#AcademicRunPlaylist - 12/16/25

I was graciously protected from delivery folks who might encroach on our territory by these two, and after being jolted out of work at irregular intervals by incessant barking I listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an incredible Deep Learning Indaba workshop on centering data in African AI. Highlights for me were the talk by Joan Kinyua (data work) and the concluding panel on how essential unique data and data labeling are in driving AI development and strategies for leveraging that importance with Vukosi Marivate, Felecia Webb, Albert Njoroge Kahira, and Chris Emezue. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuG6aUXcBHw

Next was an amazing talk by Alice Crary on the historical and philosophical roots of techno-fascism and its deep connection to academic and industry development of AI at the UCD School of Philosophy. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3s7yRJ_CEo

Next was an engaging Power At Work discussion on the latest labor-related news in the US with Seth Harris, Bill Samuel, and Andrew Ziaja https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID5fSWLQoB0

Next was a great talk by Anna Wexler on the ethical dimensions of implanted brain-computer interface research at Penn Medical Ethics and Health Policy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC65RQirkJs

Next was an important panel on the history of eugenics at Yale and academia more broadly with Mayah Monthrope, Tara Bhat, Alana Slavin, Marco Cenabre, Stacy Cordova Diaz, and Ayah Nuriddin at the Yale MacMillan Center's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC). Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL-BcpK9fGk

Next was a powerful panel on how the concept of race shaped scientific knowledge production with Evelynn Hammonds, Natalie Lira, and Rana Hogarth at the GLC. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noPRAlNVxrs

Next was a wide-ranging panel on labor supply chains in the Arab Gulf with Elizabeth Frantz, Fabien Goa, and Matthew Hopper at the GLC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehmHbhz6WHI

Next was "The Second Emancipation" by Howard French. French is always a must-read, but this book sets a new standard even for him, tracing the arc of Pan-Africanism and its reverberations across the world in a riveting fashion. While Kwame Nkrumah is at the center of this history, it is by no means a biography. Instead, French uses Nkrumah's trajectory to chart various movements in Africa, the US, Europe, and the Soviet Union and how they intersected with the African independence and Pan-African movements. It's genuinely eye-opening how connected the US and Ghana were during this period. I'd known that W.E.B. DuBois died there, but learning about Nkrumah's education in the US and the interactions and influence over the decades with people who would later become leaders of the civil rights movement was incredible. It was all the more depressing to read about the creeping impossibility of charting a successful non-aligned middle way for Ghana and African nations more broadly, but this history is a shining example of the power of international solidarity in driving social change. Highly recommend https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324092452

Last was "The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China" by Ruixue Jia, Hongbin Li, and Claire Cousineau. This book is most interesting not for covering the ins and outs of the Gaokao itself, but for the zero-sum, competitive tournament it fosters at school and beyond, importantly stretching into academia. This is almost by necessity a biased look at the system - the authors benefitted immensely from it as they mention, and also still maintain strong ties to a government that benefits from a positive framing of it. However, some of the drawbacks are engaged here, and even the quantitative data brought to bear shows many of the drawbacks of this approach along with the benefits (the economic mobility stats in particular are impressive). A big gap is any reference to educational literature, with a myopic economic focus being centered here. Overall, this is still an extremely thoughtful book on one of the world's most important evaluation systems. Highly recommend https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674295391