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What Now? With Trevor NoahWhat Now? With Trevor Noah

RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin | What Now? with Trevor Noah Podcast

This week we speak with professor, sociologist, and MacArthur Fellowship winner Ruha Benjamin about some of the pressing political and social issues of the day.

Trevor NoahhostRuha Benjaminguest
Feb 13, 20251h 19mWatch on YouTube

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At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Ruha Benjamin Challenges DEI, Schooling, AI, and Imagining Beyond Inclusion

  1. Benjamin argues DEI was a placeholder concession that is now disappearing, and says the real question is what people are being included into.
  2. She describes Black administrators being used to enforce repression at her university, and says she is on probation for accompanying student protesters at a sit-in.
  3. Noah and Benjamin disagree over expulsion, integration, and homogeneity versus diversity, with Benjamin pointing to Finland's play-based schooling and the idea that national identities are constructed.
  4. On AI, Noah is optimistic about medical, educational, and bias-detection uses, while Benjamin stresses hidden labor and environmental costs, biased training data, and the idea that facts alone do not change minds.
  5. Benjamin closes with hope in building small communities and constellations rather than stars, and cites a VR project preserving Gazan culture as a liberatory use of technology.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Inclusion is not enough without asking what you're included into

Benjamin says diversity and domination can coexist, citing the example of diverse plantations, and says the choice between exclusion and inclusion leaves important things off the table.

Representation can insulate institutions from critique

Drawing on her own experience as a graduate student and now at Princeton, Benjamin says Black faces delivering repressive messages make business as usual look like progress.

Universities honor dissent only in hindsight

Benjamin and Noah note that institutions suppressed figures like Mandela, MLK, and Alice Walker, then later celebrated them, which Benjamin connects to the economic and military ties of universities today.

Schooling could be built on play and accountability rather than exclusion

Benjamin points to Finland's play-focused model and says expulsion is applied unevenly; Noah counters that exclusion is unavoidable and proposes separate spaces for anomalies like a magic school.

Understanding opponents does not mean excusing them

Benjamin says some people who support walls or join groups like the Klan experience their stance as love and bonding, and that grasping this is needed to address the root problem while still demanding accountability.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Simply put, we're not asking what we're being included into.

— Ruha Benjamin

So diversity and domination can go hand in hand.

— Ruha Benjamin

I have one foot in the academy and always one foot out. I will never turn to these institutions for my sense of self-worth or self or mission. It's like I don't give them my all, and so they can't take anything from me in doing this either.

— Ruha Benjamin

We are so creative in creating hierarchies and distinctions out of nothing, you know? Why can't we channel that creativity to actually work in the opposite direction?

— Ruha Benjamin

So the smarter the algorithms get, the more racist and sexist they often become.

— Ruha Benjamin

Read the available transcript
Failure and limits of DEIRepresentation versus structural powerCampus protest and academic freedomRethinking schools and expulsionIntegration, homogeneity, and national identityAI bias, labor, and imaginationLanguage, speech, and who holds power

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SPEAKERS

  • Trevor Noah

    host

    Comedian and TV host, best known for hosting The Daily Show and the podcast What Now? with Trevor Noah.

  • Ruha Benjamin

    guest

    Sociologist and professor at Princeton University known for work on race, technology, and inequality.

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

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