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The Science and Justice Working Group brings together faculty and graduate students from all five academic divisions on the UC Santa Cruz campus—arts, humanities, social sciences, engineering, and physical and biological sciences—to promote interdisciplinary conversations and exchange. We expand UCSC’s historical focus on social justice to include questions about the formation of science and technology, and related public-policy debates. We define social justice broadly to include both the profound human benefits of science and technology and the social and political transformations that they may pose. Recent topics: classificatory practices in the genome sciences, and attendant questions about the construction or racial categories; the meaning and possibilities for “ethical” science (special session on re-imagining bioethics); the ethics of clinical drug trials; the conditions of possibility for intra-divisional conversations about issues of science and justice. Our topics reflect the interests of our participants and develop based on our evolving discussions. Who participates? Interested graduate students, faculty members, and members of the Santa Cruz and Bay Area community are invited to join us for reflective conversations and intellectual exchange. Meetings: Our bi-monthly meetings typically begin with a shared reading or an invited speaker, followed by an informal discussion and light refreshments. During this inaugural year, we plan to expand campus awareness of our group and outline topics for future interdisciplinary projects. Invited scholars and scientists: anthropologist of science and science studies scholar Kaushik Sunder Rajan (UC Irvine), genome scientist David Haussler (UC Santa Cruz), and Nikolas Rose, scholar of the human sciences/director of the BIOS Centre for the study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society at the London School of Economics and Political Science (London School of Economics). |