Historical Context
With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, there has been a growing understanding within the social consciousness of the importance of addressing the issue of systemic racism within American society. This has been reflected in Lafayette’s efforts for diversity and inclusion, with the creation of programs such as the Portlock center, the Hanson Center for Inclusion in STEM, and the introduction of seminars on systemic racism for incoming professors. However, these efforts have not had the same fervor within the more technical disciplines of the engineering department, leaving a gap in the effectiveness of such education at this school. This gap has been somewhat filled by courses such as the Race and Technology class led by Professor Rossman, and efforts from the Hanson Center and student-led organizations such as the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. However, the lack of an interdisciplinary approach in the technical engineering majors leaves students in a position where they lack the context to understand engineering as a whole and their place and role in it and how the tools they learn as part of their engineering education can contribute to societal issues.
As Smedley and Smedley describe in their article, Race emerged as a concept around the 16th to 18th centuries, becoming cemented as a technology for social control by the 18th century. (Smedley & Smedley, 2005) Around this time the engineering discipline began to emerge as well. Lucena, Schneider, and Leydens go into detail in their book Engineering and Sustainable Community Development describing how, “when countries developed as empires and colonies during the 18th and 19th centuries, engineers worked both for the internal organization and expansion of the empires and in the colonies as agents of imperial development.” (Lucena et al., 2010) These two concepts, race and engineering, along with the underlying social structures of empire and colony developed in tandem with one another, giving empires the technical abilities necessary to carry out their projects and simultaneously othering the indigenous inhabitants of the colonized territories. Spencerism developed around the same era, the view that societies evolve and progress from simpler states to more complex ones, and as societies evolve it necessitates the presence of a state, a governing body to keep the whole organized. (Lucena et al., 2010) This was tied to similar concepts such as Social Darwinism and manifest destiny. These ideas combined with the mechanisms of race were employed to facilitate the projects of extermination of indigenous peoples as well as serving as a justification for chattel slavery. Thus the role of the engineer as an agent of state-building has historically gone hand in hand with white supremacist projects and conceptions of Race as a biological truth. Lafayette College itself played a role in the state-building project in the early United States, established in 1826 as a military and civil engineering school that taught courses in extractive industries such as mining and railroad construction. In World War 1 the college housed and trained soldiers further cementing its underlying role as a military institution. (150 Years of Engineering, Lafayette College) From its inception as a school these same values for what makes an engineer have been baked into the very bones of this school.
Continuing into the 20th and 21st centuries, engineering has continued to be used as a tool for disenfranchisement and segregation along the lines of race. For instance, in the 1950s and 60s developers such as Robert Moses used interstate development as a means to entrench already existing segregation of neighborhoods. In an interview between Noel King and Deborah Archer on the National Public Radio show Morning Edition they discuss how,
“The highways were being built just as courts around the country were striking down traditional tools of racial segregation. So, for example, courts were striking down the use of racial zoning to keep Black people in certain communities and white people in other communities. And so the highway development popped up at a time when the idea, the possibility of integration in housing was on the horizon. And so very intentionally, highways were sometimes built right on the formal boundary lines that we saw used during racial zoning. Sometimes community members asked the highway builders to create a barrier between their community and encroaching Black communities.” (King, 2021)
Given how the concept and identity of what makes an engineer has been shaped throughout (even recent) history, to teach engineering techniques without elucidating the importance of examining social context risks or even guarantees the potential for negative engineering outcomes on social issues of race. As Lucena et al. ask later in their book on page 134, “Does [Engineering] problem solving facilitate certain habits of mind, ways of knowing, and methods of inquiry while unintentionally marginalizing others?” (Lucena et al., 2010) The answer, they find, is that yes, teaching students to solely engage with engineering problems through the lens of quantitative problem solving can severely hamper their ability to approach problems from a more holistic perspective that takes into account the social relations surrounding an issue. By continuing to teach students that the context of the problems they work on is irrelevant, these classes are preparing students to go out into the world and approach issues again from a quantitative perspective that ignores any social issues at play. In a school that is 80% white where there is already a lack of diversity of perspectives, avoiding confronting this issue head on does a disservice to the students in the engineering department and their future ability to address these vital issues in the contexts of their future workplaces.
Campus Context
In the time since the Black Lives Matter movement started, Lafayette College has made efforts to address these issues, giving incoming professors training on social justice education and organizing workshops and seminars on the topics of race in engineering. These initiatives, as well as the creation of the Hansen Center are solid steps in the right direction, however, there are still many policies and systemic issues present at the school. That courses such as Professor Caleb Gallemore’s dual listed International Affairs/Environmental Studies course, “Mapping Environmental Justice” have been moved into Acopian is a promising sign for the future of the integration of the humanities and engineering departments at this school. Yet as Professor Rossman explained when we interviewed her, there has been some push-back from faculty around these initiatives. Many, if not all of the technical engineering courses still lack any integration of context based approaches into their curriculums. In a society where the identity of “Engineer” has become married to the idea of solving issues simply through a quantitative technical lens, to not combat this through a radical adjustment of how engineering is taught at this school is a tacit acceptance of that status quo. The engineering department at Lafayette is in a position to lead this school into the forefront of socio-technical perspectives on engineering. The resources this school has available all provide the opportunity to better the school for the benefit of students, professors, and the administration alike, however, it will not be easy to work against generations of entrenched biases held within the very foundations of this school. Regardless, in order to uphold the ethical values that define the goals of engineering as a discipline, Lafayette College must take initiative to become a leader for this kind of change.
To learn about the Technical Context of this project click here.