Ruha Benjamin

About Ruha's Work

Ruha Benjamin is a transdisciplinary scholar and writer illuminating how advances in science, medicine, and technology reflect and reproduce social inequality. By integrating critical analysis of innovation with attentiveness to the potential for positive change, Benjamin demonstrates the importance of imagination and grassroots activism in shaping social policies and cultural practices.

In People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (2013), Benjamin examines the persistent gap between those who contribute to new medical technologies and those who actually benefit from them. She uses the California Stem Cell Initiative as a case study to illustrate a persistent problem in medical research: socially marginalized groups engaged for research purposes but not guaranteed access to the treatments that result from that research. Benjamin further investigates the intersection of science and society in Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019). In this work, she exposes the racial hierarchies and systems of social control embedded in seemingly neutral algorithms and automated systems that people interact with daily. These technologies, which rely on biased training data and flawed assumptions, cause direct harm to individuals and communities. Benjamin provides numerous examples of digital systems that perpetuate what she calls the “New Jim Code,” such as marketing algorithms that promote real estate based on “ethnic preferences,” thereby maintaining segregated neighborhoods, and crime prediction software that justifies intrusive surveillance of communities of color.

In her two most recent books, Benjamin weaves together personal experience and social analysis. Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022) is a poignant meditation on how individuals drive meaningful social change. She advocates for the power of grassroots initiatives that prioritize care over control, such as doulas focused on birth equity and tenant organizers fighting the legacy of redlining. In Imagination: A Manifesto (2024), Benjamin argues that we are constrained by policies and paradigms that result from the narrow imagination of those who monopolize power and resources and seek to benefit the few at the expense of the many. She urges readers to challenge the assumptions and logics underpinning systems of oppression as a first step toward creating a world in which everyone can thrive. In addition to her scholarship, Benjamin collaborates with community organizations on digital justice initiatives. As founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, she works with students, organizers, and artists to identify, challenge, and transform tech-mediated harms. Benjamin deepens our understanding of the dangers that technological advancements pose to vulnerable populations while reimagining what counts as innovation and who gets to shape our collective future.