"What does it mean to truly care about inclusion and diversity in engineering?"
My reflections on the values of a discipline deeply shaped by militarism, war, and quest for power
[I just got home from Chicago after attending the annual conference of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), held this year in Baltimore. I was invited by the incredible professor and historian of science and technology Dr. Amy Slaton to speak on a topical plenary session co-sponsored by the Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division (LEES) and Equity, Culture, & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY). The plenary was titled, "Saying the Words: centering racism and other critical frameworks for 21st-century engineering education," and featured Dr. Slaton, Dr. Meagan Pollock (founder of Engineer Inclusion), Dr. Kayla Maxey (Indiana University-Purdue), and myself. Ironically, and sadly, our discussion on racism and engineering education takes place a day before the U.S Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate race from college admissions. After Dr. Slaton provided an opening framing that also referenced the then imminent and predictable Supreme Court decision, each panelist provided 12-15 minute remarks. Though what I ended up saying is an abbreviated version, below is the text I had prepared in advance.]
Hello everybody, and thanks for being here. This is my first time at ASEE, and also my first time in Baltimore. I'm really excited to be here. I've been planning to attend ASEE for a few years now, so I was really honored and pleased to receive Amy's invitation to join on this occasion.
By way of introduction, my academic research and writing have been preoccupied with questions of equity, identity, and learning, as well as the politics and ethics of STEM education, including engineering education. My work has been largely focused on the K12 space and within out-of-school learning in community-based contexts, with considerable attention to computing and technology education. In my most recent project, Im studying engineering education at Sharif University in Iran - probably familiar to many as the most elite technical institute in Iran if not the entire Middle East. With two phenomenal postdoctoral scholars (Dr. Mina Khanlarzadeh and Dr. Mahdi Ganjavi), we are looking at the history of this institution - and in particular, the cultural and political factors that enabled engineering students to be not just involved but at the forefront of student activism and revolutionary politics inside Iran. In my short remarks today, I'll draw on this research, but my comments will be based primarily on my personal experiences as an engineering student. I studied Electrical Engineering at UCLA from 2001 to 2007, before heading into industry. I spent the next several years working as an engineer in various contexts, before changing directions in my career and pursuing a PhD in the field of STEM education.
Amy prompted us with a very significant and hard question: what does it mean to truly care about inequity in engineering? What do we say matters when we support "DEI" programming in engineering and STEM fields? And what do we imagine should and could change?
My experience with engineering education begins in 2001, literally days after the historic and horrific events of 9/11. After a summer spent with my father in South Carolina, I came back home to California and entered UCLA as a freshman majoring in electrical engineering. As an 18-year-old kid showing up on the beautiful Westwood campus, I was full of energy and ambition. I wanted to learn, have fun, and maybe even change the world. Now, if I'm being completely honest, the ethics or political economy of engineering was not top of mind for me at the time. And I also have to admit that I fundamentally had a positive experience at UCLA. It was hard, really hard. Equal parts challenging and rewarding. I participated in undergraduate research with Dr. Ali Sayed, a globally recognized expert in a subfield of electrical engineering known as signals and systems. I got involved with the student organizations like Engineers Without Borders and stuck around to earn a Master’s degree under Dr. Sayed's supervision. I struggled, learned, and made lifelong friends. I say that even as I have written and spoken elsewhere about explicit racism I experienced at UCLA as a Middle Eastern immigrant kid in a post-9/11 era. You can read more about this in an article I co-wrote with Dr. Julissa Muñiz for Truthout.
But, there was another kind of tension in my experience at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering. A tension that I didn't have the political clarity or even the words to name when I was a student, but one that lurked in the shadows of my consciousness. I want to think about and speak about that tension here, as I believe it carries some implications and insights into our conversation today about diversity and inclusion in engineering.
I'll share a short story that I think captures this tension well. We're all familiar with these massive career fairs that engineering departments host. At UCLA I think we had 2 per year, one in the Fall and one in the Spring quarter. They're these frenzied events with anxious students standing in long lines to speak with representatives from various tech companies, hoping to land a job or summer internship. There’s also a lot of swag at these events. Notebooks, backpacks, t-shirts, mugs. I remember for some reason Raytheon (one of the largest national security and aerospace companies in the nation) had the most impressive swag. I remember in particular this little compact whiteboard I brought back from one of these career fairs, that I promptly put up in my dorm room near my desk (because what engineering student doesn't want a free whiteboard?). In bold red letters tracing the bottom rim of the board was Raytheon's logo. One day, when I walked into my room there was a provocative, and disturbing drawing displayed on the board. A friend of mine had drawn several missiles originating from the Raytheon logo, and dotted lines indicating a trajectory that terminated in his tracing of the map of Iran. The message was clear: What are you doing endorsing a company that profits from military intervention in YOUR home country?! (the fact that he was a white Jewish dude telling ME how to feel about something related to MY cultural identity annoyed me a bit at the time. But he was right...)
Probably unbeknownst to my anti-war, artistically inclined friend from college (who is one of my closest friends to this day), the contradictions of my own involvement in engineering as an Iranian, Middle-Eastern immigrant have stayed with me for decades. I worked for several companies, including a start-up in liberal Berkeley that primarily was funded through defense and national security contracts. A large part of my decision to leave engineering and enter education stemmed from a profound desire to disassociate with a DARPA-saturated world that is inextricably tied to what science historian Stuart Leslie has called the military-industrial-academic complex.
But the contradictions are not mine alone. And it would be a mistake to write off my story as the particular misgivings of an engineering student of Iranian descent who during his college years grew increasingly critical of US imperialism in the Middle East. The case of engineering's problematic entanglements with the agendas of US militarism (see work of Dean Nieusma and Juan Lucena, and a paper I co-authored with Dr. Shirin Vossoughi as well as a special issue I co-edited with Dr. Rick Ayers), reveals a deeper problem. Indeed, Raytheon is just the tip of the iceberg. Funding from DARPA (an agency within the Department of Defense with the explicit responsibility to develop technologies that advance the goals of the US military) and military contractors is an unexamined norm in engineering, computer science, and other STEM disciplines. These relationships, on top of the racism and sexism that have long characterized the field, add up to an academic discipline that is morally untenable for many. In particular for students who are sociopolitically aware and active. Authentic and transformative moves towards equity in engineering, therefore, must address the values and ethics of the engineering discipline itself. "DEI" efforts need to take seriously the social and political implications of engineering and technology more broadly (there are many scholars who can guide this effort. I've personally learned from the work of scholars like Ruha Benjamin, Safiya Noble, Timnit Gebru, and Meredith Whittaker). This work cannot be outsourced (as it commonly is) to the DEI staff in our universities, or to undergraduate and graduate students who in the absence of alternatives often take up the mantle themselves to critically examine their disciplines (see the incredible work of undergraduate student group RAISO at my home institution of Northwestern as just one example). We have to start asking more from faculty and from administration. What are they doing to create spaces that aren't just "safe" or "inclusive," but that are aligned with the sociopolitical and cultural interests, values, priorities, and needs of the communities that students come from? For me personally, the last thing I wanted to do with my life was assist in the hegemonic project of US imperialism in Iran, or anywhere else for that matter.
When sharing these perspectives, sometimes people comment that some students of color, including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, as well as immigrant students with visas from places like Iran, come to engineering not with a social or political agenda but simply to get a secure, well-paying job. And that introducing politics into their engineering educational experiences is out of touch with objectives that are mainly tethered to upward mobility and economic advancement. I have a few reactions to this. First, the underlying premise here needs to be examined and unpacked. The point is that engineering is already politicized (see work by Amy Slaton, Juan Lucena, Donna Riley, Erin Cech, and Heidi Sherick, among others). To stimulate dialogue and deliberation around the values of the field is not to politicize the field, but to make visible what is already there. And to begin the work of imagining new directions and possibilities. Now, do some students (including students from marginalized groups) come into engineering so they can get access to good jobs, including secure employment in the deep-pocketed national security and defense industries? You know what, yes, some certainly do. And my personal feelings aside, I'm not the one to cast judgment here. Particularly for students coming from very difficult circumstances, I tend to think that folks have every right to desire and seek a fancy degree and a fancy job. I know there may be serious disagreements with that perspective, and I respect those disagreements. We can't give a pass to every capitalist decision made based on prior harm or struggle. Yet, still, in my view, we have to acknowledge there’s just a lot we don't understand about people’s circumstances and struggles, and thus reserving judgment is usually wise. That’s just my take, probably also informed by a close-up view of my own family and friends’ relationships with engineering. Many Iranian immigrants including my own parents pursue higher education degrees in STEM fields as a way to escape the suffocating oppression of Iran under the despotic, Islamic government in power (for now). Once they arrive, they're often exhausted. After leaving behind their entire lives to start from scratch in a foreign country where they are subjected to all kinds of bullshit, they're not in the same privileged position as I am in to question the politics of their chosen careers or disciplines. Some still manage to do so, but not everyone. Some pursue and earn degrees, get good jobs, and support their families. Who am I to judge? There are many similar stories of engineering as a means to a better life that I have much reverence and admiration for.
But here’s the thing. Desiring a deeper moral and political engagement with engineering as a discipline AND also desiring professional and economic advancement for self are not necessarily mutually exclusive goals. Everyone likely is motivated by some measure of both. And while there may be some fraction of engineering students from marginalized communities who care less about the moral and political implications of their field, there are many, many others who deeply, to use the technical term, give a shit. You can see the work of Juan Garibay here, who has conducted studies demonstrating that students from historically marginalized groups enter STEM fields with disproportionately higher levels of social agency (the actual technical term). The point is that the empirical evidence shows that non-white students by and large have big hopes for an engineering education. They want their degrees to matter - for their own individual benefit and for the prosperity and general welfare of their communities. That's what I wanted out of my engineering education. Ultimately, for me, this remained an unfulfilled hope, but one that I strive for now alongside so many of you. Thank you.