Communications of the ACM
Researchers Team Up to Launch BU's Racial Data Lab
Ibram Kendi (left) and Azer Bestavros say the Racial Data Lab will bring antiracist researchers together with data scientists to expose and eliminate racial inequities.
Boston University launched the Racial Data Lab this month as part of an effort to become the leading U.S. academic institution for data-driven antiracist research. The venture will marry antiracist research and data science and bring together experts from BU's Center for Antiracist Research and the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences.
The lab is the result of a collaboration between Azer Bestavros, BU's associate provost for computing and data sciences, and Ibram X. Kendi, BU's Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and a CAS history professor. The lab's first project will be the Racial Data Tracker (RDT), which Bestavros and Kendi say is aimed at developing and maintaining the nation's largest online collection of racial inequity data and will be accessible and available to the public. The racial data will be regularly updated on an online dashboard, displayed as infographics, and easily navigated by users.
"Data is essential not only in exposing racial inequities, but also in mitigating those inequities," Bestavros says.
"The collection, analysis, and presentation of racial data will give us the ability to see the hotspots of racial inequity in real time in this country," says Kendi. "If we can't see it, how are we going to make changes?"
Kendi and Bestavros say they will assemble a large multidisciplinary team of faculty, from BU and other institutions, along with students and experts from a number of fields, including data science, software engineering, web development, data journalism, and visualization.
From Boston University
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