2023 IEEE RESPECT + NSF CISE EWF PI meeting trip report
After a celebratory weekend of my daughter’s college graduation in San Diego, I went to Atlanta to listen, learn, and talk about equity in computing education. I went with trepidation — not of the meeting, but of Georgia. I don’t have any rational reason to be afraid. My violation of its state laws about supporting trans youth in Georgia hiding from their parents doesn’t phase me. It’s not (yet) illegal to pee here. Atlanta of all places in Georgia is certainly the safest place to be if I have to be in the South. And yet, walking around with my little symbols of queer and trans pride this month does not feel like a risk worth taking, especially not with the broken elbow I’m nursing. I arrived at the airport still wearing a trans pride flag top, but quickly took it off in the airplane restroom before I arrived to ATL. It’s a time to choose my battles carefully.
I came fatigued. Being in computing ed has been challenging in the last year of sabbatical. I started last spring with a dispiriting public canceling from my community, and so rather than spending the year growing community, I felt like I’ve been mostly isolated. I’ve had a joyous year wandering the planet anway, meeting with people face to face across the country. But even that has been isolating, without much community. And while I always find people to talk to at conferences, I often find myself alone at social time, especially in venues that are explicitly about equity and justice, eating dinner alone. Maybe I smell :P
Despite all this, meetings about computing, learning, justice are some of my favorite places to be. It’s where I find colleagues that share my values, where I find and share ideas I care deeply about, and where I advocate to whoever will listen. I feel alive at them, even if frequently alone.
IEEE RESPECT 2023, and the co-located NSF PI meeting, promised to be much of what I love about conferences: people at the leading edge of thought about computing education equity and justice, a community of advocates, and a focus on ideas and the future.
Tuesday: Poetry, Advocacy, Networking
I arrived just in time Tuesday from the airport for my PhD student Megumi Kivuva’s work on integrating computing concepts into poetic analysis in a Spanish language class. Megumi brought me into the project late, as they were primarily doing it at their undergraduate institution Bard. But I was so grateful to learn about their work and help them find ways of communicating it to computing education communities. I’ve recently been captivated by opportunities at the intersection of language arts and computing, and Megumi’s investigations into the tensions between the non-digital traditions of literary analysis and the inherently digital traditions of computing revealed fascinating opportunities and risks.
After, had a call with a SIGCSE board member to advocate, then went to the RESPECT reception where I reconnected with folks doing awesome work in teacher education.
Wednesday: Peer Review, Equity, (In)Visibility
I started off Wednesday with a very fancy latte and then a serendipitous chat with Tracy Camp, the Executive Director of CRA. We chatted a bit about leadership pathways, and the implied commitments to the status quo in the phrase “responsible computing.”
Equitable Peer Review Panel
Wednesday began with Naveena Karusala, Carla Strickland, and Nicki Washington on a panel about peer review, facilitated by conference program co-chair Tamara Pearson. The panel focused on equity in peer review processes (not just in publishing, but also funding). (This has been a core interest of mine for some time).
Carla talked about the tensions between the safety of anonymity with the need for accountability. Nicki talked about epistemic tensions, around what count as knowledge and who gets to participate in creating knowledge, and the dismissal of anything but positivist, quantitative knowledge. Naveena talked about the need for much broader epistemologies that allow for community-based, qualitative work, especially engaging schools.
One topic that came up was the size of our community, and whether it’s actually anonymous; in many cases, it may not be, because our community is knowable. This also led to discussion about accountability and self-selection of opt-in reviewing. Carla noted the scarcity of time and how it shapes reviewing, especially on rigid conference reviewing timelines. She noted that the very people who have been historically harmed by peer review are the ones needing to hustle to publish. She also noted the lack of humility in self-selected reviewers, which can lead to abuses of power.
Another topic that Naveena raised was the need for respectful dialog, through interaction and iteration on submissions. This isn’t always possible in strict conference timelines (and from my view, a good argument for moving away from conferences as archival venues). Nicki noted that this is all limited by a lack of criticality amongst people who tend to review, and challenges of recruiting and training reviewers. She noted just how much expertise is missing from our reviewing community in Black feminist thought and other critical perspectives, but also lived experiences.
Tamara then talked about grant funding, which preserves reviewer anonymity, but not author anonymity. Nicki talked about how the panel is not anonymous to each other, and has a social space to dialog about gaps in expertise, but that there’s not a lot of value in the anonymity itself. But she noted the need for iteration in grant proposals as well. Carla added how important it can be to have dialog with panelists, which isn’t possible with current review processes, but could be if we added pre-review dialog with program officers. Nicki added that for scholars from minoritized groups, there’s a lot of hidden curriculum that makes it even harder to know how a process is going to unfold.
Naveena then shifted the conversation to meta-reviewers’ responsibility to filter bad reviews and ensure review quality. Tamara asked Carla about meta-reviewing experiences; she talked about the large amount of advocacy that was necessary to make space for new perspectives. There was a need for constant effort to remind reviewers of different ideas and language, and encourage revisions. Nicki talked about how she has had very positive reviewing experiences, particularly at ASEE, which stemmed from being very intentional about creating a culture of constructive critique.
Tamara asked Naveena about the US-centricity of so many computing education. Naveena noted how much the community has grown, particularly globally, but how much there still need to be incentives to learn, particularly amongst reviewers. Carla noted the English-US supremacy that the heart of a lot of review processes as well. Carla particularly emphasized the value of RESPECT’s language guide in the review process (and how it was obvious who had read it), and how it was useful as a tool for educating reviewers.
The audience had several questions about concrete policy changes, including the risks of deanonymizing reviewers and the lurking issues in reviewer assignment algorithms.
Designing and Enacting Equitable Measures
Jeanne Century, Josiah Hester, Rodney Hopson, Monica McGill, and Alan Peterfreund served on a panel to talk about equity in the context of measurement. All shared unique paths to thinking about equity about evaluation. Alan started the conversation by asking about responsiveness in the context of evaluation. Rodney talked about the problematic search for universals in social science knowledge at the root of post-positivist epistemologies. He talked about these as a form of epistemic hegemony, most often with white supremacist roots. He raised questions about who is considered and valued as an expert, and the devaluing of lived experiences.
Alan then turned the conversation to “evidence” and “rigor”. Jeanne reflected on how limited goals of rigor and evidence have been on progress. She noted that “evidence is only evidence in the context it was generated”. She also talked about whether we even need a goal of “rigorous” publishing at all; there are many other ways to share our knowledge, other than peer review.
Yolanda Rankin talked about the need for unlearning contexts. Jeanne observed that in learning, we all have to give something up to make space for something new. Josiah talked about his journey to understanding about the broader systems and inequities underlying computing technology and who its designed to serve, and what it means to design with different goals (e.g., sustainability).
Monica talked about the many opportunities to build on more mature instruments from education researchers, to more thoughtfully gather demographic information, to think more longitudinally about data, and be more thoughtful about data privacy and security. Rodney added to this the need for applying Black traditions of learning and unlearning inherent to living in a white supremacist world to research. Jeanne talked about ideas of co-constructing measures with communities and conducting cognitive interviews to validate measures.
Lunch with Jeff Forbes and Charles Isbell
At lunch, I coordinated with the ICER and SIGCSE TS program chairs about equitable peer review, then had lunch while Charles Isbell received the CRA Nico Habermann award for significant contributions to increasing participation of minoritized communities in computing. Jeff probed into Charles’ perspectives on the centrality of computing in science, society, and life. Charles talked about how this is less about the primacy of computing — though that is definitely an issue—but the unignorability of computing in society.
Visibility, Invisibility, Hypervisiblity
After lunch was a brief presentation and conversation with Stacey Sexton and Lien Diaz. The conversation was broadly about the highly nuanced ways in which people at the margins in CS are seen, watched, and not seen, for their race, gender, ability, and other forms of identity. The key question at the heart of the conversation was what kind of community we want and how committed we are to everyone’s liberation.
Kamau Bobb on this inflection point
After some afternoon breakouts, Kamau Bobb spoke about our inflection point around racial justice, literacy, book bans, attacks on tenure and free speech in relation to equity. He then discussed this in the context of Atlanta, where the goal is to have every student have equal access to computing education. But he noted that trying to achieve this on a system that is profoundly segregated race. In fact, some schools even have zero white children. He then talked about our collection reversion to separate but equal rhetoric. He then turned to the fewer than tens of Black and Hispanic students who graduated from top CS departments, and how they portend an undue access to influence. He ended with a prompt to imagine something we haven’t seen before: some assault on the structures and systems that are holding us back.
Dinner
After Kamau’s talk, I did some remote advising of a graduating doctoral student in the community, then wandered down to the lobby to try to find a dinner group. I struck out — everyone that passed by seemed to already have plans. So I found my way to a creative ramen shop and got a weird katsu and white bread sandwich and a seaweed salad. I doomscrolled through Elon Musk’s declaration of “cis is a slur” and my broader community’s replies, wondering how much longer I’ll be able to connect with trans people — or anyone—on Twitter. I stumbled upon the community org Southern Fried Queer Pride, which is having a festival this week that is for QTPOC (queer and trans people of color) and wondered if I’d be welcome. They were having a self-defense workshop tonight, and I wondered if that was a good idea with my broken arm. I wondered if I am person of color, since everyone at this conference seems to treat me as white. I’m definitely not Southern.
Thursday: Black feminist thought, justice
Thursday kicked off with Jeff Forbes giving us an overview of the status of computing education opportunities, and then a panel about justice-focused computing education. I was on the panel with Aman Yadav and Aaminah Norris. We broadly talked about conceptions of justice, their relationship to computing education. I was particularly fond of Aamniah’s points about epistemic power, alluding to Black feminist thought, and it deters progress and participation in CS. I talked about John Rawls conception of equity, Michel Foucault’s notions of social norms, and identity-centered theories of justice, such Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, Charlene Carruther’s Unapologetic, and DisCrit, and lenses for thinking about justice.
At lunch, Yolanda Rankin talked about Black feminist epistemologies, false narratives about Black folks in computing (e.g., they don’t want to code, they aren’t interested). She noted that in reality, there is interest, but not in what’s being taught or how it’s being taught. This was true in Yolanda’s case too. Then then talked about Black feminist thought, which validates women’s way of knowing, even if and especially if they are derived from lived experience, and how studies that apply an intersectional lens have revealed the particular kinds of gendered racism that deter participation in CS it is. She then discussed the root cause of these as epistemic power: certain epistemologies are legitimized in CS, and others are not. She offered testimonial authority as a methodological form of resistance, giving Black students agency to share their stories and control their stories about their experiences in CS.
Friday: Coordinating Outreach
After a coffee at Dancing Goats, I headed to a 3 hour BPC Alliance coordination meeting. Representatives from the NSF-funded Broadening Participation Alliances met to coordinate and plan. I came representing AccessComputing and my role on the board of Exploring Computing Education Pathways. I came hoping to learn about all of the other alliances, identify operational ways to help with coordination, and think about strategic goals for the community.
Kinnis Gosha talked about iAAMCS and discrepancies between the institutional focus of BPC efforts and institutions that tend to graduate the most Black students in CS. We brainstormed ways to maximize our collective impact with overlooked populations, including Black students, but also other groups on the margins. I mentioned queer students, undocumented students, refugee students, and not-for-profit and government career opportunities, such as the US Digital Service project. Others mentioned prison populations, adult learners. There was also an observation that there really isn’t (yet) and NSF strategic vision around the broader goals of the alliances (although there are goals).
After the meeting, I headed to the airport. TSA’s “scientifically validated” facial recognition algorithm decided that my driver’s license ID didn’t match my face, so I kind TSA officer interrogated my identity and travel plans. I almost fell over on the train to the gate because I only have one good arm and I didn’t grab the bracing handle in time; my core saved me. The restroom had no soap, and so a mother, her child, and I, with our dirty hands, locked eyes, sighed in sync and left the restroom. A black queer barista with a pride band in a flimsy concourse D cafe laughed at my request for a steamed oat milk, then had a good chuckle with his friends about my apparently tragically uncool inability to digest cow milk. I found a quiet corner of the sticky table to think more about gender, disability, and racial equity.
