What I learned from Student Pugwash both reinforced my basic ideals and gave me the ethical framework with which to put them into practice. Our group comprised students of chemistry, biology, and engineering (if memory serves), but I realized that even as a student of the theory of language, most of my employment options (outside of a university environment) were going to be defense-related. While I could certainly not pre-classify all military applications of linguistics as “bad”, I might be faced with concerns down the line.

Sure enough, concurrent with my coursework at UCSD I was working at a small software engineering company. We were under contract with the Department of Education to develop some fascinating products for Apple computers: a speech therapy application that allowed users to view their own articulatory tracts on a split-screen next to a target of the same speech sample, and model their own accordingly; a word processing system for American Sign Language; and cognitive rehabilitation software for people with head injuries.

A co-worker and I focused on grammar and spellcheckers targeted for students with writing problems tied to being nonnative speakers, hearing impaired, or learning disabled. So, I was stunned when my employers accepted a subcontract through a large Department of Defense contractor, and asked me to work on the project (it primarily involved speech recognition).

With the luxury of no mouths to feed, I declined. My superiors presented me with many of the arguments I had been told to expect by the group, including: “If you don’t do it, someone else will,”  “Wouldn’t you rather have it be someone like you, with a sense of responsibility?” and “Think of the spin-offs that could help so many people.” I was grateful to the Student Pugwash group for having prepared me.

I have been doing mostly volunteer work for a local and national non-profit for the last decade, but I’d love to return to my first alma mater, SDSU. By earning the certificate in Computational Linguistics (CL), I hope to find work as a research linguist. CL is related to Natural Language Processing (a subfield of Artificial Intelligence).

Computational Linguists are currently being recruited by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. We are also being hired by companies that develop major search engines and those that develop social media. With these latter job options would come ethical issues involving privacy. In my opinion, it’s an important time for people in our field to have access to good information that will allow them to tailor their respective career paths in ways that feel right to them.

– Tam Kozman is an alumn of Student Pugwash USA. Tam works with the Narcolepsy Network national organization and the Narcolepsy Network Support Group of San Diego County

Student Pugwash USA is a social benefit organization that promotes social responsibility in science and technology. Contrary to the misperceptions of occasional callers, we’re not in the business of washing animals or cars.  Instead, we connect students and young people to engage in discussion and debate on the social and ethical dimensions of science and technology. Our organization’s historical roots trace back to the international Pugwash conferences. These conferences convened scientists and humanists to discuss the role of scientists in the military industrial complex post-Manhattan project, in Pugwash, Nova Scotia.  One of Pugwash’s founders, Joseph Rotblat (who quit the Manhattan Project in protest), went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1979, students at the University of California San Diego founded Student Pugwash to give young people a voice in these crucial conversations about the complex and evolving roles of science and technology in society. Below I explain Student Pugwash’s current initiatives, who can participate, and the like-minded organizations in our field.

Is SPUSA only for scientists and engineers? Student Pugwash is open to students from any disciplinary (or interdisciplinary) field. Understanding the multiple ways that science and technology are intertwined in society and policy requires multiple disciplinary views. Our unique history actually reflects this—philosopher Bertrand Russell and scientist Albert Einstein co-wrote the initial Pugwash manifesto, encouraging scientists to “learn to think in a new way” about the use of science in society.

Isn’t Student Pugwash really just an organization for arms control wonks?  Not at all. The scientific enterprise changed dramatically following World War II, which initiated a period of reflection about the social responsibility of scientists and technologists. Our organization is grounded in this history of critical thought. However, while we have grown from these experiences, we are not constrained by them. Today, the heart of what we do is to engage students in thinking about a spectrum of contemporary issues relating to science and technology in society— issues as diverse as space policy, technology and sustainability, and research ethics. In addition, we explore contemporary issues at the intersection of science, technology, and security, such as cybersecurity and dual use research in the biological sciences.

Isn’t the ‘social responsibility’ discourse dead?  Fortunately, it’s not dead; it’s evolving. Student Pugwash is a grassroots organization, which in itself is a shift away from technocratic modalities.  We focus on empowerment and ethical reflection, not navel gazing. We give young people from different disciplinary backgrounds a set of analytical tools, a vocabulary, and a voice for considering the often-neglected social, cultural, and ethical aspects of science and technology.

What are examples of recent Student Pugwash activities? Our most recent initiative was the science and technology policy guide to the 2012 elections, which included 26 issue briefs on a variety of science and technology policy issues, including science funding, climate change, mental health, and space policy. It also included a multimedia contest, co-sponsored by ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, for which the first prize was $2,000. You can read the winning entries here.  There was even an article about it in the Dover Post! Other recent activities include student board member elections, a nationwide SPUSA happy hour series for alumni, the Purdue Student Pugwash annual conferences, and at panel on nonprofit networking at the SEI (Social and Ethical Implications of Science) Congress.

Who can participate?  Any high school, college, or graduate student can participate in SPUSA. We do not have an official membership—that way you participate on your own terms in the activities that interest you, and you don’t owe dues.  Professionals and faculty can get involved by being mentors, faculty advisors, and board members. We’re also establishing an alumni/alumnae and young professional outlet, as we often hear that post-grads have very few opportunities to discuss science, technology, and society once they graduate, even in thriving technology corridors in Boston and Silicon Valley.

How can I get involved?  Student Pugwash was founded as a campus chapter-based organization. We still support student chapters where there are student leaders and participants excited to start them. However, we know that students today are extremely over-programmed, and we are working to provide more online and single-event opportunities for participation, such as the elections guide and contest.  We also accept remote interns during the summer and semesters.

What’s on the horizon? Student Pugwash is moving ahead with innovative methods for applying our timeless mission that is highly relevant in the 21st century.  As one such initiative, SP is launching a fellowship program to invest in the most promising young leaders in the social and policy dimensions of science and technology.  The proposed fellowship program has four components: (i) A training and networking meeting in Washington DC, (ii) Preparatory work during the spring semester with a faculty mentor, (iii) A summer internship at a local community organization, and (iv) Outreach work on each fellow’s campus in the fall semester.

Why don’t I hear more from Student Pugwash? In short, resources. But if you don’t hear anything at all from us, check us out on Facebook and Twitter, and join our email list for quarterly updates. We want to do more, but we’re an all-volunteer staff with limited funding. Funders often concentrate on a single-issue area, making it difficult to gain the necessary financial resources to develop programs that cut across disciplines and other silos. However, we can get a lot done with more person power, so we invite you to volunteer with us.

Are you alone out there? What is the broader student community in this field like? Complementary student initiatives are growing, as young people demand more voice and educational resources in this domain. The Journal of Science, Policy, and Governance (JSPG) provides a professional publication for students and young scholars, with excellent peer review conducted by students’ peers. JSPG provides a voice for students through op-eds and formal policy analyses. The STGlobal conference provides a venue for Science & Technology Studies (STS) and Science & Technology Policy students to meet annually in person. Additionally, AAAS’s Emerging Leaders in Science and Society program will soon be providing additional educational programs for young people from all disciplines to learn about solutions to real-world problems in STS issues. We believe that efforts in this field would be stronger if this organizations bridge boundaries to build a collaborative network of organizations working in this domain with the goal of increasing access to STS education and engagement, providing both a spark to consciousness, rigorous thinking, and an outlet for participation. You can also view our map of like-minded organizations.

We ask for your support to grow out network and “learn to think in a new way” about science and technology in society.  Please start by leaving your ideas and feedback on this post below and email me for more information about SPUSA’s efforts at smoore@spusa.org.

-       Sharlissa Moore is the President of Student Pugwash USA and a PhD Candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology.

Here are just a few of the sessions I’m looking forward to. Are you going? What are you looking forward to?

011. Postphenomenological research: Conceptualizing human-technology relations
Chair:Don Ihde, Stony Brook University
• Robotic Embodiment. Kirk Besmer, Gonzaga University
• Technology and the subject: on the technical constitution of the subject in post-phenomenology. Mithun Bantwal Rao, Wageningen University; Pieter Lemmens, Wageningen University
• Making Humanness with Technology – Dialoguing with Postphenomenology. Lucie Dalibert, University of Twente
• Postphenomenology and brain technologies: from posthumanism to metahumanism. Peter-Paul Verbeek, University of Twente

020. Uncertainty trumps? Science and contested authority.
Chairs: Hedwig te Molder, University of Twente & Wageningen University Rob Hagendijk, Universiteit van Amsterdam
• An Inside Job? Contesting Business School Research. Alan Irwin, Copenhagen Business School
• Uncertainty Trumps and Traps. The risky paths toward democratization of scientific advice. Pierre-Benoît Joly, INRA
• The public authority of science: erosion and resilience. Rob Hagendijk, Universiteit van Amsterdam
• Identity work, and the public credibility of scientific experts. Erwin van Rijswoud, University of Twente
• Science and the Struggle for Public Meaning. Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University
Discussants: Huub Dijstelbloem, University of Amsterdam, Stephen Hilgartner, Cornell University

021. (103) Ethics and technoscience governance – I
• Interdisciplinary research in practical ethics: challenges at the interface with social sciences. Gaia Barazzetti, University of Lausanne; Lazare Benaroyo, University of Lausanne
• Ethics and Participatory Technology Assessment – A Reflective Ethical Mapping Approach. Matthew David Cotton, University of Leeds
• The impact of the new emerging technologies on the changing role of the ethical advisory boards. Franc Mali, University of Ljubljana (Faculty of Social Sciences)
• Politics of ethics, counterfactual nature. Some problems of the recent debate on techno-science and (post-)humanity. Luigi Pellizzoni, University of Trieste, Italy

069. Postphenomenological research: theoretical contributions
Chair: Peter-Paul Verbeek, University of Twente
• It Takes Both Postphenomenology and STS to DescribeMundane Artifacts. Robert Rosenberger, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Postphenomenology vs. “Postpsychoanalysis”: Digging into the Technological Unconscious. Yoni Van Den Eede, Free University of Brussels (VUB)
• Postphenomenology follows art to science to art. Don Ihde, Stony Brook University

074. Private property in the public interest? Patent politics in comparative and historical perspective
Shobita Parthasarathy, University of Michigan
• The United States Patent Office and the Politics of Life: A Historical View. Kara Swanson, Northeastern University School of Law
• Producing Participation in US and European Debates about Life Form Patents. Shobita Parthasarathy, University of Michigan
• Access to medicines, the right to health, and intellectual property in South Africa. Manjari Mahajan, New School University
• Intellectual property, pharmaceuticals, and questions of sovereignty. Kaushik Sunder Rajan, University of Chicago

101. Agnotology as research program and theoretical problem
Chair: Philip Mirowski, University of Notre Dame
• The Origins of Pharmaceutical Agnotology. Edward Nik-Khah, Duke University and Roanoke College
• “The co-production of negative boundary objects in the H5N1 debate”. Samuel Evans, Havard University
• As Long as they Keep Paying Us, We Must Be Right: Economists and Agnotology in the Economic Crisis. Philip Mirowski, University of Notre Dame

132. (59) “This planet is doomed”: on the entanglements of science fiction and technoscientific artifacts – I
Chair: Michael Bennett, Northeastern University School of Law
• A design for living : metaleptic devices and trends of gnostic imagination in contemporary science-fiction. Frederic Claisse, University of Liège
• Open Futures: From Monopoly to Engagement. Robert Dingwall, Dingwall Enterprises; Murray Goulden, University of Nottingham; Stuart Reeves, University of Nottingham
• New Hope for the Dead: Changing Visions of Apocalypse in Science Fiction Cinema. Langdon Winner, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Epic facts. The rhetoric of evolution in Weimar school books. Constance Sommerey, Maastricht University

138. (73) Critical studies of interdisciplinarity – I
Chair: Mathieu Albert, University of Toronto
• Knowledge Ecologies and “Supple” Objects in Interdisciplinary Gender Research. Christine Virginia Wood, 3122180462
• Boundary-Blurring Work: Designing Computer Science as an (Inter)discipline. Janet Abbate, Virginia Tech
• Accomplishing interdisciplinarity: regimes of practice in the production of knowledge. Susan Molyneux-Hodgson, University of Sheffield
• Constructing interdisciplinary identities in science magazines: Visions and expectations. Carlos Adrian Cuevas Garcia, University of Nottingham

191. Feminist Dialogues on Technology
Chairs: Beth Coleman, Harvard/Hogeschool van Amsterdam
Anne Balsamo, University of Southern California
• Future Internet Architectures. Elizabeth Losh, University of California, San Diego
• For an Experimental Mode of Expression. Sarah Kember, Goldsmiths University
• ‘Compliant’ Feminist Archives. Jacqueline Wernimont, Scripps College
• Feminist Dialogues on Technology. Alex Juhasz, Pitzer College
Discussant:
Judy Wajcman, London School of Economics & Political
Science

Learn more in our 2012 S&T election guide (Click mental health under the health issues tab)

Get Involved!

Heuts interviewed a variety of tomato experts – developers, growers, sellers, professional cooks, amateur cooks, eaters – and, rather than treating them as stakeholders (Mol mentioned that she hated this term), he looked at their various valuation registers employed by these experts: costs, handling, tradition, aesthetics, and ‘natural’. For example, costs might be framed differently by a seller (“The small ones are more tasty. We can ask more for those.”) than by a buyer (“I buy tomatoes when there is a discount.”). They (Heuts, Mol) also looked at clashes and compromises between different registers, for example, compromises by sellers and eaters between cost and taste.

Mol discussed the ways in which a tomato is not given, but rather depends on the care of growers, sellers, and cooks. Neither are the experts given; rather, they depend on tomatoes, for a living and/or to live on. She also looked at the ways values may be expressed, or enacted. For example, a valuation may be expressed by the phrase, “I love tomatoes in a salad.” Valuation may be enacted by the practice of throwing away a moldy tomato.

So, what does this have to do with technology and ethics? Mol suggests that differences are not just between ‘stakeholders’, or people with stakes, but also between valuation registers, ways or techniques of valuing. For example, while technologists tend to value efficiency, an STS person might value ethics – rather than thinking of ethics as something separate, it might be useful to view these as different registers of valuation.  One might look at their own object of study and consider different registers of valuation in tension or compromise, through both expression and enactment. Mol asked participants of the conference to consider what registers might be relevant to their own cases. What is the difference between tomatoes and your case?

She recommended laying out the differences between different registers, and then adding reflections to these. The goal is not to make a final verdict, for example, about what does in fact make a good tomato. Rather, it is a method for opening up questions. This is a strategy that isn’t necessarily helpful for providing advice to government, she argued, but can be quite useful for “changing things up.” It is a method that isn’t about resolving tensions, but about exploring tensions as part of the empirical field.

I wonder what you think about the term ‘stakeholder’? What do you think of looking at ‘valuation registers’ – do you already do this in your work, even if you refer to them by some other term?

Colin Milburn, from UC-Davis, gave a fantastic talk, entitled “Modding the Technoscape: Video Games and Techno-Moral Change,” in which he showed how practices of appropriation, such as mods, hacks, exploits, and mashups, present themselves as “ludic interruptions or subversions of existing technopolitical regimes: resisting power, questioning normative discourse, [and] transforming social relations by reconfiguring technical relations.”  After briefly showing the way the super macho narrative of the video game Crysis has been variously appropriated by citizens to re-narrativize it as a gay male fantasia, he did a close reading of the video game Portal to illustrate the ways in which revolution as resistance-from-within has played out in gamer and hacktivist communities.

Wikipedia succinctly sums up the game as follows: “The game primarily comprises a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player’s character and simple objects using “the handheld portal device”, a device that can create inter-spatial portals between two flat planes. The player-character, Chell, is challenged by an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) to complete each puzzle in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center using the portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed.”  One element in the game is a “companion cube” that Chell must carry along for some part of her journey, but ultimately is asked to put in the incinerator.  The whole narrative of the game, Milburn shows, has trained the player to question authority and resist the power of the military industrial complex.  The game is structured so that Chell cannot move on until and unless she sacrifices the companion cube in the incinerator, where the incinerator cube stands in for the kind of sacrifice necessary to technoscientific experimentation.  However, players have resisted this imperative, and have found various glitches in the system for bypassing it: finding ways to avoid the incinerator room to begin with, and even entering into the dark regions of the code, where the player moves through spaces that are not graphically represented.  Yet, the game developers have anticipated this, and in a way, it is as if even this attempt at working outside the system is nevertheless part of the system.  Milburn then showed the ways in which elements of this game, such as the song played at the end when GLaDOS is destroyed/liberated, have been taken up in maker and hacktivist communities, such as Anonymous, where a mentality of resistance through modification, hacking, and cultural jamming, is valued.

An unbroken circle of energy. Everywhere – on the ground, in the hallways, in front of tables, around tables, on tables. In the grass. On the pavement. In the center of a ring of security. To be part of the international youth climate movement is to be a part of a lot of circles. The choice to sit and work in circles is a deliberate one – without a head or tail, no one is more important than everyone else, and if one person drops out, the transfer of optimism, ideas, and work, continues to cycle through the group.

And having been one of many who, over the last few years, helped to grow this international force of young people from all over the world working to stop climate change, I have sat in many of these circles. Fundraising circles, where we helped to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from supportive governments to fund our work to forge a stronger international climate agreement, and tens of thousands more from our own pockets and organizations to help fund our brothers and sisters from climate-impacted countries to come to the negotiations and show the world how climate change they largely did not create is killing people and nature they depend on. Policy circles, where we evaluate and lobby about complicated issues like forest protection and carbon capture and storage, and where we have scored several small and a few large victories in changing the text of the talks. Communications circles, where we have coordinated some of the thousands of stories and interviews that youth have received.

The latest talks, in Durban, South Africa, were no different. Nearly a thousand youth from almost a hundred countries, including many new faces from across Africa, came to give youth a voice in the negotiations. Here, too, the circles were obvious. All of us, and the African youth especially, were linked to broader circles of youth outside of  the negotiations, and often far away in our home countries. Because we know that, as much as the world needs international cooperation to halt the costs of climate change, it needs help from people right at home, too. And so, while youth would never try to take credit for everything positive that has happened on climate change in the last year, any more than they claim to represent every young person in the world, the advances by California, British Columbia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico, and many others were won in part by hard campaigning by members of the international youth climate movement. Similarly, while Durban did not deliver a strong outcome to stopping climate change, it was at least positive progress overall, and one the growing youth movement will build on.

“Growing” is maybe not even the best word for this movement. Widening might be better. More youth from more countries join every day – nearly every country is now represented. And the scope of  young people putting effort into this struggle is growing too. Young scientists, engineers, soldiers, political conservatives, artists, journalists, and business students show up in our circles in greater numbers every year. Not to worry – we always make our circles with room for more.

Born and raised in sunny California, mosquitoes are a rare nuisance, and definitely not something to be feared. When I decided that I wanted to study the deadly disease malaria, that perspective changed dramatically. My name is Cameron, SPUSA alum from Rockefeller University and current board member. I am currently pursuing a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in the Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research. I’ve always wanted a career that allowed me to use my love of science in ways that have a major positive impact on society. I felt that advances in technology were all too often geared at “developed world” problems such as male balding or pathologies related to old age (ages that most of the underdeveloped world will never reach). These desires led me to the NIH, and it is why I switched my research trajectory toward, so called, neglected diseases. Why is the NIH working on a disease that does not impact people in the United States? Historically, the specific mosquito species capable of carrying the parasite Plasmodium Falciparum, the causative agent of malaria, lived here in the United States (as did the disease). It was the advent of the pesticide DDT that lead to the extinction of that mosquito (and malaria) in much of North America; but due to concerns over the ecological impact of DDT, its widespread use was banned. Following suit, many other nations banned the use of DDT, and because of this, under developed countries, many of which are in Africa, continue to be devastated by malaria. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has as its priority to research basic mechanisms and methods of protection for all human diseases, among these, malaria. Again, since this is a disease no longer present here in the United States, NIAID has set up research collaboration sites around the world in disease endemic countries. This allows U.S. scientists to liaise with local research staff to bolster country research capacity (through infrastructure building as well as training and resource delivery) and study the disease as it occurs in the people most afflicted.

Here is where I come in. My project is to understand why some West Africans, harboring mutations in genes for red blood cell proteins, are naturally protected from the most severe form of malaria. You may have heard of sickle-cell anemia. It is caused by a mutation that affects red blood cell morphology and has evolved to protect humans from death by Plasmodium. This mutation, along with a handful of similar ones, occurs in nearly 30% of the population in Mali, the country in which that I spend 2 months a year working. This means there is a strong selective advantage to being born with one of these mutations. These children still do become sick after receiving a bite from an infected mosquito (here was that perspective change). My job is to understand what is going on that prevents these children from progressing to coma, and ultimately death, a scenario much too common amongst their red blood cell-normal neighbors. I acquire blood samples from children as they enter our NIAID funded clinics (for free treatment) and isolate the parasites. Using a myriad of biochemical screens, I hope to understand the mechanisms at work that keep the pathogen at bay.

Working in Mali has been a life-altering endeavor.  Not only have I been able to act as a mentor and collaborator to a cadre of dedicated and inspirational Malian research scientists, I’ve gained lifelong colleagues and friends. Working in isolated villages, in less than ideal research conditions, has taught me the true meaning of innovation, as well as alerting me to the much needed niche of novel small, simple and robust rapid diagnostics (a research direction I hope to continue to develop). It is clear to see that science can truly be used for the betterment of human health, but also to spur and bolster international ties. NIAID’s influences don’t stop at the clinic, and it doesn’t end when our research projects are finished. The lab spaces we have built, and the local scientists we have trained will continue to develop their country’s research capacity, and begin a positive cycle of education that will carry forward into the future. For me, now the sight of a mosquito evokes danger, but the sight of blood evokes hope. Inside the blood of the children in our research villages lies the key to factors that can protect millions from succumbing to malaria. There is also much more to be done away from the bench. Improving sanitation as well as delivery of life saving medicines is an essential but non-trivial component to the successful eradication of this disease. Mali has a long history of political stability and international comradery that makes working there easy, but many other countries in need of support do not have proper and unwavering mechanisms in place to duplicate this success. The way forward is not easy and will require policy as well as political changes. SPUSA has taught me to try to think in new ways about how advances in science and technology can impact the world around us. This is the lesson I will never forget to pack on my next adventure.