Inquiry
Embedded ethics robot
In your role as a software engineer, if you can reasonably foresee that a certain design choice or algorithm would lead to harmful outcomes, what should you do?
What’s Going On With Embedded EthiCS?
In 2017, two Harvard professors launched the Embedded EthiCS program, hoping to “bring ethical reasoning into the Computer Science curriculum.” But few students take the program seriously, and many even consider it “funny-bad.” At a time when tech-ethics seems more important than ever, what’s going on?
Phone Affirmations
Before I thought of simply sparking a conversation with my years-old crush, I was repeating variations of 'I don’t chase, I attract,' convinced of its effectiveness by the TikTok creators whom I watched. But testing the concept wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I had believed that such techniques were a convenient shortcut to actual change in my life.
“I Don’t Chase, I Attract”: The Lure of Manifestation TikTok
On manifestation TikTok, superstitions and unfounded techniques promise the fruition of anything you desire. The more I scrolled, the more I was told to repeat phrases, to embrace my delusions, or to use an audio for good luck.
Sidechat Inquiry
It’s easy to focus on scooters and mascots, easy to ignore the conflict simmering below the surface of certain posts as you scroll, and scroll, and scroll.
Dying Lotus
I don’t want my sexuality to be socially meaningful or my pleasure to be politically important. That feels so laborious.
Why Sidechat Matters
Sidechat allows us to imagine an institution more socially coherent than the insular circles we traverse daily.
To Revel in An Asian Body
As I reflected on my own relationship to racial fetishization, I discovered that it was overwhelmingly forged through ambiguity: ambiguous interactions, ambiguous responses, and ambiguous feelings. The instances that prompted my immediate, visceral disgust felt secondary to the instances that left me uncertain, on the precipice of being shoved into a tired cultural script but clinging to the hope that I’d hold my ground.
Harvard and Me
I was the only person I knew of coming to Harvard from South Africa, and, in turn, I was to everyone in South Africa the only person they knew going to Harvard — which is to say, I became Harvard.
Trap On Trial
Still, several questions remain unanswered: Do the supposed “traps” of trap music outweigh its value? Can you evaluate the “right” way to musically reconcile with injustice? How should Black Americans communicate exasperation and emergency and unrest?
Paulson Cover
Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named for John A. Paulson, a Business School graduate who donated $400 million to the University in 2015.
A Pathetic Aesthetic
The aestheticization — dare I say fetishization — of female pain reaffirms the conditions that made girls sad in the first place. Simply put, the Sad Girl reeks of complacency.
Mayi Inquiry Design
My shame of being found reading Colleen Hoover stemmed from a culture of intellectual snobbery – feeling superior and prideful about the type of culture you consume.
Learning to Fail
Is it vulnerable or honest about the reality of being at this school? Or is it playing to an aesthetic standard of what a Harvard student is supposed to be: personality, friendships, and academic success, all in one? These performances feed into a perception, however misguided, of students at Harvard and other elite universities as universally capable and flawless super-students, without even the possibility of failure.
In Defense of Colleen Hoover: Intellectual Snobbery at Harvard
My shame of being found reading Colleen Hoover stemmed from a culture of intellectual snobbery — feeling superior and prideful about the type of culture you consume. It’s the person who prides themselves on their knowledge of “classical” literature, listing off the last names of authors such as John Milton, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen as if they are family friends.
Zadie Smith Saw This Coming
Yet as I read “On Beauty,” her wonder of a 2005 novel, I couldn’t shake the one central mystery it posed: does Harvard by any other name sound as sweet?
This Pride Month, Postmates Wants You to Eat with Shame
Postmates, the food delivery app owned by Uber, announced "The Bottom-Friendly Menu" in 2022 Pride Month campaign. Though the project was conceptualized team of BGLTQ employees, it fails to scrutinize the terms we use for ourselves.
Unlearning Inquiry Image
A photo of Katherine's laptop as she opens "Is it Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage: A Christian Woman’s Guide to Hidden Emotional and Spiritual Abuse," by Natalie Hoffman.
A Story of Unlearning
People wanted to hear the story of a white, conservative, evangelical woman from the South publicly endorsing vaccines, especially in the wake of a global pandemic that could be put to rest if those millions of “crazy evangelicals” just got the vaccine. But this, I soon realize, is not the story that matters most — at least, not to Katherine.
A Form of Hesitation
What happens when the lost object speaks; when, given these material and psychic limitations, we do try to express our malaise? What forms exist to communicate and grapple with Asian Americans’ public and private racial grief and outrage?
We're Really Not That Nice
Finally, one of them broke the heavy silence and asked me, in all seriousness, “Do you not have racism in Canada?”