Ruha Benjamin is a sociologist and professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, which examines the relationship between machine bias and systemic racism, analyzing specific cases of “discriminatory design” and offering tools for a socially-conscious approach to tech development.

The Lewis-Ezekoye Distinguished Lecture in Africana Studies is an annual lecture with a focus upon interdisciplinary subjects that are at the heart of African diasporic and African scholarship and artistic creation, and community and social commitment.

The series takes its place among a handful of distinguished lecture series in Africana Studies around the country thanks to an endowment by Denise Jackson-Lewis('66) in honor of what she has described as transformative experiences at Barnard and the enduring and unexpected gift of friendship that began when she and Adaeze Otue Ezekoye('66) met as College freshmen. The lecture reflects the spirit of this gift by drawing to Barnard scholars, artists, activists and thinkers from within national and transnational circles.