Safiya Noble, UCLA Professor & MacArthur Genius Award Winner, Delivers Keynote Address at SICSS-Howard/Mathematica 2022

This blog is part of the 2022 series “The Future of Computational Social Science is Black” about SICSS-Howard/Mathematica, the first Summer Institute in Computational Social Science held at a Historically Black College or University. To learn more about SICSS-H/M’s inaugural start, read last year’s blog “Welcome SICSS-Howard/Mathematica 2021” or our first blog “Uncovering new keys to countering anti-Black racism and inequity using computational social science.” If you are interested in applying to participate in SICSS-H/M 2023, check out our website.

Dr. Safiya Noble delivered the Keynote Address for the 2022 Summer Institute in Computational Social Science sponsored by Howard University and Mathematica (SICSS-Howard/Mathematica) on Friday, July 1st, 2022. Dr. Noble opened her speech by discussing her mother saying, “She wanted to be free, and she put that in me, to want to be free too.” Safiya grew up in Fresno, California, a small town that quickly taught her about the social boundaries in place for working-class people of color. Which, along with watching her mother’s potential limited by the patriarchal standards of the time, deeply affected her. These observations taught her “a real sense of where the limits are and why it’s important to push past them.” And push past them she did. She would go on to become a Professor of Gender Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, a 2021 MacArthur Fellow, and a leading scholar in the field of internet and digital media studies.

Safiya Noble’s childhood experiences led her to the world of marketing and to support companies’ multicultural efforts in the spheres of social responsibility and philanthropy. Both of her parents were artists (her mother a graphic designer and her father a musician) and she attended Roosevelt School of the Arts, a performing arts magnet high school. This helped inform her perception of computer scientists as artists; she developed a special respect for their work when acting as a creative liaison between programmers and clients on the job. Over time, Dr. Noble started writing what she calls a “book of evidence” to convince her interlocutors about the bias she was finding in code, and credited this experience with developing an ability to communicate well with computer scientists and engineers. For instance, she worked on getting programmers to question the concept of the “universal user” they were building their platforms for, after recognizing that they were privileging white users and reproducing racism in a digital format. 

Dr. Safiya Noble

During a time when search engines were becoming more popular, Dr. Noble began to pursue a degree in library and information sciences. With her background in advertising within urban populations, she was astonished to see that many people viewed search engines as a public good or objective reference rather than advertising tools established by companies with unclear ulterior motives. She also noticed that the “black part” of the internet was very different from the “generic” part of the internet. As a result, she found herself wanting to write an addition to Siva Vaidhyanathan’s book The Googlization of Everything regarding the racist and sexist dynamics that were unfolding online. Eventually, combined with her earlier “book of evidence” for engineers, this writing endeavor evolved into a PhD dissertation, and then her book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, published by NYU Press in 2018. 

Although Dr. Noble had experience communicating with engineers, her ideas still faced resistance, and she remembered fearing the negative reception her book might receive. In the end, many academics of color publicly defended and endorsed her work on social media, which prompted more scholars in the technology sphere to engage with and build what she calls a “space for repair.” However, many of those who were originally skeptics have now advanced to the forefront of the field when it comes to receiving recognition, funding, and opportunities (something not afforded to non-academics who have been doing this work for years). While people who are marginalized based on race, gender, and sexuality are usually the ones who are harmed by these digital dynamics and initiate the work on it, their impact is frequently erased by more privileged peers. 

Dr. Noble went on to discuss the hostile environment she confronted as a black feminist critical race scholar at the intersection of information sciences. Throughout her journey of finishing graduate school, becoming a professor, and achieving tenure, she endured “active career suppression” along the way. Finally, her potential was realized, and she was supported when awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, also known informally as the “Genius Grant.” She was able to join the Gender Studies department at UCLA, where she found the creative and academic freedom that she had sought for so long, ever since her mother instilled that search in her. 

Emphasizing the value found in her “ecosystem” of support, she remarked that “the community that has stepped forward and embraced me and embraced my work is actually what has made this book and my career happen.” For her, the “amazing colleagues” in this community included people like Dr. Ruha Benjamin, who was a guest speaker at SICSS-Howard/Mathematica 2021, and Dr. André Brock, a panelist at this year’s event. Now she pays it forward to scholars today, stating “I never underestimate the power I have as a committee member… in supporting ideas that are ahead of their time.”

SICSS-Howard/Mathematica aligns itself with this reality, with the understanding that scholars of color, especially black scholars, face a more challenging experience in the academy. Its aim is to establish a space for this community of underrepresented people to learn and grow together, share resources, and hold each other up in their common mission of using computational social science to make a positive impact.

Conveying a bittersweet sentiment, Dr. Safiya Noble noted that since her book was published, so much more scholarship has been conducted on the subject, which is “both heartening and amazing because people are doing such smart [and important] work that will change the world…It's also really devastating because more and more damage is happening that we are documenting.” This “damage” alludes to the fact that the tech industry is not governed by a regulatory environment to the same extent as most other industries. Dr. Noble calls for a “massive reckoning” as demonstrated by her work on the board of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, where she advocates for a digital civil rights framework in which accountability measures are instituted for people who are victimized by technology in various ways. This also means supporting whistleblowers such as Ifeoma Ozoma, who withstood mistreatment while employed at Pinterest and co-led the introduction of the Silenced No More Act in California. In a world where the most elite members of society often view others as disposable and invest in technocracy more than democracy, Dr. Noble believes that our time should not be invested in making better algorithms, but rather “looking at how power is reorganizing and how the tech sector is fueling that.”

Ultimately, Dr. Noble expressed a desire to release artistic disseminations of her research and also enthused about her passion for institution-building. This includes work she is doing as co-director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, founder of non-profit The Equity Engine, and Steering Committee member of the Social Science Research Council’s Just Tech Fellowship. She views black women as the “canaries in the coal mine” and stated that “people who are forced into oppressive marginal experiences in a society always see things way before they become mainstream.” Thus, she implored funders to “invest with no strings attached” into women of color, including those outside of universities such as community organizers, in order to build their power without any restrictions. We at SICSS-Howard/Mathematica are grateful for the vulnerability, expertise, and honest encouragement that Dr. Safiya Noble has shared with us in her keynote address, and will stay tuned as she continues to lay the groundwork and elevate others in this field. 

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About the authors

Naniette H. Coleman is a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley and a UC-National Lab In-Residence Graduate Fellow (Los Alamos National Lab). Her work sits at the intersection of the sociology of culture and organizations and focuses on cybersecurity, surveillance, and privacy in the US context. Specifically, Naniette’s research examines how organizations assess risk, make decisions, and respond to data breaches and organizational compliance with state, federal, and international privacy laws. Since 2016, Naniette has directed the AAC&U award winning Interdisciplinary Research Group on Privacy/Coleman Research Lab at Berkeley. Naniette holds a Master of Public Administration with a specialization in Democracy, Politics, and Institutions from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and both an MA in Economics and a BA in Communication from the University at Buffalo, SUNY. A non-traditional student, Naniette’s prior professional experience includes local, state, and federal service, as well as work for two international organizations, and two universities. 

Amanda Lee received her Bachelor of Arts in Africana Studies and minor in Health & Society from Wellesley College. Amanda served as a research assistant and the first lab manager for the AAC&U award winning Interdisciplinary Research Group on Privacy/Coleman Research Lab. Amanda served as an event manager for SICSS-Howard/Mathematica 2021 and an event assistant in 2022. She currently works at John Hopkins University School of Medicine in the Department of Ophthalmology, while studying to pursue a career in data analytics.