A tale of two cities: a sabbatical jaunt to Pittsburgh and Chicago
Last fall I was fortunate to get an invitation from the wonderful Mary Shaw and Jim Herbsleb to do a short sabbatical visit at Carnegie Mellon. This sounded great professionally — Pittsburgh is full of wonderful scholars of all kinds, and it seemed like a great way to reconnect with people I hadn’t seen in years due to the pandemic. But it also happens to be a place of personal scars, including lonely struggles with gender, the usual chaos of young parenthood, and at the end, the chaos of my former partner’s bipolar mania, and the separation and divorce that came with it. Returning to the city that profoundly shaped my professional career and identity, but nearly destroyed my sense of self worth personally, is not something I did lightly.
But returning to places of trauma has been a theme this year. I did it last August when I returned to Spokane for my one year surgery follow up, and even though it brought up a lot of difficult feelings of pain and isolation, it was also a chance to replace memories by working through old ones and making new ones. And so I hopefully said yes, and emotionally prepared for a couple weeks of emotional instability and professional stimulation.
Around the same time, I learned that a few AERA papers and proposals I’d submitted with students and colleagues were accepted. I’d almost forgotten about those, and suddenly realized that right in the middle of my trip would need to be a trip to Chicago for my first visit to the massive, 15,000 person AERA conference. So my plan for a couple weeks of learning, sharing, and molting took on another goal of immersing myself in a sea of the country’s vibrant community of education scholars. I’d fly to Pittsburgh on a Sunday, leave for Chicago on a Wednesday, return on a Sunday, then stay through another Friday. Personal professional ping pong!
This post isn’t going to be a chronicle of everything that happened on this trip, just the things that were salient to me in the moment and in my memory. And while I’m sharing it publicly, I really am writing it for myself as a way to process all of these new experiences and to capture what I was thinking about these few weeks. Maybe you’ll learn a bit about CMU, a bit about AERA, a bit about processing traumatic memories, and what it feels like to come to an institution to advocate for change.
Warming up in Pittsburgh
I planned a slow start in Pittsburgh. I found a cute little Airbnb in Shadyside near food, shopping, and walking distance to campus. The Sunday I arrived I took my time, riding the 28X bus from the airport to my place, and then getting a cozy dinner at a ramen place solo. I structured my week with quiet mornings at cafes and in my visitor space on campus, with lively chats in the afternoon.
My first day was a bit of welcoming. I met with Jim Herbsleb and talked a bit about the many factors that shape individual investments in broader open source communities and the challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary departments. I had a nice lunch with Jonathan Aldrich and talked about sabbatical software projects and the many intricate constraints of programming language design. Mary Shaw and I had a nice conversation about equity gaps in public education and the many ways that computing education might look in schools. That was plenty for the day: I was also teaching CS teachers online for two hours that evening, then immediately after doing some trans youth group support online. So Monday accelerated quickly.
On Tuesday, I tried a new cafe, and settled in my visitor office to create some Wordplay features for visually framing content. Then I had lunch with Motahhare Eslami, where we chatted about youth’s critical perspectives on computing and structural injustices in system design. I came back for dense chat with Michael Hilton about teaching track pathways in higher education, nuances about grading for equity, and how to respond to skill deficits from the pandemic. After a quick interview with a journalist at Nature about large language models and an hour of much needed therapy, I got some boba with Ken Holstein to talk about community-based work on AI. Then I had a beautiful walk home with a colleague about some promotion work that fell on our plate (on sabbatical, grrr), and then an urgent chat with an undergrad about grad school decisions. I needed some quiet time, so I went for a burger at quiet bar with outdoor seating while the sun set.
Wednesday promised to be exhausting. I did a bit of Wordplay bug fixing, then walked the Carnegie Museum of Art with Dom Moritz to chat about declarative representations for visualization, animation, and interactivity, and the various messy opportunities of splitting time between industry and academia. Lunch was with Sauvik Das, where we talked about academic risk taking, then I blabbed with Jeff Bigham about large language models, strange dynamics on social media, and whether industry will ever lead public literacy about accessible computing. Mary Shaw and I gathered again to ponder what it means to satisfice when people build software for themselves, and what ways that large language models might make that harder or easier. And then, with my densely packed backpack, I caught the 28X to the airport to head to Chicago for my first AERA.
I spent much of that night trying to make sense of the three intense days of networking, and the three intense days of networking to come. The first thought that came to mind was how little time I’d even had to be aware of being in Pittsburgh, and how much the dramatic changes to Pittsburgh and campus precluded any trauma triggering. I’d mostly been in buildings and restaurants that didn’t exist when I was here. So instead of feeling like I was being pulled back into gender dysphoria or marital strife, it instead felt like the Pittsburgh I had known was dead, just like the Amy I was in grad school was mostly dead. The city had changed, and I had as well.
AERA 2023, a raging rhetorical river
I really didn’t know what to expect from AERA. Many had given me tips: don’t go to sessions, focus on the receptions, schedule things with friends. I understood those conceptually, but it wasn’t until my first morning when I saw what 15,000 education researchers in one place feels like that I really understood how overwhelming it all ways. It’s like a little city of people with shared interest just pops up, a million little exchanges happen, and everyone walks away forever changed and temporarily spent.
The first thing I noticed was how inaccessible it was. I walked a mile for breakfast, walked through mazes of hotels to find a panel about whiteness in teacher education, squinted to see tiny text, struggled to hear audiences that had no mics with which to amplify their voices. There was a deep irony to the persistent presence of ideas of equity and justice, but the mostly absent ideas of disability justice. Things got a bit easier when I found a poster session with humanities and computing education where I know several people. I met up with Michael Lachney and my PhD student Jayne Everson for casual tapas, then Jayne and I had an awkward roundtable with authors doing work completely unrelated to ours.
After the roundtable, I found a place to rest, and learned that the Missouri Attorney General had just outlawed gender affirming care for everyone, adults included, and kind of lost it. I knew this was coming — the right wants no less than to eradicate trans people right now—but I wasn’t ready for it. I found some private space to cry, did a bit of caregiving, and tried to emotionally prepare myself for dinner with some lovely folks with whom I was on a panel the next day, but who I was sure wouldn’t know the news. I kept repeating to myself “this is what it means to be on the margins — holding back tears while the rest of the world moves on with indifference”. I went back after dinner, made a bath, cried some more and watched the Mandalorian (“yes, yes, yes, yes”, oh baby yoda), and then couldn’t sleep all night.
The panel the next day was fun, but I was still distracted by the ever escalating loss of civil rights, and the vast ignorance about it even happening. I put on my game face and tried to give a good presentation. I’ve had decades of practice of pretending everything is fine, so I’m sure it was good, despite the sleep deprivation. I got lunch with the panelists where we had some tasty veggies, and kept my mood to myself. I eventually shared it on the walk back, but got the usual cis “that must be hard, you’re so courageous”, which mostly made me feel worse. So I went back to my room, slept for two hours, and tried to get to a better place for a long night of reception hopping with my friend and colleague Anne Beitlers.
Party hopping was fun, and helped. I met new folks at the University of Portland and found some common ground around growing up in the city of weird. We went to the University of Washington party and I met a lot of new faculty I hadn’t met, including the College’s dean. We then went to the UPenn reception, where I ran into a colleague, but also an old grad school acquaintance. We then we went to the Stanford party, where I expected to not know anyone, but stumbled upon many a people I know from Twitter, and had great conversations about constructionism. Although it was more of the world just moving on in ignorance of the daily loss of civil rights in my community, I at least felt welcome, and not alone.
After a long night of talking, I decided to slow down on Saturday. I got a smokey cortado and croissant, then spent a couple hours writing a new journal policy on reviewer reciprocity. Then I went to a strange session with education historians talking about queer histories, hoping I might find some solidarity. Instead it seemed to be mostly old lesbians geeking out about queer women education leaders from the 70’s, which is fine and needed, but not what I wanted emotionally. I ambled to a taco place, and then bumped into my gaggle from receptions the night before and enjoyed lurking on some administrative drama. It was nice to not be alone, but I still felt a bit numb. I spent a bit of time writing this piece.
I went to one last session before heading to my train, to see my respected colleague Sepehr Vakil speak and receive an early career award. Sepehr spoke about his groundbreaking work to reimagine computing and engineering education around youth’s political positioning and thinking, trying to empower them as philosophers of technology. His talk was somehow even more captivating than his excellent publications on the topic, was an epic weaving of discourse around school, learning sciences, political identity, history, and biography. What I found particularly striking about his ideas was his argument for making space for youth to decode tech’s relationship with power. He also posed some provocative questions about the tensions in trying to respect and preserve the need for deep technical knowledge, while also advocating for deep philosophical and ethical knowledge about technology. These are tensions I wrestle with myself, in my teacher education work, and my own identity, which carries deep chasms between my computing and political identities. I feel lucky to have witnessed Sepehr share his ideas, and also to listen to the fantastic community of learning scientists around him, who did not hold back in pushing his ideas into unexamined spaces.
I headed to Union Station to catch my train, and was fortunate to share the walk with my endlessly interesting grad school colleague Ryan Baker. We caught up on life and ideas, and then I settled in to the transit backwater that is Amtrak. The train ride was whimsical, quiet, and a bit disorienting. I dined with a couple of Trump supporters, and came out to them as trans to see what would happen. They pretended that I didn’t, presumably so they wouldn’t have to engage in conflict with me, and I joyfully shared my escapades and politics while they meekly seethed in anxiety. I watched Ted Lasso, which felt surprisingly melancholy and unmoored. I splurged on a sleeper suite with a bed, which was sometimes like a wonderful back massage from the bumps of the aging American rails, and other times like the sensory pummeling I’ve felt all week.
Pittsburgh, with zeal
My return to Pittsburgh began with a 5 am downtown wandering for a bus to Shadyside. I met a few folks in crisis, some houseless, some trying to get home after a rough Saturday of hijinks, some floating between mental health care on the bus. Sometimes I consciously choose to immerse myself in poverty just as a reminder of our shared humanity, but also as a reminder of what I fight for. I came home, slept a few more hours, and then began decompression, with a bit of laundry, and had a brunch where I randomly met an African woman soon starting med school at Pitt and a bit unsure of what to make of Pittsburgh, relative to her current home of D.C. Then I went and had my eyebrows threaded, just to fend off a bit of gender dysphoria from a week of voice strain . My dryer didn’t work.
Sunday evening, I had a pleasant dinner gathering with David Garlan, Mary Shaw and her partner, and George Fairbanks. We had a wide ranging conversation about software design, professional learning, public education, expertise, and the many open questions about how all of it fits together. It was gently raining, and David’s house was serene; I felt grateful all evening for the stimulating and challenging conversation.
Monday was a lively day of conversations about the limits of large language models (Vincent Hellendoorn), the role of domain in programming language design (Josh Sunshine), work/life balance (Claire Le Goues), ChatGPT personalities (Andrew Begel), academic leadership (Jim Herbsleb), the courage to embrace academic freedom (Travis Breaux), power and activism in academia (David Widder), and then a great dinner with Brad and Bernita Myers, catching up on life. Then I taught K-12 CS teachers for two hours about the reductive ideas that computing has about intelligence and information, and how the loss in these reductions leads to many of its problematic applications. A few of the candidates led us through discussion of these topics, playfully talking about how to talk critically about computing.
Tuesday was a bit different. I started with a bit of task work, then had a great conversation about the history and future of HCI with Ken Holstein’s lab, participated in a class discussion about programming and tools, had lunch with Brad to talk about the future of debugging. I then had two quick meetings with my wonderful former undergrad Jenny Liang about disciplinary identity, and then Wes Deng about AI, fairness, and literacy about these topics when engaged by end users. After a short break, I talked to John Zimmerman about systems thinking and equity, Chris Harrison about the arc of HCI and its ideas, Steven Wu about the fraught power dynamics of operationalizing ethical ideas with formalisms, Jessica Hammer and her group about advocacy and change in academia, and Christina Ma about change from below. I took a break from talking at a coffee shop before an evening dinner with a former undergrad for some trans and queer solidarity, then fixed a few Wordplay bugs.
Wednesday was a bit better paced. I had a generous three hours in the morning to work on Wordplay, fixing some bugs with time travel and reshooting some video for my talk. I then had an interesting conversation about problem and program space design with Eunsuk Kang, and the challenges of fitting both into a single semester course. Morgan Evans and I talked about CMU as a bubble and what life might be like outside it. After a tasty solo crepe and salad on Craig St., I chatted with Haiyi Zhu about undergraduate programs in HCI and the shifting discourse at the FAccT conference, had a grant meeting about a project on CS assessment bias, and talked to Michael Xieyang Liu about the limits of LLMs in bootstrapping and polish phases of design and programming work.
I started Thursday morning with a bit of email, then worked on a painting interface for Wordplay. Then I had a sober conversation with Sara McAllister, Ananya Joshi, and Catalina Vajiac about advocacy and change from within, and Pranav Khadpe about community-based research. After a lovely lunch with Lisa Huang and Catarina Gamboa on epistemic hegemony in programming languages research, then met with Frank Elavsky, Cella Sum, and Franky Spector to talk more about changing CS culture. I reserved a couple hours for quiet time before meeting with Jim Herbsleb and Mary Shaw again to discuss everything I’ve noticed over the past two weeks of conversation.
I shared a few observations with them:
- There are a huge number of opportunities and redundancies across the School of Computer Science that aren’t noticed because of distance and the pandemic. I feel like I was able to see them because I was meeting with people across CSD, S3D, HCII, and LTI, but many of the people I met with couldn’t see them. More opportunities for cross-unit mixing seems like an exciting opportunity, for CMU and likely many institutions.
- There are large gaps in expertise and perspective in the school, due largely to its scale and the lack of other discourses on campus. The lack of perspectives from the social sciences and humanities, for example, is palpable, and I think holding back a lot of research, as it stumbles through reinventing ideas that other fields worked through long ago.
- I was surprised by how many doctoral students and faculty shared with me that they had ideas they wanted to work on, but didn’t think they could or should, since it might not be valued by their advisor, their senior faculty, or their broader research community. Perhaps it’s being at such an open place, my information school, but it felt melancholy to hear about so many amazing dreams for research that people only felt sharing in private. It felt like a amazing community of scholars held back by fear of resisting the status quo.
- There is a large community of students (and some faculty) that have a sincere desire for equity within SCS, and in some cases, a need for SCS and the university to play a greater role in justice outside the university. I heard many horror stories of missing supports, uncompensated labor, resistance to change, indifference to harm, and a general dismissal of the importance of anything related to social justice. Students are frustrated and many are losing hope that CS will be a place where they can pursue these goals. I don’t think that this is specific to CMU — it is certainly in better shape than many CS departments I’ve visited from an equity perspective — but it is not good. And I think that’s largely due to leadership’s inattention to and ignorance of these problems. (This is not to call any particular leader out, as the problem is ubiquitous in CS).
On my last day, I had a quiet morning packing and finalizing my talk, then a series of fairly raw but inspiring conversations and a lunch with students asking deep questions about academia, its purpose, its capacity for social change, and where I find hope. We covered a lot of ground, but I think central was the idea that the academic norms many of us live with — including those at CMU—are not the ones that have to be. Change is always possible, and perhaps particularly possible in academia.
After lunch, we ambled to the seminar room, and I gave a playful, passionate, and somewhat irreverent talk about computing, justice, and programming language design. Based on the questions, and the facial expressions, I think it had the intended effect: there was a lot of smiling, squirming, confusion, the exact soup of emotions I’d hoped my art would evoke.
But more importantly, after the talk, and over email, I heard the people in the audience on the margins, including disabled students, students from abroad, and many who never felt welcomed in CS. Many shared how powerful it was to hear that I’d spent 1,000 hours in the past year on a project so driven by allyship of many forms, and how missing some of that deep investment of time felt from the broader field of computer science. Receiving these messages, especially after two weeks of stories of student and faculty dreams deferred, felt like the only validation that mattered. I do care about justice, I am committed to always growing in how I imagine it, and I will always prioritize it in how I spend my time.
This trip, and the trip within it, couldn’t have been more different. CMU was welcoming, joyous, and yet in some ways, felt like a place of constrained possibility. AERA was difficulty, exhausting, and overwhelming, yet felt like a place of openness, justice, and transformation. Together, they are everything vibrant academic communities could and should be, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was money that made the difference. After all CMU is a place of abundance, but with strings attached, and AERA was a place of scarcity with nothing to lose. These two cities felt like an academic microcosm of the failures of modernity, neither able to realize a world of safety, freedom, and justice.
But I left Pittsburgh with a sense of hope. There are so many amazing people I met in both cities that are fighting or want to fight. They just need to see that it’s possible and just need resources to make it possible. It feels like such a great capacity and desire for change that it just seems like a problem of catalyzing it. I’m not sure if my role as scholarly gadfly is helping much to catalyze.
As for Pittsburgh itself, I was surprised to find that everything I feared I might trigger simply didn’t happen. Maybe it’s that I’ve healed enough, or maybe it’s that Pittsburgh has changed enough. Or perhaps gender affirmation was all that was missing, because I’m free to be myself. I look forward to coming back again someday, and seeing how its changed and I’ve changed, once again.
