Social Context (Justice)

First, a brief history on the matter must be iterated to provide background and context. Engineering has progressed an incredible amount, especially since the mid twentieth century. The consequences of an engineering militaristic mindset caught up with the engineering profession, exposing the lack of understanding engineers had with the experts of humanities and the wants and needs of society. For some critics, engineers had opened the technological pandora’s box and could not control what they had created. This turning point began when the United States government dropped the two atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which shocked the world. Many people were frightened for their lives for decades as they saw the harsh effects from those bombings on Japan. During the same time, society was seeing technology’s negative impacts on the soil, ecosystems and people as shown in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962. At this point, engineers were seen as puppets for the government and corporations, doing their will and not serving the people (Kirkman, 2017). The heroes of yesteryear were now viewed as the masters who could not control their creations; this left society to handle the consequences of each innovation. Today, our society has seen how technology is tracking us and slowly peeling away our senses of privacy. Engineers remain in the situation they were sixty years ago, still feeling the pressures of society demanding that engineers consider how technology may affect them and our environment. 

Although engineers were trying to become more humanistic individuals, many education programs have been aware of these shortcomings over the past decades and attempted to produce more humanistic engineers. This movement began during the sixties as engineering students sought to take their own education, trying to take initiative and go into a profession that truly aided society. At MIT, students protested“MIT’s development of both nuclear weapons and weapons used in the Vietnam war” (Science and Revolution, 2018). Students would protest to ensure their curriculum fit society’s expectations, which led to an overhaul towards how some view engineering. Schools like Caltech, Harvey Mudd, MIT, and UCLA became the leaders of this movement, introducing programs that attempted to connect engineers towards society. Lafayette College followed the previously mentioned emerging leaders of this movement as well, introducing their A.B. Engineering program in 1970 (The Lafayette, 1970). Lafayette College intended to create a revolutionary program that combined their liberal arts with engineering. The current Lafayette Engineering Studies program’s website claims, “This distinctive bachelor of arts in engineering could be considered the ultimate liberal arts degree because it requires students to delve more deeply into each of the four divisions on campus (engineering, humanities, science, and social sciences) than any other degree offered at Lafayette College.” (2020). They want to ensure that more engineering leaders produce technologies that follow the interdisciplinary mindset. Lafayette College and other universities are aware of the effects that deterministic engineering has caused in society, but their words must be acted upon.

 

Many of these programs have not met the high expectations they started with. Matthew Wisnoiski, a professor in the Science, Technology, and Society department at Virginia Tech states in his book, Engineers For Change, “Universities and technical institutes were left with STS programs, minor increases in humanities curricula, and brochures with an aura of human values” (2012, p. 185). These courses tout how programs are creating leaders who are empathetic members of society, yet we still see these engineers fall into the same mistakes that their predecessors made. Lafayette College is one of the programs that fit this shoe, but they seek to ensure that they are constantly updating the program. The program altered its name to Engineering Studies to reflect one that would not need to change as it can fit any time in history. This change seems to be more icing on the cake rather than making a concrete difference to the discipline. The program is truly trying to change and fit their vision better, but there are some fundamental issues in place. Engineering Studies majors often go towards the route of project management, a very technical but people-driven profession. This is certainly a great profession to enter after graduation, but it does not portray the goals of the major’s program. This becomes an issue when reviewing the goals of the program, because if most Engineering Studies majors become project managers, is the original reason for the program still held to the same expectations today? 

While there has been great progress in socio-technical engineering, there is always more upgrading and updating to be made. Several schools that have been mentioned from the likes of Caltech, MIT, Harvey Mudd, and others were some of the first schools to implement socio technical majors and courses to their engineering programs. They saw the need for a different approach to what is now known as humanitarian engineering. The most recent round of reformation within the socio technical curriculum country wide is the addition of engineering courses that incorporate social justice and environmental justice or sustainability. 

The emergence of social and environmental justice to the curriculum in engineering has come into the shape in college programs over the last several years. With more research on the subject in recent times, it seems imminent that this will be added to more programs across the nation. Between 2005 and 2016 there were several grants given to researchers ranging from $25,361 to $404,813 from the NSF (National Science Foundation) (Engineering Justice, 2018,  p. 168). This represents the expansion in national interest of the study of social justice in engineering. More recently, schools have ventured into adding social justice into the curriculum of their engineering programs.

One school that has taken a step towards the future is the Colorado School of Mines. A student of the school states, “Engineering and Social Justice taught me that engineering is so much more than technical work. I believe a combination of social work and technical work makes the best engineers” (Engineering Justice, 2018,  p. 210). With students recognizing the benefits of this and being in a world filled with racial turmoil, courses like these are essential for the future of engineering education. Humanitarian engineering literally means the advancement of technology to help improve human welfare. With engineering focused on the human, all people must be taken into consideration, not just privileged communities. As shown in Figure 3 below, there is a bridge pictured that serves its function as a bridge, but it has some stipulations to tack on to it.

As shown in Figure 3 above, there is an example of how engineering and technology can be purposely racist. In this example, the inability for bus traffic to pass through on the main road exposes poor populations, oftentimes Black Americans and other minorities, from traveling freely. Even though this example has been largely suggested to have been engineered for this reason, there are certainly many technologies that do not take into account the needs of minority populations (Engineering Justice, 2018, p.54). With more knowledge on social justice, there is certainly opportunity to minimize these issues to arise in the first place. An account for the environment and sustainability must also be recognized for the success of engineering in the past and the future.

When speaking about environmental justice, one can learn from the triple bottom line, which incorporates people, planet, and profit as previously mentioned. While views and opinions on each differ among the entire population, a shift of goals in engineering and tech can heavily impact the planet portion of the triple bottom line. As mentioned in Engineering Justice, “The anti-war movement, environmental activism, and other counter-cultural activities in the 1960s and 1970s produced interesting curricular experiments in engineering education with increased presence of HSS (Humanities/Social Sciences)” (2018, p.161). With movements and change in culture, engineering, and more change occurring in the world and the United States specifically, environmental activism came on the scene as a criticism of engineering and technology. 

While civilizations have shown to have cared for their local environment, this is not always the case. In recent history, examples of sacrificing the welfare of the environment for other reasons such as economic prosperity or to fulfill basic human needs are very prominent. As mentioned in Engineering and Sustainable Community Development, “The Green Revolution: Beginning in 1945 in Mexico and then expanding to other highly populated countries like India, this revolution refers to the transformation of agriculture by means of high yield crops brought by artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and intensive irrigation” (2010, p.23). When referencing each portion of the triple bottom line, this example improves life for people and I can infer that it led to increased revenue and profit; on the contrary, it certainly does not help alleviate the effects on the environment for the local community. 

An example that seems to be known by many people within the engineering community is how nuclear power plants are commonly placed within low income and densely populated minority areas. As mentioned in the Stanford report named Environmental Injustice: Racism Behind Nuclear Energy, “Minority groups are more likely to live proximal to NPP(Nuclear Power Plants) thus increasing their exposure and risk of radioactive health related problems…More policies also need to be put in place to protect minority and low income communities who face uncertainty in the event of emergency evacuations” (2018). This is one example of many instances of engineering and technology having social and environmental injustice implications packed to the brim. With this narrative and others, a base of knowledge is lacking in the engineering field of education on this matter. Lafayette currently does not have classes required for engineering and EGRS majors that would help them learn the implications of social and environmental justice in engineering. 

Lafayette’s Engineering Studies curriculum must teach its students to learn how to solve complex problems by evaluating the aftereffects on each: planet, people, and profit. At Lafayette, there are courses available in the Environmental Studies program for all students to take. Unfortunately, it is not required for an Engineering Studies major, or the other Engineering disciplines to take a course specifically in the EVST (Environmental Studies) department. This brings upon the question of should engineers have to take courses on environmentalism? For engineering to be successful in future production and manufacturing and management of the world, the effects of a technological advancement on the environment must be recognized and minimized of its degradation. An argument as referenced in Wisnioski’s Engineers for Change of “is vs. ought” is described as to “impart technical skill with moral content” (Wisnioski, 2012, p.170). The notion of encompassing moral content, the environment as well as all people are to be listened to and contextualized to reach the highest potential success of technology. 

In its current state, we believe engineering and technology is considered to be socially unjust and environmentally unconscious. The technologies that were developed by engineers in the 20th Century have led to significant environmental problems, such as climate change and increased CO2 emissions. However, that is only the tip of the societal iceberg; climate change is not only harming wildlife and environmental systems, it’s harming people as well. These dangerous technologies are mostly affecting people of color and minority communities. The highest risks for cancer and other health conditions are in underprivileged, minority communities while majority white communities see less of a risk in general. The oppression of minorities and effects of climate change work hand and hand to brew a recipe for a vicious cycle of deafening the most vulnerable. The technologies that these engineers created were not designed with these potential outcomes in mind. We hope and believe that no engineer wants to create a racist technology nor is intending to, but it is an outcome of implicit bias. Implicit or unconscious bias in this context is when we make decisions or act in a way that shows their stereotypes towards different racial groups. Ruha Benjamin is a professor in Princeton University who focuses on the relationship between race, technology, and justice. In Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology, she states, “Racist robots, as I invoke them here, represent a much broader process: social bias embedded in technical artifacts, the allure of objectivity without public accountability” (2019, p. 53). Students need to learn that technology is biased and they need to hold these biases accountable as they will affect people negatively. At this moment, our country and society has come to a crucial tipping point. With the Black Lives Matter movement emerging in a time where implicit and explicit biases are being recognized, change must be made in the world, and that does not stop in the social injustices expressed in technologies. Engineers must realize the truth in implicit bias and start communicating with their community in order to understand how they can make unbiased and unproblematic technologies.

Technology can be racist and it certainly affects targeted groups, but there are some engineers who deny this. Some engineers determine technology as a neutral force but that is simply not the case. (Benjamin, 2019, p.51). Technology has biased creators who are unaware and may not be willing to accept their role in society. They have a sense of technological determinism, which is a mindset that technology is the only thing that changes society and it is the focus of all that we do. However, we can disprove this idea by mentioning an AI Beauty algorithm, which was also described in Benjamin’s Race After Technology. This algorithm was designed to simulate a beauty context and when the results were given, the creators were disappointed. The algorithm chose lighter skinned individuals and only picked one person with dark skin. Some may ask why this was the case, but those who are in these communities have an idea of why this happened. The creators programmed this bot to reflect their beauty standards, which is based on society’s standards that are clearly biased to give favor towards those with lighter skin. 

Why don’t engineers develop a socially-aware and environmentally-based mentality throughout their college experiences? It is easier said than done, especially when there is an ideological battle between engineers. Since the 1960s, there have been two main sides to this argument; technological determinism versus a mindful and interdisciplinary approach to engineering and society. In the 60s, some engineers who would like there to be less humanities in engineering as it “can be taught elsewhere” and “we need to make sure we get our students certified and ready for the workforce”. We see this mindset at Lafayette College, within students and the engineering program itself. Due to Engineering Studies’ focus on the critique and evaluation of engineering’s role in society, other engineering majors may not see it as “real” engineering. Engineering Studies majors have casually been coined as “pretend-gineers” and it is evident that the program has less core engineering technical courses than a Mechanical Engineer, Civil Engineer, and so on. On the contrary, to load up on technical courses is not even the intention of the major. The Engineering Studies major features a math and science heavy foundation and other engineering majors also take these classes as well in the beginning of their college careers. Then courses that are woven into the humanities like the capstone course Engineering, Engineering and Society, are very much writing and reading focused. Lafayette is not the only place where this type of mentality takes place. Professor Donna Riley is an Engineering Professor who focuses on engineering and social justice at Purdue University. Professor Donna Riley points out an interesting experience of resistance when she was trying to apply environmental justice concepts in her class. She recalls, “Just before Thanksgiving, a student frustrated with an essay assignment held up her essay and exclaimed, ‘This isn’t thermodynamics!’ and then held up a problem set: ‘THIS is thermodynamics!’” (Pushing Boundaries of Mass and Energy, 2015, p. 10). This shouldn’t be surprising as students grow up in a traditional school environment, where every concept is treated as its own. Trying to teach students to think about the interconnectedness of engineering and the world around them when they have spent so much time learning the opposite can be quite the challenge. Students will resist this mindset and continue to stick to the more comfortable problem sets. Society is an ongoing problem that requires constant interventions and failures, but allows learning lessons. A traditional problem set is easier to figure out; it starts and ends somewhere, unlike societal problems.

One possible issue that can arise in conversations about social and environmental justice in the classroom is if the teacher or professor is ill prepared to speak on such a topic. Since the addition of engineering justice courses are quite new in universities and colleges in the United States, many might not be comfortable instructing on the matter. Engineering Justice states, “We need to acknowledge that some engineering faculty can struggle with the term social justice” (2018, p. 14). Assuming many engineering professors did not take courses in social justice when they were studying shows a difficulty in adding this to the curriculum. Although this is an obstacle, there must be a starting point and a shift in curriculum across the nation.

The socio technical engineer was introduced in society as a balance between the engineers and the humanitarians. Building a bridge between to become a liaison on the subject is vital for a complete understanding of an issue on both sides. While the Engineering Studies major has a focus on socio technological issues built into the curriculum, it is time to update it and include issues on social justice and environmental justice. 

Next page: Political Context