Incubating Imagination with Ruha Benjamin

A world without prisons? Ridiculous. Schools that foster the genius of every child? Impossible. A society where everyone has food, shelter, love? In your dreams. Exactly.

For the 2025 Taft Research Center keynote on Worldbuilding and Radical Worldmaking, Ruha Benjamin takes us into the liberating power of the imagination. Deadly systems shaped by the school to Pr*son pipeline, ableism, digital surveillance, and eugenics emerged from the human imagination, and have real-world impacts. To fight oppressive systems and create a world that works for all of us, we will have to imagine things differently. Ruha Benjamin will show us how educators, artists, technologists, and more are experimenting with new ways of thinking and tackling seemingly intractable problems. Let’s explore the possibilities and practices required to imagine and create more just and habitable worlds of learning and being.

Presented in partnership with the College of Arts & Sciences. Free & open to the public. Registration required. Please arrive early.

Ruha Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, and she recently released her fourth book, Imagination: A Manifesto. Ruha is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and in 2024 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellowship. Learn more at: https://www.ruhabenjamin.com

About the Venue: MainStreet Cinema is a 200-seat theater with stadium style padded seats. It is located within Tangeman University Center (TUC) in the heart of MainStreet. This four-story building is the home of the iconic clock tower that plays UC’s Alma Mater twice daily at noon and 6 p.m. TUC is the central campus location offering the university community a vast variety of dining options, shopping, and meeting spaces.

Getting Here: UC Uptown Campus Map | UC Visitor Parking Info | Transit Options

Host or Publisher Taft Research Center