The papers in this series, “Critical Histories, Activist Futures,” have captured some of the exciting conversations that took place during a conference titled “Critical Histories, Activist Futures: Science, Medicine, and Racial Violence,” which was held at Yale University in February 2017. As my colleague Sarah M. Pickman has explained, the conference was intended to create a space for …
Series: Critical Histories, Activist Futures
Defining “Social Justice” at the Academic Medical Center
I am delighted to contribute to this series on the Critical Histories and Activist Futures: Science, Medicine, and Racial Violence Conference. As captured by the submissions published here over the last few months, the content of the conference sparked productive conversations about history, health, and justice that are still ongoing here at Yale. But rather than focusing on the papers …
Justice, Science, and Pedagogy
As we consider the role of justice in pedagogy and scholarship, I want to ask a simple but difficult question:
What is our ethical task?
Do we desire to be right? Do we desire to be powerful? Do we desire to be empathetic and other-oriented?
Earlier in my academic career, I understood my pedagogical task to be equipping students to …
Medical Student Activism: Political x Institutional x Personal
Robert Rock and Nientara Anderson are medical students involved in a broad range of activism efforts at the Yale School of Medicine, including the US Health Justice initiatives (co-founded by Robert Rock) and the History, Health, and Humanities Reading Group (co-led by Nientara Anderson). Robert and Nientara also co-teach a session within the main curriculum for Yale medical students titled …
Klamath Connection and Critical Histories/Activist Futures: The Role of Interdisciplinary Discourse in Addressing Racism and Inequity in STEM Education
The Klamath River flows from Southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean through some of the most wild lands of the continental United States. It is home to diverse communities including American Indian Tribes, farmers, fishermen, and the most remote and geographically isolated campus of the California State University (CSU) system, Humboldt State University (HSU). The call for submissions for the …
History, Ethics, and the Environmental Archive
In Marshallese culture the environment itself is sacred.[1] Yet American colonizers used ancestral environments in the Marshall Islands for devastating nuclear weapons testing and related environmental research. Once central to emerging understandings of radiobiology, geology, and ecology, archival records of environmental research in the Marshall Islands offer a wealth of data to historians of science and the environment. These …