Ruha Benjamin @ruha9 Twitter profile

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Ruha Benjamin

1 month

Thanks to everyone who listened to & shared the short clip from the 2024 Spelman Founders Day address. In case you'd like to hear the full 15min talk, here's a captioned version. The spicy section that's circulating is towards the end:

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

2 months

“THE REALITY ON THE GROUND IS INFINITELY WORSE THAN THE WORST VIDEOS AND PHOTOS WE’RE SEEING IN THE WEST.”

Democracy Now!

@democracynow

2 months

Susan Abulhawa is the author of the critically acclaimed novel "Mornings in Jenin" and has just returned from two weeks in Gaza, where "What’s happening to people isn’t just this death and dismemberment and hunger. It is a total denigration of their personhood."

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

3 years

How it started How it’s going🥳

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

@dereckapurnell

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

First, who are you?

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

The part that really gets me: “None of the victims who lost their lives had attended the party.”

MacKenzie Elmer

@mckelmer

4 years

A small wedding in Maine: 177 infected with COVID. 7 dead.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

21 days

Shame shame shame @Princeton . Two of our students arrested, evicted, and permanently barred from campus. There is nothing “inherently unsafe” about encampments. The university MAKES them unsafe by criminalizing tents and sending campus police to intimidate protestors.

Writers Against the War on Gaza

@wawog_now

21 days

🚨BREAKING: At 7am, @Princeton students launched their Gaza Solidarity encampment on the McCosh Courtyard. They join thousands of students across the world in demanding that Princeton divest from Israel, and that Israel end its genocidal campaign—immediately.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

21 days

Hi @Princeton , who decided that encampments are “inconsistent with the University’s mission”? As a faculty member I find students’ courageous stand against genocide to breathe life into our motto “…in service of humanity.” Unless those were just cute words for the website?

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

Whose hoop are you holding? Who’s holding your hoop?

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

2 years

AHHH! A first look at the cover for my next book VIRAL JUSTICE: How We Grow the World We Want, on-sale from @PrincetonUPress on October 11. Learn more + pre-order your copy now:

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Work-in-progress. If you want a recording let me know.😷

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

I think this might be the first course crosslisted as African American Studies + Engineering at Princeton. I’ll let u know how it goes🤖

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Happy Birthday Breonna. We won’t rest in peace until this anti-social system is buried.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

3 years

Remembering all the random things about in-person talks: Like, even in a completely masked audience, all I really need is one vigorous head nodder to get me through an hr lecture. Shout out to all the head nodders! I am bc you are😭

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

SHE WON🎃😭

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 year

Please join me in calling ⁦on Boston University to accept the fair price of tenants seeking control over their homes through a Black-led community land trust instead of ⁦ @BU_Tweets ⁩ selling the LA property to developers who would evict over 100pp!

Baldwin Hills Tenants Fighting Boston University to Keep Their Homes - Knock LA

Tenants demand Boston University allow community control over the homes, rather than sell them to developers who would evict the community.

knock-la.com

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

21 days

Hi @Princeton , you took the megaphone away from students but this helicopter circling nonstop above our assembly doesn’t “disrupt University operations”?

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

2 months

Hi friends, I was looking forward to connecting at @SXSW tmrw, but I’m pulling out after learning about the unacceptable deep links the festival has to weapons manufacturers and the US military who at this very moment are enabling the genocide of Palestinians.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

For all the youth in your lives, encourage them to read this— “Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind”

Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind (Published 2019)

In three decades of advocating for prison abolition, the activist and scholar has helped transform how people think about criminal justice.

www.nytimes.com

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

2 years

In every word, on every line, she was trying to teach us how to love. May her spirit soar, as we keep trying. #bellhooks

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

9 months

“There are a few things they all want us to know: AI is not magic. LLMs are not sentient beings, and they won’t become sentient. And the problems with these technologies aren’t abstractions — they’re here now and we need to take them seriously today.”👏🏾

These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI

Rumman Chowdhury, Timnit Gebru, Safiya Noble, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, and Joy Buolamwini open up about their artificial intelligence fears

www-rollingstone-com.cdn.ampproject.org

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

9 months

On my birthday I’m geeeked to share the cover of my next book, IMAGINATION: A Manifesto @wwnorton . Art by the incomparable @nettieb , Order here:

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

eyes on the prize👀

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 month

I’m in my feels this week as I return to Spelman to receive an honorary doctorate of science. In 2001, a week before I graduated I squeezed this precious child into the world, so I made him dress up in my doctoral robe for a full circle moment.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

If you decide to teach either one of these books next academic yr, I’d be more than happy to Skype into the discussion.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

9 months

“People hit first and worse by the climate crisis tend to be Black, indigenous and low income. Yet we’re the keepers of the knowledge of how to build a society that wouldn’t cause ecological collapse and societal doom.”

Wildfire decimates Lahaina, once the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom

For centuries, Lahaina has been a significant economic, political and cultural center for Native Hawaiian communities.

www.nbcnews.com

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

2 years

It’s #ViralJustice Pub Day! Let’s be extra and give the people an original mix to rock to while you read 🎶 🎧

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 year

Ahhhh pinch me!!! Viral Justice was just awarded the 2023 Stowe Prize! The prize recognizes a distinguished book of general adult fiction or non-fiction that illuminates a critical social justice issue in contemporary society. #ViralJustice

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Essential worker, essential to exploit, essential to sacrifice, essential to expose, essential to gaslight, essential to coerce, essential to romanticize, essential to resist, essential to organize, essential to unionize, essential to protect, essential to pay, essential to care.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

15 days

In short, university administrators are lying + fear mongering. Our full statement here:

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

I know who needs to hear this: I am still learning how to write.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

2 years

Race After Technology animated😱

Jordan Clark

@Prodigalson2025

2 years

Watching @theproudfamily introduce Maya—an activist who marches to the beat of her own drum, who never hesitates to shut anyone down with her honesty and wisdom—reading @ruha9 ’s Race After Technology & instantly she became my favorite character #TheProudFamilyLouderAndProuder

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Soooooo, are universities still making pandemic cuts to Black studies programs, or nah?🤔

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

In 2014 my dad died from H1N1 complications. Mom picked him from work bc he wasnt feeling well, drove him to Cedars Sinai n he quickly deteriorated. He was 59 +weak immune system. I dont have any grand lesson, just grief, confusion, anger. So PLEASE, be careful with one another.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

8 months

“What did cops do to deserv a play geround?” asks a perceptive child in Atlanta whose school was shuttered. #StopCopCity

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

7 years

Note to selves: remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

3 years

On this 2-year anniversary of the publication of Race After Technology, I’m thrilled to share this free discussion guide that I hope will be useful in classrooms, book clubs, and other groups. Please share widely:

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

We are now officially the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab at Princeton! In honor of her 158th bday please join me in donating to The Light of Truth monument & film project. Every little bit counts! @Princeton @PrincetonAAS

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

2 years

As a young Black woman, I saw my pregnancy treated like a problem. So I ditched the docs for home delivery n found an alternative model for health care. TMI ALERT⚠️missed periods, leaky breasts n public vomiting—my insides are all over this. via @wired

A Better Birth Is Possible

As a young Black woman, I saw my pregnancy treated like a problem. So I ditched the doctors for home delivery and found an alternative model for health care.

www.wired.com

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Words are to be taken seriously. Words set things in motion. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I try not to be careless about what I utter, write, sing. I’m careful about what I give voice to. —Toni Cade Bambara

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

YALL, this is the chair of my Dept... “THIS IS US.”

Mona Eltahawy

@monaeltahawy

5 years

This is the best analysis of the horror of this past weekend in the United States

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

17 days

“Every generation has to agitate and demonstrate. We are part of a long chain. And this should be a wake up call for universities, who are often behind the curve, behind the nation.”

The Nation

@thenation

17 days

The goal of Princeton's "Popular University for Gaza" is to create spaces for education. On day two of the protest, @raziaiqbal writes, the lawn had the feeling of an urgent, edgy, talky, relaxed festival.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Day 1 vs Day 14

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 month

“Study ‘resistance to genocide’ but please don’t act on what you learn.” — @USC

Christina Cover

@christinakcover

1 month

This is infuriating! Does @USC not recognize the morbid irony of offering a minor in resistance to genocide and then not allowing the schools valedictorian, who studied this, who has worked hard to earn that moment, to speak during an ongoing genocide? We've really seen it ALL

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

For those asking ‘why the riot gear in downtown Princeton? Well, if you buy an expensive car, you’re not going to leave it in the garage. That’s why the demand #DefundThePolice .

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

What if... we pressed pause on all virtual events, meetings, meetups, work calls, everythang that isn’t really really urgent from, lets say, Aug 24-31? Not individual detox, more like collective refusal & rejuvenation?

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 year

When I first got to @PrincetonAAS my incredible chair @esglaude oriented me to our longterm mission: “we are doing this work for the 4th grader…” Yall, today I met that 4th grader🥺

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

I'm slow...but after over a dozen virtual guest lectures this fall, I realized I could record the primer presentation, then just Zoom in for the Q&A portion. So if you're teaching any of my work in the Spring, I'm posting the presentation link below.

Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

If you decide to teach either one of these books next academic yr, I’d be more than happy to Skype into the discussion.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Warning: This is what happens after your 300th hour on Zoom.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Official zoom uniform of the fall semester, my new bday top arrived!🎉Then things quickly spiraled out of control. Your professors are not alright.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Still processing... my speaking agent told me there’s a client interested in projecting me into an event next year “using a holographic option.”

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

10 months

“My friend Toni Cade Bambara said that she didn’t like to call herself an artist bc then it made you start acting precious like you were so above everybody else, that she thought we shld call ourselves cultural workers bc we were no better than ppl who worked in factories…”

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Ancestral anger. If it seems my reaction is not proportional to the offense, it is bc my grandmothers are still pissed.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 year

The Meaning of African American Studies: “Black studies is supposed to be an epistemological break, and that’s why it’s dangerous—because it actually wants to try to figure out a way to make this country not racist.”♦

The Meaning of African American Studies

The discipline emerged from Black struggle. Now the College Board wants it to be taught with barely any mention of Black Lives Matter.

www.newyorker.com

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Today I’m reading a dissertation with a section dealing seriously with the sonic & linguistic brilliance of the incomparable @MissyElliott . This is my job.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

I’m starting a critical study of bees as cooperative world-building.🌍 Join me on the journey on IG @ bee.earthseed

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

8 months

“Using prisoners to train AI creates uneasy parallels with the kind of low-paid & sometimes exploitive labor that has often existed…Others consider this new form of prison labor part of a problematic rush for cheap labor that underpins the AI revolution.”

These Prisoners Are Training AI

In high-wage Finland, where clickworkers are rare, one company has discovered a novel labor force—prisoners.

www.wired.com

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

This is what you can do with a degree in Sociology👊🏾😬

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Huge congratulations🎉 to the incomparable Alondra Nelson, who has just been elected President of the Society for the Social Studies of Science 2021-23! #MyPresident @4sWeb @alondra

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

Ask & you shall receive! The Critical Race + Digital Studies syllabus created by the incredible @rachelkuo #CriticalRaceDigitalStudies

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

An SOS from the bowels of Zoom! I *may* be medicating myself w/ cropped blazers.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

BOOM. Snyder “withdrew.” Thanks to each and everyone who made this happen! #NoSnyderFellowship

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

2 years

When my students find out I won’t be on campus much this semester bc of the book tour, the first Q they ask is how I’m planning to rest, recuperate, or enjoy the trip. The grind is no longer glorified, and I love them for that.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

6 months

UPDATE: It took a few months but we’ve come up with a fabulous new jacket, art by Creative Soul Photography @csphoto_atl . HUGE thanks to those who already preordered!

Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

9 months

Hi all, lots of impt discussion happening in the comments under this announcement which Im taking back to the press. Three links in particular: 1/4

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Health policy that makes us sick, educational policy that breeds ignorance, labor policy that generates disposability, financial policy that creates precarity, housing policy that manufactures scarcity, environmental policy that ensures our extinction... all by design. REBOOT.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

Happy Fathers Day to all the hoop holders🖤

Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

Whose hoop are you holding? Who’s holding your hoop?

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

edited: I am re-learning how to write after graduate school.

Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

I know who needs to hear this: I am still learning how to write.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

“The weaponization of medical language emboldened white supremacy with the authority of the white coat.”

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

“A broken gun is better designed than a working gun. There is no ethical way to design a wall that keeps refugees from safety. A database that keeps track of immigrants for the sake of deportation will always be broken.”

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

3 years

THANK YOU @BKLYNlibrary for awarding Race After Technology the 2020 Literary Award for Nonfiction! The award$ will seed a new scholarship @SpelmanCollege in memory of my dear friend, BK librarian, Taneya Gethers Muhammad.✨ Please join me in donating🙏🏽

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

What’s your life philosophy in a gif? Here’s mine:

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

@prisonculture What’s even the point of getting invited anywhere if we don’t withdraw when it matters? @Kennedy_School #NoSnyderFellowship

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

As a former UC grad student who pieced together 2-3 campus jobs every semester to cover the “subsidized” rent in student housing & still had to apply for “emergency loans” from the univ to make ends meet, I stand with #ucscstrike & #cola4all . This is SHAMEFUL @UCSC .

UCSC4COLA

@payusmoreucsc

4 years

We are fired and it's official. @UCSC terminated student workers engaged in #ucscstrike strike for a Cost of Living Adjustment ( #COLA ). Did we get a COLA? No! So why would we stop striking? #cola4all

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 year

“Solidarity does not require that people be identical. If it did, it would not be solidarity but sameness. Rather, solidarity is something you choose, not something that exists already in advance for you.”

GETACHEW & HALEY: Choosing solidarity - Yale Daily News

When you arrive at Yale as a graduate student, you are asked a question, again and again, implicitly and explicitly, by everything in the environment of the University: how will you relate to the...

yaledailynews.com

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

2 months

Checkout the Becoming Bell Hooks doc!

Becoming bell hooks | KET

Explore the life and legacy of Kentucky-born author bell hooks.

ket.org

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

6 months

Heyhey! My TED talk on tech, imagination, and justice, connecting to struggles on the ground to #StopCopCity , just posted today. Please share!

Is technology our savior — or our slayer?

When it comes to technology, we're often presented with two contrasting visions of the future: one where technology fulfills all our desires, and another where it leads to chaos and conflict....

www.ted.com

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

When people gently comment that “your talk was a bit one-sided” as if capitalism, racism, authoritarianism, patriarchy, colonialism, predatory inclusion, and techno-utopianism need lil ole me to represent it fairly?

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

3 years

It’s here! The audiobook of Race After Technology dropped today & I have free downloads to giveaway. DM me for a code.📚 And THANK YOU to everyone who pre-ordered. Your online reviews are appreciated!

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Like many of you, each AM finds another dozen requests for interviews, consultations, talks, workshops, brainpickings. I’m not complaining. I’m emboldened to train up atleast 100 young ppl every yr as long as I’m alive to do this work, starting w/ 42 students this summer. Asè.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

I spoke at a conf recently where one of the other speakers was Well Known Singularity Bro who told attendees, mostly students, “XYZ tech is inevitable. You have no choice. You can only decide how to respond.” That was my only time starting a talk with “HE IS WRONG.”

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

14 days

Whose safety, whose peace are university officials protecting?

An open letter to President Eisgruber and VP Calhoun concerning minoritized student safety

"We — the undersigned leaders, community members, and allies of cultural affinity groups of Princeton University — condemn in the strongest possible terms the University’s utter disregard for the...

www.dailyprincetonian.com

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

”More training or diversity among police officers won’t end police brutality, nor will firing and charging individual officers.”

Opinion | No More Money for the Police (Published 2020)

Redirect it to emergency response programs that don’t kill black people.

www.nytimes.com

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

If you squint reeeeally hard!👀

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 month

I’ve been waiting for this paper to drop like yall wait for the latest Kendrick or Bey hit! On eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence by @timnitGebru + @xriskology . <>

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

Daily reminder: With technology, you can police *without* the police. #DefundPolice meets #NewJimCode

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

2 months

I cannot in good conscience participate in a festival ( @sxsw ) that has the US Army as a “Super Sponsor” and is platforming RTX (formerly Raytheon), Collins Aerospace, and BAE Systems, the very companies selling the weapons that have murdered 31,000 Palestinians.

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

11 months

Help me spread the word! From June 19-26 the Viral Justice ebook is on sale for $1.99 @BookBub 🫨

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

It’s also shouting into a void if you call my office in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, with no pandemic, with me staring directly at the phone 👀

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 year

Write girl. —Octavia E. Butler, Jan 21, 1968

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@ruha9

1 year

EYYYY, join me in celebrating new @PrincetonAAS colleague @lorgia_pena ! OVER-Overjoyed!🤸🏾‍♀️🤸🏾‍♀️🤸🏾‍♀️

Board approves six faculty appointments

The Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the appointment of six faculty members, including three full professors and three assistant professors. Professor Lorgia García Peña, in the...

research.princeton.edu

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 year

The @CorbettTenants did not settle & got all 4 buildings!! The people UNITED will never be defeated.👊🏾

Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

1 year

Please join me in calling ⁦on Boston University to accept the fair price of tenants seeking control over their homes through a Black-led community land trust instead of ⁦ @BU_Tweets ⁩ selling the LA property to developers who would evict over 100pp!

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

“Imposter Syndrome” locates the problem in our psyches. But institutional security rests on our insecurity. We need a more accurate diagnosis of the dis*ease: Insecurity Infectants Agents of Anxiety Academia Nervosa Induced Overproductivty Disorder

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

5 years

Send me all your positive energy in one hr please. I’m gonna be on NPR’s “Science Friday,” jet lagged and hyped up on espresso so hoping I don’t start rapping or brain farting or both. Here’s to a nongaseous, non MC-wannabe interview!

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Ruha Benjamin

@ruha9

4 years

I know this might seem really random, but my heart goes out to all the new grandparents out there who haven’t been able to hold their grandbabies.

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