June is Pride Month! At SPIA, we celebrate the contributions of LGBTQ+ individuals within our community and beyond — and we stand with them in the ongoing fight for equal rights and against discrimination.

SPIA is committed to ensuring that all members of our diverse community feel respected, supported, and valued both inside and outside the classroom. We seek to strengthen the capacity of our students to promote equity and foster inclusion while here and in the broader world.

Upcoming Pride Month Events

June 2, 2022

4:30 – 6:30 p.m.

Princeton staff and faculty are welcome to attend the LGBT Pride Kick-Off Happy Hour hosted by the University’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Employee Resource Group (ERG).

Stay tuned for upcoming events during Pride Month 2022!

Past Events

Check out recordings of past events at SPIA focused on LGBTQ+ issues, as well as talks featuring LGBTQ+ scholars, researchers, and leaders.

Data, Power, and AI Ethics: Critiquing and Rethinking Machine Learning Data Infrastructure

In response to growing concerns of bias, discrimination, and unfairness perpetuated by algorithmic systems, the datasets used to train and evaluate machine learning models have come under increased scrutiny in recent years. Emily Denton, a senior research scientist at Google, examines the role datasets play in model development and in the broader social organization of the field. Denton studies the societal impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) technology and the conditions of AI development. Denton is queer and nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.

Industry Unbound: The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power

With research based on interviews with scores of tech employees and internal documents outlining corporate strategies, Ari Waldman’s book, “Industry Unbound: The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power,” reveals that companies don’t just lobby against privacy law; they also manipulate how we think about privacy, how their employees approach their work, and how they weaken the law to make data-extractive products the norm.

Waldman, a leading authority on law, technology, and society, is a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University — and previously served as the Microsoft Visiting Professor at CITP and visiting professor at SPIA. Waldman is the founder of @Legally_Queer, a social media project that educates the public about the history, present and future of LGBTQ freedom. Providing accessible summaries and context to LGBTQ cases and laws decided or enacted “on this date in history,” Legally Queer seeks to engage both the LGBTQ community and the general public in the role of the courts in equality and social justice.

Listen, We Need to Talk: How to Change Attitudes about LGBT Rights

Political scientists Brian Harrison and Melissa Michelson, co-authors of “Listen, We Need to Talk: How to Change Attitudes About LGBT Rights,” share their research. Published by Oxford University Press, the book uncovers how to change people’s attitudes on controversial topics using what the authors call “The Theory of Dissonant Identity Priming.” The theory, which the pair tested through randomized experiments across the U.S., shows how people are often willing to change their attitudes about LGBT rights when they find out that others with whom they share an identity are also supporters of those rights.