University of Florida Offers ‘Data Feminisms’ Course but Won’t Provide Syllabus
“That appears to contradict the public university’s own policies.”
The target audience for this course probably doesn’t care, and the people who do care probably wouldn’t take the course anyway.
The College Fix reports:
University of Florida offers ‘Data Feminisms’ class, won’t provide syllabus
The University of Florida plans to offer a “Data Feminisms” course this upcoming semester.
However, the public university refuses to provide a current syllabus.
The class will use “critical data, algorithm studies, and feminist science and technology studies to develop essential tools of inquiry needed to approach data in a context of racialized, gendered, colonial, and classed systems of power,” according to its description.
The class is listed under “Fall 2024” classes in the department of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. It is also listed in the course catalog for the fall semester.
But the university declined to provide a syllabus because “the course has not yet been finalized for the fall semester,” according to spokesperson Cynthia Roldan.
Roldan told The College Fix to request the syllabus via a public records request.
The university then again denied the request, stating “the draft syllabus you requested is not available because the course has not been taught in a year and a half and has not been formalized for the Fall semester.”
That appears to contradict the public university’s own policies.
“All University of Florida course syllabi should be made available on the Web in accordance with the UF Policy on Course Syllabi,” the office of the provost states.
Professor Hina Shaikh, the listed instructor for the class, did not respond to two emailed requests for comment sent in the past several weeks.
Her “research interests” include “critical data and algorithm studies,” “feminist studies of space and place,” and “critical Muslim studies,” according to her personal website.
“In this course, we center how racial capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy define who is the subject or object of data collection, cleaning, analysis, and management,” a one-page document for the fall 2021 version of the course stated.
“We learn how to read datasets with a critical feminist science and technology studies lens and critically examine technologies of surveillance such as Big Data, facial recognition, and biometric data collection,” Shaikh’s course description stated.
“How do systems of anti-blackness, settler colonialism, white supremacy, and capitalism effect data and science,” a 2022 course syllabus stated.
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Comments
This sounds like another class in which the students will get an A Plus in indoctrination studies. How about learning actual statistics and data analysis? Why are these professors so afraid to give their students actual knowledge and information? It’s almost like they want to control them?
That, or it may be useful to a student looking to fill out that one last elective requirement and can score an easy A grade.
There’s really nothing new about Data Feminism. I can’t count how many times in my career I’ve called the computer I was debugging a “treacherous little bitch.”
Here’s a “science” course for those who could never pass that algebra class in high school.
If you can convince yourself math is racist or white colonialist, then your failure to understand biology, chemistry or physics turns a simple intellectual or scholastic failure into oppression by a shadowy Them.
You’re not a loser, you’re a victim!
To be fair, I don’t finalize my syllabus until 1 or 2 weeks before the semester starts. As such, I can believe the syllabus isn’t available yet.
However, telling someone to file an information request seems sketchy. I consider my syllabus to be a public document and I provide it freely to anyone who asks.
“The class will use “critical data, algorithm studies, and feminist science and technology studies…”
“Feminist science.”
Remember “race science?” Good times!
And, oh yeah… “studies.”
The mark of quality (said the queer captain to the trans bo’s’n).
The policy linked to says this: Syllabi must be posted at least three days prior to the first day of classes.
Contact her in late August.
Her classes indicate she’s a feminist Muslim…. So basically everything she teaches would have to be utter bull crap and lies….imo
When you put those things together, don’t you get mutual annihilation?
When we can no longer agree on what 1’s and 0’s are anymore (and have another “spectrum” for simple concrete concepts), there’s a real problem.
Data Feminism? How does that even work? Is there “Mathematical Male Toxicity” too?