Why AI Needs Feminism: From Campus Surveillance to Global Conflicts

Why AI Needs Feminism brings together feminist critical technologists Lauren Klein (Emory University) and Meredith Broussard (NYU) in conversation with Barnard’s Saima Akhtar (Vagelos Computational Science Center) and Gabrielle Gutierrez (Neuroscience) to examine how algorithmic surveillance is reshaping everyday life—from predictive policing in New York neighborhoods of color to the data infrastructures sustaining global conflicts and occupations.
This conversation challenges the myth of “data-driven decision-making” as neutral progress and asks how feminist approaches grounded in care and accountability can offer paths toward refusal and repair.

Across higher education, including at Barnard, the rapid adoption of AI reflects wider struggles over power and control. “Smart” campus security systems and learning analytics promise efficiency and personalization while quietly expanding surveillance of movement, behavior, and intellectual labor. While AI can support learning and connection, it is also worth discussing how it reinforces existing hierarchies or privileges efficiency over care, trust, and human judgment.

The feminism AI needs, we insist, is not the mainstream feminism of representation or inclusion alone, but one that confronts how race, class, gender, and colonial power are built into technological systems. We ask: Who designs and benefits from these systems? Who bears their risks? And what would it mean to build technologies guided by care rather than oversight and control? This event invites collective critique and imagination—toward technologies and institutions that center people, not just data.

Accessibility
This event is free and open to the public. ASL interpretation will be provided. Registration is required. A light reception will follow the conversation.
Additional information is available on the BCRW event page.
Meredith Broussard is an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and the research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. She is the author ofMore Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech(MIT Press, 2023), as well as the award-winning 2018 bookArtificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.Her research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting, with particular interests in AI ethics and using data analysis for social good. She appears in the Emmy-nominated documentary “Coded Bias,” now streaming on Netflix. Her work has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute of Museum & Library Services, and the Tow Center at Columbia Journalism School. A former features editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she has also worked as a software developer at AT&T Bell Labs and the MIT Media Lab. Her features and essays have appeared in The NewYork Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Vox, and other outlets. Follow her on Twitter @merbroussard or contact her via meredithbroussard.com.
Lauren Klein is Professor of Data & Decision Sciences and English at Emory University, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab and the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network. Her research brings together computational and critical methods to explore questions of gender, race, and justice, both in early America and today. Klein is the author (with Catherine D’Ignazio) of the award-winning Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020), and the editor (with Matthew K. Gold) of Debates in the Digital Humanities (Univ. of Minnesota Press), among other books and papers. Her next book, Data by Design: From the History of Visualization to the Future We Need, is forthcoming from the MIT Press in October 2026.
Saima Akhtar is the Interim Director of the Vagelos Computational Science Center (CSC) at Barnard College. She is a computational social scientist with a background in architecture. Prior to joining Barnard, Saima was a postdoctoral associate in the Yale University Department of Computer Science, where she managed digital cultural heritage preservation projects between the fields of computer science and architecture. Saima earned her PhD in architecture and urban studies from the University of California - Berkeley, and holds degrees from MIT and University of Michigan - Ann Arbor.
Gabrielle Gutierrez is an Assistant Professor in the Neuroscience and Behavior Department at Barnard College and an affiliate of the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at the Zuckerman Institute, Columbia University. Her work focuses on understanding the brain's fundamental operating principles: she develops mathematical models and theories that predict how neural circuits could work given the building blocks available to them, and uses these predictions to uncover the broader logic the brain uses to process information and guide behavior. Her research has led her to investigate various neural systems - from rhythmic pattern generation in the crustacean, to visual processing in the retina, to neural networks that control circadian rhythms. Her current research interests are focused on applying network science to connectome data to discover neuronal circuits in the understudied regions of the fruit fly brain. Gabrielle Gutierrez has a PhD in Neuroscience from Brandeis University. She did her graduate work in Eve Marder’s lab. She received her bachelor's degree from Barnard College where she majored in Physics and minored in Applied Mathematics.
Image credit: Clarote & AI4Media

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