educational prices you know we just have to have, you know, competent leaders who are willing to have tough conversations, right so this is a very uncomfortable discussion to have right it's hard to say that. You know, the way that we think about issues of medicine and public health today are connected to some of the practices that Nazis and other eugenics is engaged in way back when. One example I would always talk about is you know I wrote an article of Scientific American a couple years ago about Robert Edwards. So Robert Edwards is this. He's a Nobel laureate won a Nobel Prize in 2010 for his work in developing IVF. And the op ed that I wrote was about how he had a very long and distinguished history as a eugenicist. He was a member of the Britain's eugenics society he had written and said some things that are more horrific. And eugenics really shaped his entire career. And so for example, he saw IVF that the ability to join egg and sperm outside the body and then implanted in a womb. And so as an important platform, excuse me as an important platform technology to facilitate the ability to enhance people in a eugenic fashion right so this ability to kind of manipulate egg and sperm is that's constitutive of future ideas and practices that might lead to forms of human enhancement that could lead to eugenic outcomes right so this was someone who was all in and yet we celebrate him without acknowledging that past. Let's say that IVF is a bad thing IVF is brought tremendous joy and happiness to millions of people that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is that we have to understand how even these kind of useful medical practices have a history to them that we have to really struggle with and grasp with and make sure that we are aware of that as we continue to understand the full impact of this moment in history. So, to sort of link this conversation back to what we began talking about the eugenics fund. I'm wondering what the role is for universities in all of this right because we're at this moment, I mean we've been certainly at Michigan we've been talking about these sorts of things. For a while in terms of, you know, what are that what are the criteria that we should have in terms of who we employ. What kinds of names should we have on buildings and what should we take off from whom should we get money what should our standards be. What does it mean if, if one of our tenured faculty is is publishing this kind of work. How do you, you know what is your guidance I think for for universities for you know because that's an important arena of science policy making as well right is sort of what do universities do what do August scientific institutions do to manage this eugenic legacy. So this, this, this conversation has a lot of different layers to it right so on the one hand you have situations such as what happened at USC, when one of its former presidents at the University of Southern California, Southern California. You know, was a genesis and said some pretty horrific things, and his name was on a building and they had a bust of a bust of them on campus and so they decided to take that down a few months ago. So there's other situations like that, particularly here in California so California has a, you know, as an unusual number of middle schools and high schools and other type of institutions of learning that are named after people who espouse eugenics. And so that conversations and happening here in California. Our difficult question what you're getting at is, is a, I think an important one, which is an acknowledgement that there are still people on many of our faculties that still buy into and promote, promote eugenics. And that's the conversation that we really need to get to. And I think, you know, for those of us who are connected with universities, we all know of a couple of folks who have said or written things that are aligned with eugenics. And so what do we do on one hand as universities in a university culture we want to promote free speech and intellectual thought and engagement in a way that folks can follow what they believe to be what the data says or what the evidence says. On the other hand, free speech does not mean hate speech free speech does not mean to say that you get to be able to argue that a certain portion of the population should be eliminated for the public good. And that's the very tough conversation that universities are have to have and you know my understanding, or I should say my, my, my, my belief is that that's that's where the conversation will go in the next couple of years. That is, you know, it's one thing for a university to say that a certain amount of funds or should not be used to for you to do the research. It's straightforward. I think conclusion to come to, but how do we engage with faculty members who might continue to believe eugenics and advocated as a academic perspective. And to be clear, this is a perspective that has been thoroughly debunked and has very little scientific merit to it. So one idea in this sort of, you know, kind of general set of issues that we've been talking about one thing that you have proposed is the idea of race impact assessments around I think policies interventions technologies etc. I have been very taken by this idea. You know, when you look at science and technology policy or policy generally these days we have environmental impact assessments. You know there's a lot of discussion about social impact assessments. This moment especially this is the kind of idea that could potentially get a lot of attention and real traction and so I'm wondering, can you describe the idea and maybe help us understand how that might work. Yeah, yeah, so the idea of an impact assessment has been around for, you know, several decades and we see it most prominently in the field of like for example environmentalism. So the basic notion is that for example, if you want to put up a new building someplace before you can be approved for that you have to put out some type of assessment showing that the construction of a new building won't disrupt other environmental needs of the area right so that you want to show that what you're doing won't have an adverse impact on the surrounding environment and there's you know it's a very tedious process but we do this because we have a respect for the environment. We want to make sure that any kind of, you know, development that we put up doesn't have a bad impact. And so the idea behind that is a notion that, you know, those people who want to construct these things, their intent is not necessarily to disrupt the environment, but they might, you know, accidentally or inadvertently do something right so we want to go through the process to make sure that everyone is aware of the potential impact so it's not necessarily the idea that anyone would intend to harm the environment, but the idea is that the overall impact might be one that we want to avoid. And so similarly with race impact assessments, the basic notion is that whenever, and I talk about specifically in the context of race based medicines, genetic ancestry tests and DNA forensics. The basic issue that these are policies that are often engaged with some type of government support, and that when a government allows these things move forward such as FDA approval for race based medicine, that before that medicine becomes available to the public, we should have some race, some type of assessment of the impact that that FDA approval will have on notions of race in our society. So for example, we think about Baidil, which came out in 2005 with the first race specific medication to receive an indication for a particular racial group so this medicine for African Americans suffering from heart failure. Many people heralded that as like, you know, this is a wonderful achievement as the idea that if we have race specific medicines we can really target health disparities in a very particular way. Well, the other side of that is this idea that once the FDA gets into the business of saying that disparities and heart failure outcomes are somehow driven by some type of inherent natural racial difference. And then gives credence to the idea that race is biological and not a social construction which you know we've all been taught about right and that the ancillary impact of the government getting to the business of reaffirming those in the biological race could have a tremendous impact on all types of things. Again, we've been down the road of biological race in the past. It hasn't turned out well right so this is the this is the conversation around scientific racism and eugenics right so we we have hundreds of years of evidence that if we allow that conversation to move forward on critically. It turns out pretty bad for communities of color right. And here we are in 2005 where the FDA's intent was to help communities of color and particularly the black community right, but the overall impact could have been quite detrimental. The basic notion is that what a race impact assessment could be helpful and allowing government actors to think through what the overall impact of their approvals might be before these things hit the market, and that that process could lead to decisions that could be a bit more thoughtful, a bit more tailored, or perhaps for people to decide not to approve these things at all so for example by Bill, you know the example always talk about is that the physician who developed it, the cardiologist who openly said like yeah, I give this drug to my white patients all the time, right. And so a lot of people like Jonathan Conn at Northeastern have talked about how this was a, this was a, not necessarily innovation with regards to race based medicine but was an innovation around marketing, and how the some of the goals around the development of BiDell weren't necessarily to treat a specific health disparity but to extend the patent of the drug for another 13 years or so. So these are the type of considerations we have to have, before we go down this path and I think race impact assessments could be very helpful. Do you think that at this moment, obviously there has been, thankfully, more and more attention to racial injustice and racial inequity this year. And with these high profile, you know the high profile death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor among others. It does this create space for thinking about racial justice questions specifically in science and technology and science and technology policy, specifically have you noticed that in terms of how people are responding to your work and sort of ideas like race impact assessment. I mean you noticed a difference. I think the current moment that we're in. I think the awakening that many people have had has been very beneficial so we have people thinking about and talking about race in ways that they have them beforehand and in part is because the shocking video George Floyd being strangled to death over nine minutes really hits people and there's no other explanation for how and why it occurred outside of the fact that George Floyd was treated poorly because of his race. And so that has led for folks to realize how race can affect decision making in other areas. So I've seen this conversation really kind of take root in some of the other work that I do around policing. So people are starting to have that kind of conversation around how and why police can engage in the type of behavior. I've seen less of it with regards to my work around bioethics and science policy. And part of that I think is that even after George Floyd we tend to continue to think about issues of race and racism as individual interactions. For example we tend to think of the officer in the George Floyd case Derek Chauvin. We tend to think of him as being an individual bad person or bad apple. You made a horrific decision rather than thinking about the set of circumstances and laws and policies that allowed him to engage George Floyd in that way. So a lot of my work both in bioethics and in policing is really trying to take the emphasis off of the individual. Now clearly we have to hold individuals accountable for what they do. But we also have to understand that individuals do what they do because they are part of systems and structures that enable them to do those things. So when we think about for example policies such as qualified immunity which makes it very hard to hold police officers accountable for what they do. When we think about other aspects of criminal procedure and criminal law that makes it very difficult to prosecute police officers when they engage in this type of behavior. Those are the types of structural dimensions that put police officers in a position where they can put their knee on someone's neck for nine minutes and not think about the consequences. So similarly I think science has a similar conversation that it has to engage with is which is what is it about what we do as folks who work in the sciences that tends to repeat certain outcomes that tend to adversely impact people of color. And rather than looking at it as whether or not there are individual scientists who are engaged in bad behavior. We have to think about what are the patterns that are created by the methods that we use the approaches that we use the structures that we engage in. What is it that allows that happen over and over and over again and very predictable ways. And so my hope is at the very least that this George Floyd situation as tragic as it is will allow people to make a shift from these individual analyses and think more about the structural. If we were to think about centering racial justice as a public value in our science and technology policies. What what should we be advocating for what kinds of what what would our policies and our laws look like do you think I think you've talked around this a little bit but I'd love to see if you have sort of more specific insights that that might be useful for the folks who are watching. We have to put the experiences of communities of color and other vulnerable communities at the center of the way we think about these things. And this is really an issue around perspective and standpoint. And so, you know, science is a, I should say the sciences themselves are it's a perspective that's often steeped in the position of those in power. And in particular when we talk about the role of markets in capitalism with regards to how we how we prioritize, there's things. So for example, when you think about the distribution of the forthcoming COVID-19 vaccines, right. So when we start having conversations about who has access first. There are a lot of different ways to think about, you know, how do you prioritize these type of things. And, you know, my concern is that in the context of this kind of market economy, you know, we'll think about who has funding as the people who get access first as opposed to people who are most vulnerable. There have been certain some companies have made strong pledges to making sure that communities of color are first, and that they have access for free. Hopefully, those commitments will come through. But a basic sense of social justice would suggest that the very first people to receive this vaccine should be, you know, first, first responders, those on the front lines. And secondly, those communities where we see where the spread is happening at horrific rates. And part of the reason why these communities are particularly vulnerable, these tend to be communities of color is because of the structural circumstances surrounding issues around poverty and lack of access to resources that puts people in a position to be more likely to contract the coronavirus. So again, as we make these type of decisions around distributing resources, these are a type of conversations we have to have in terms of who has access first. And again, there have been some hopeful signs that things couldn't move in that direction, but we really have to make sure that you prioritize those experiences first. You worry at all. I mean, I don't you probably follow this and remember this from relatively early on. I think this was April, May is she'll though, as for all of us, I think all of the months are running together at this point. But, but I remember relatively early on in the pandemic, there was an article that it came out from a number of physicians. And I forget where it was published but it was a medical journal where they were essentially linking the increased vulnerability among communities of color, and making some vague hand waving towards a biological basis of race. And so I'm wondering how do we how do we manage that in this situation right so on the one hand, you want policies that are privileging the most vulnerable communities that are vulnerable due to the structural inequalities and biases. And often these are communities who are working at the front lines. And yet in the process of doing that. It could also inadvertently serve to reinforce erroneous ideas about the biology, the biological basis of race. So how do we how do we sort of square that in a way that doesn't do harm in the process. That's a fantastic question. And this is part of the reason why I, it's important for my work and as a scholar to engage folks in medicine and public health. And that's because, you know, I taught at a law school for for eight years. And then I came over to to the joint medical program and school public health at Berkeley in 2016. And what has always really surprised and shocked me is the extent to which notions of biological race continue to be prevalent within medicine and public health. And what that is, you have really, really smart and accomplished people who still talk about race in biological terms, that is to say that they think of race as being a risk factor for certain diseases of the same consequence as other known biological risk factors. You know, people talk about, you know, these kind of risk factors and variables in a way that race will be next to things like age and preexisting condition with our known biological variables and then race is thrown into there as if it is also biological when we all know that's more much more of a social and political phenomenon. And so this is a entrenched problem in medicine and public health. And so when we, when we fast when we come back to the original question which is how do we make sure that the conversation around COVID-19 moves forward in an appropriate way. Now we have to have a consistent message around what makes people susceptible or vulnerable to COVID-19 is not necessarily anything great is not necessarily anything biological with regard to race, but it's about the social conditions that people have been put in connected to broader historical and social patterns. That is to say that it's the environmental of place spaces and places that people find them in connected to legacies of his legacies and histories of racism. That that is what makes people vulnerable to COVID-19 not anything biological with regards to to like natural susceptibility I'm trying to say. I think another fascinating part of this conversation is that if you can remember back to February, March, when we started having conversations around locking locking things down and, you know, the conversation around COVID-19 was much more it was much more of a coherent concern about everyone being adversely affected. And then if you remember like around late March, early April, you started to get some initial figures about who was actually dying from COVID-19. And that's the first time that we started to see that it was already older people and people of color. And then that's where we started to have a conversation about reopening America. And Adam Sewer, I believe that's his name, writes for Slate, he had a great piece about this, about the kind of eugenics sensibility around the messaging around reopening America that is that once we had initial data data showing showing that it was older folks and people of color who were dying from this. There was this kind of sentiment particularly coming from this administration saying, well, these are people who don't matter, right. And if other people, white middle class upper class people are not being that terribly affected by it, then let's just keep this thing going right. And that's another example of how we see eugenics play out in public policy, right. So, so these are policy choices that are being made with regards to prioritizing economic growth and development over the lives or the most vulnerable people. And when you engage in policy choices like that, you're basically saying that certain lives don't matter, that is, lives that are already disregarded and not seen as being as worthy as others. Once they are exposed to this disease, the policy choice is simply well, let's just let it run its course right. And so again, it comes back to the original conversation we're having about why it's so important to have conversations around eugenics and making connections between what happened in the past and some of the contemporary policy choices we've seen being made. Well, I have lots more questions, but so does our audience. So, so I want to start to get to those and for those of you who haven't yet you can ask those questions in the Q&A. But I'll start with this one, which is that we're seeing a growing number of declarations of racism itself as a public health crisis. And in fact, in Michigan, we, the governor signed such a declaration in August. So what do you think about these kinds of actions? I mean, they are sort of symbolic and symbolism is important, but it's also, you know, symbolism and perhaps not necessarily linked directly to concrete policy action. How can it translate to concrete policy action? You know, especially I think that we're at this moment where people are really energized. So what, what can they be advocating for if, you know, like, for example, in Michigan that the governor has already said this, what's the next step then that we might see students or faculty or community members advocating for? Yeah, no, great first step. I'm waiting to see what folks are willing to do after this right so this is an acknowledgement of something that you know a lot of scholars of color I've been saying for decades that racism is a public health issue that affects people's lives and affects people's life spans as well. So I'm happy to see that folks are starting to acknowledge this, but I am less sure that we'll see meaningful steps come out of this from the public health community. In part because the public health community itself is steeped within a history and logics of how it doesn't work, how it does its work that are interested in maintaining the status quo. That is to say that we have to rapidly rethink the way we do public health, if we're going to take seriously this notion that racism is a public health problem. You know the conversation I have my students all the time is that you know, for example, you know to get back to the conversation about eugenics that you know many of the statistical methods that we use in public health and other and other sciences were developed by eugenics for eugenic purposes. Right. And we tend to just ignore that as if it doesn't matter, because it becomes very uncomfortable to think that the very tools that we use as social scientists to be able to measure and describe certain social phenomenon were developed by eugenics in the 1920s and 30s to be able to control the norm populations to figure out how to promote the reproduction of some groups and discourage reproduction of other groups. And unless we have that conversation and take that seriously and think about what that means for how we measure groups today, then you know we can't it's hard to think about what it means to move to move forward in a manner that acknowledges that and perhaps encourages us to develop new methods that are supportive of all groups, rather than using tools that continue to replicate some of these ideologies that were designed to not necessarily take into consideration the health and well being of all people. So, I'm sorry. No, no, go ahead. But so this is why I'm, I'm concerned because I think those type of conversations about the structure of the field have to be addressed. And we can say that racism is a public health problem. That's a great sentiment and something important to announce but unless we engage the structural problems that are endemic in the field, in terms of how we could go about and do our work. Unless those are addressed, then we're not really taking seriously these newer revelations. Just on this point. One of the questions here sort of is directly tied to that which is, what are some ways that faculty today frame or disguise you Genesis views as something less hateful and or more scientific. I just read I'm sure you know Angela Siney is a book superior I just read it last few days and she talks about how you know summary scientists talk about how oh no I'm not political I just follow the data right so that you know you still are hearing a lot of that. Genesis is hiding in plain sight and those sorts of places it's hiding in in plain sight to a large degree as well and statistics courses you know one on one statistics courses. So what does that mean for you know how do we, what should we look for what should you know, all of us as concerned people look for how do we recognize it, how do we call it out I mean I think one of the things that would be I think really useful is that I often see people who recognize it, but then they don't know how to, for example, approach their professor or their PI to say, listen, you know, this, this is you Genesis and this is why it's problematic do you, you sort of both ideas on how this happens and how you know we might be able to take this sort of smaller P policy steps to to address it. It's a huge problem. And I think the way it manifests itself, in large part today is that we still continue to have a deep commitment to positivism. The way we teach things. So for example, you know, a lot of scholars in my department. They do fantastic work, but they're very positive this and how they go about the work that is the assumption is that we can understand a social phenomenon by simply observing it and collecting data, and then that data itself is telling us what's going on. And that is to say that the surface level observation and assessment is a meaningful articulation of how something becomes impactful. And so the critique of positivism has been around, you know, for hundreds of years right, which is the basic notion that we have to kind of think deeper about underlying causes beyond what is immediately observable. And unfortunately, you know, too many social sciences and life sciences scientists still continue to embrace positivism in its work. And so what this means is that when you start collecting data around race and racial disparities, you see who's gas between people color and whites with regards to any particular social health phenomenon, the positive responses like, oh, wow, there's this difference, there's this gap. It must be something inherent or natural to the people or groups themselves. And that lends itself to a certain frame of thinking and certain ideology that allows white supremacist ideas to proliferate without engaging deeper about how these gaps are connected to longer histories and legacies and more over contemporary actions that produce differences between various social groups. So rather than seeing them as a natural reflection of inherent work, seeing how these groups, how these distinctions and gaps are produced by ongoing social economic and political mistreatment. So that is how these things get reproduced. I think the moment of intervention is also difficult because particularly, you know, if you're a grad student, and you're just trying to get a PhD, you know, that's not a position of power from which to rock the boat. You know, you are being asked to replicate in a sense what has been done in your field for the for many, many decades, and in particular, what's being done in the field now so that you can get your PhD and get a tenure track job. And then once you have a tenure track job, that's also not a space from which to rock the boat because you're trying to get tenure, right? And then once you get tenure and you're an associate professor, again, not a time to really rock the boat because you want to become a full professor. And by the time you're a full professor, you're so entrenching your ideas and in your career that, you know, again, might not be the best time to go about these things. And this is how academia reproduces racism and racist ideologies, right? This is how eugenics gets reproduced over and over again, in part because all the incentives within the academy, again, there are incentives to be innovative, and do things, do things new. But many of these incentives are in a way to kind of keep things moving, keep these going in a particular direction so that your career advances. And so we have to find opportunities to kind of change the incentives so that people can think about ways to intervene so that we can move things in a different direction. For example, I teach a class here at Berkeley on critical theory and social science methods. So that class is designed for graduate students so that they can have a more critical understanding of what social science methods do, understand that they often come out of this kind of tragic history that we've been talking about, and then think about what does it mean to bring critical theory into the conversation. So that is to say, what can critical race theory, feminist theory, queer theory, disability theory, what can that bring to the way that we collect and analyze data, so that we can do it in a way that is both responsive to the theoretical contributions being made by these fields, but also allows us to be adequate and robust in a way that we collect and assess data. So with that that will provide a context for these graduate students to provide those new set of tools that we need. And in that, and that course that's you were mentioning to this, this to me earlier before we began the webinar. That is a course for medical students in fact right I mean so that's really about training practitioners. So this course on critical theory and social science methods is open to everyone on campus. I do have some medical students but also PhD students and law students. I do teach a version of the class for medical students as well. It's a little bit different but we get some of the same principles. Yeah, I mean so one of the things we're doing at Michigan is we've been involved in conversations to try to rethink the undergraduate computer science curriculum with justice and equity at the core of the curriculum given how, you know, there's this concern about AI and algorithmic bias, etc. Because I think one of the things, you know, as I mentioned before we, we have an STPP program obviously these kinds of things are central to that but that's an opt in program right and that's, you know, those are students who often go off and, you know, become part of science and technology policy institutions, but the challenge I think is how do we integrate this way of thinking, this complexity of thinking at a curricular level, I guess that's the first thing. And the second is, and this is, you know, and I'm wondering what you think about both of these things if you've seen the sort of models that you like, that part of the challenge here is that there's a perceived simplicity to the biologization of race or the idea that we can, you know, techno fix whatever the problem is, and the structural, historical, sociological, legal dimensions that you're talking about are not the polar opposite of those things, right. And so, you know, when we think about how do we educate whether it's under, you know, budding computer scientists budding biologists budding physicians budding policy practitioners. And, you know, there's a there's, I don't know if there's resistance but there's certainly a, you know, a frustration that there isn't sort of a tool that they can pick up and then go on their merry way right especially if you're kind of forcing them to do this have you seen models that of this kind of, you know, kind of talking to them about this complexity or engaging with this complexity around issues of racial justice that you find work better. So nothing comes to mind immediately. It's a complex issue right because, you know, on one hand we have to deal with oftentimes these are departments in schools that aren't necessarily stellar with regards to diversity, along multiple lines in terms of you know gender race nationalities that are often very homogenous spaces. So it's hard to get folks to acknowledge that there is a problem. And then, once you can have a knowledge that there is a problem then there is a, there can be a difficult conversations around it knowledge that science itself is deeply political, that science itself promotes its own ideologies, and that we have to kind of this embed the political nature and ideological progress of science in order to reconstitute it in a manner that is steeped in and based in and committed to basic notions of equity inclusion. And that's a very uphill battle to have right to suggest that that the scientific method itself has its own ideological commitments that allow it to veer more towards whiteness in a way towards inclusion. But this is the work that we have to do. And this has to be as much of the curriculum as any type of technical training that we provide, because, you know, if we if we produce the next generation of scholars and professionals who are not aware of this history, then we're simply going to repeat the same problems over the next several decades. And so the only way we can disrupt that is to really have these conversations in the academy first and allow that to make sure the next generation of folks will bring that to the work that they do. Do you have book recommendations in terms of, you know, of course I have to shout out Alexandra Stearns work, you know, she's a professor at University of Michigan, that's why I have to shout her out. She's who's written on the history of eugenics and but I'm wondering if you have favorite books, not just about the history of eugenics but about how it's informing us policy today, how it you know if people really want to understand, you know, the legacy of eugenics and contemporary policy, are there touchstones for you. Yes, yes, of course anything by Alex turn anything. So hard to endorse that. Yeah, she's wonderful. And, you know, I think probably the most accessible book on this history is Edwin blacks war against the week. It's a fascinating and very well researched history of eugenics and connects it in particular to its impact on how we think about reproductive and genetic technologies. Because we have a new set of reproductive and genetic technologies that that have the potential to provide the type of eugenic outcomes that eugenics in 1920s can only dream of. So the ability to, for example, in the next few years be able to create children with selected phenotypes and traits and perhaps even intelligence and all types of things. And Edwin black puts that question and predicament and it's broad historical context for us to think about what policies you need to implement in order to make sure that this these type of eugenic ideals don't don't come to pass and become normalized as the way to simply do reproduction going forward. So that's where I would start. A couple more questions. One to go back to this, the eugenics fund and the role of philanthropists, I think historical role of philanthropists and eugenics at universities. Well, first I'm curious whether you know whether or not there are similar funds elsewhere in the US lurking. But even more generally, the question asks, what do you suggest alums faculty staff and students do to see lists of all of these funds available to departments and units and the stated purpose to check whether we have funds supporting eugenics. So what might an organized effort to try to to identify and catalog eugenics funds look like. I mean I might even expand it to our conversation about buildings, you know, and sort of peer reviewed papers I mean there's I think there's a lot that we could include in this so I'm wondering if, if you look when you were looking at the eugenics fund do you know anything else about the landscape of are there other similar funds. How might people interested people sort of go about trying to discover this sort of information. Yeah, so the fund at Berkeley was unique because it was so explicit and it's you and it's eugenic goals. So, you know, we received some of the original documents and you know, in terms of the trust that was set up it was there you know, to facilitate research on the improvement of the human race right so it was like this I it was very explicit. And so I am not aware of other universities that have funds like this. But I think, as we move forward, we'll want to pay attention to the type of research that people do so that is to say that I think it's going to be rare that that folks and funding mechanisms will be that explicit. So, you know, when you peel things back a little bit, you can see this a similar type of ideology going on, and certain types of research efforts. And so that's what we have to really pay attention to so thinking about, you know, attention to research that tries to naturalize difference and disparities in ways that would attribute these poor outcomes to to who people are inherently rather than the conditions in which they find themselves in. Whenever you see research going in that direction, you know, we need to kind of really think seriously about what those research findings mean and how that those research findings will be used and weaponized as a way to suggest why certain people should be supported and other people should be denigrated. And so that's the kind of trajectory we need to kind of keep our keep our eyes on this links actually to to another question, which is about whether or not are we actually in a resurgence of race science or race based medicine. There seems to be, you know, obviously there's a lot of AI predicting personal personality from face shape that was, you know, there have been a couple of papers this year that that were kind of excoriated on Twitter for that reason. Is that just the same more attention to the to the same problem or is the problem growing, do you think is it, you know, maybe with AI tools now they they're, you know, they sort of go back to the same old trope of of recognizing or or essentializing race. Absolutely. I'm of the sense that it's growing. And part because we have a generation of researchers who who have been trained outside of this kind of historical context that we've been talking about. And so they're rediscovering racial difference and naturalizing it in ways without thinking through its full implications. And I think there's a lot of papers that you're suggesting where people are using AI to discover patterns of difference that's that magically align with race. And then race becomes a scene at the causal factor, rather than underlying rather than understanding the underlying conditions that allow groups to separate in those ways. So I think that's absolutely happening and we have to continue to make sure to call that out for what it is. There's a couple minutes left so I'll just ask this final question, which is, how can policymakers and scientists work together to improve science communication and I would add science policy that is sensitive to legacies of racism and eugenics. So one. We need to hire more people like you should be done. I agree. And you. Well, I mean, the truth is that both you and I, you know, there aren't a lot of us in the academy are not nearly enough. And we folks need to, we really need to both train and hire folks to do this type of work so that they can be colleagues of folks who are doing some kind of the more traditional work in life sciences, so that these conversations can happen. I think he hasn't talked to earlier about curricular changes. So, you know, too often we allow people to get full MDs and PhDs without having a serious class or conversation about social ethical implications or historical context, and that is simply not acceptable. And that is, you know, creating a very poor educational experience for the next generation of professionals. So, from a curricular standpoint, even if folks, even if departments don't have, you know, faculty members who can talk about this issue directly, you know, until that capacity is grown, you know, before you get a PhD and, and, you know, in life sciences, maybe if you take two or three classes in ethnic studies. You know, maybe if you take a couple classes in AFAM studies or in women's studies, right, maybe that should be a key element of what it means to get a degree from these departments because unless you are in a space where you had these conversations, folks simply won't think about or be able to imagine how the work might be implicated in a way that can make some of these problems worse. So you really just have to dedicate resources to making sure that our faculties are more diverse, and making sure that the curricular demands are rigorous, not only in technical development, developing technical capacity, but also rigorous and making sure that people have a full understanding of the social implications of their work. You're here. All right. Well, on that note, it's five o'clock. And I want to thank you very much. You don't get the thunderous applause you would have if you were in Ann Arbor today, but you can, you'll get mine. And then to our audience. Thank you very much for joining us today. And you can, as you see here in the chat, you can join us for our next event, which is digital contact tracing an unlikely policy story with Aaron Simpson, who's the Associate Director of Technology Policy at the Center for American Health. That's on Monday, December 7 at 4pm. And the link to register for that event is in is in the chat. Thank you again. Asagi, it was amazing to talk to you. I'm sorry we couldn't do it in person, but I look forward to many continued conversations. Great. Thank you so much. Take care. Take care. Bye.