CS 5/692, Winter 2020

January 20 / Week 3

No class - MLK Day!

We will have no in-class session this week, but we will have readings and online Sakai posts as normal. Our topic for today will be that of diversity and representation, and how it intersects with computer science. In honor of the holiday, we will also read Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Readings

• King, Martin Luther. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963)
  • Note: If you are unfamiliar with the Letter, or with its historical context, here are some additional readings that you may find interesting and/or helpful:
    • Lohr, Kathy (2013). “50 Years Later, King’s Birmingham ‘Letter’ Still Resonates”. All Things Considered, April 15, 2013
    • Oppenheimer, David Benjamin (1993). “Martin Luther King, Walker v. City of Birmingham, and the Letter from Birmingham Jail” U.C. Davis Law Review. 26 (4): 791–833
    • Baldwin, James (1960). “They Can’t Turn Back” Madmoiselle, August 1960, pp. 324-325
• Keyes, Os. Counting the Countless Real Life Magazine, 4/8/2019
• boyd, D. (2012). The Politics of “Real Names.” Commun. ACM, 55(8), 29–31.
• Guo, P. (2014). Silent Technical Privilege. Blog post, 1/2014

Optional

• Keyes, O. (2018). The Misgendering Machines: Trans/HCI Implications of Automatic Gender Recognition. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., 2(CSCW), 1–22.
• Huston, C. (2015). The Trouble with Imposters. Model View Culture, 4/28/15

Suggested Sakai Discussion Questions

• Aside from the timing of the holiday, why did I assign the Letter, and what does it have to do with machine learning, AI, or computer science?
• You may, of course, also choose to write a reflection on any of the other readings from this week.