Ruha Benjamin Will Be a 2026 Equity Conference Keynote Speaker

The Council on Racial and Social Justice is proud to announce that a keynote speaker of our 2026 Equity Conference is Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab.

This year, the Equity Conference will take place virtually March 12-14 and Dr. Benjamin’s talk will be titled “Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence.” Her keynote will take place on March 13 from noon to 1:30 p.m.

Dr. Benjamin was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship in 2024. Her research at the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, which she founded in 2020, aims to “rethink and retool the relationship between stories and statistics, power and technology, data and justice.”

Her research focuses on bias in data systems, algorithmic discrimination, and surveillance technologies, including facial recognition tools that disproportionately misidentify people of color. Benjamin is the author of several books on technology and inequality, including Race After Technology (2019), which critiques what she terms the “New Jim Code” embedded in digital systems.

Dr. Benjamin has authored three other books: Imagination: A Manifesto (2024), Viral Justice (2022), and People’s Science (2013). She is also the editor of Captivating Technology (2019).

Ahlam Muhtaseb, a representative on the Council for Racial and Social Justice and CSU San Bernardino professor, said she had the great honor of being selected by Dr. Benjamin to be a senior fellow with the Ida B. Wells lab two years ago.

“For me, Dr. Benjamin’s work on issues of data justice, especially algorithmic racism, power, and injustice, had been inspiring some of my work around re-tooling technology for justice and center marginalized voices like those of Palestinians,” Muhtaseb said. “This became so crucial after the start of the genocide in Gaza in 2023 and launching our VR project ‘The Phoenix of Gaza.’ Dr. Benjamin is not your typical ivory tower academician; she is in the heart of the struggle for justice.”

Muhtaseb said Dr. Benjamin took an active role in supporting Princeton’s students during their protests against the genocide in 2024, which resulted in her being investigated by her university.

“When I asked her about that, she said it didn’t really matter to her because the struggle for social justice always comes first, and that this was a small sacrifice,” Muhtaseb said. “Dr. Benjamin models for us all what a MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Fellow is all about, and that justice is indivisible. During a time when surveillance is choking our communities and when our fascist government is employing every technological trick to spy on us and attack people of color in particular, Dr. Bejamin becomes so vital to help us understand what we are dealing with and how we can resist.”

Registration for the Equity Conference is now open. Register by March 6 here.