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What 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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CHAPTERS

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Chapter summaries

Expelled School Banner and a Jack of All Trades
Trevor jokes about the school that expelled him and now flies a banner claiming him. The conversation turns to Ruha Benjamin's wide-ranging work, the 'master of none' saying, and Edward Said's idea of the amateur as driven by love.
- •Trevor's old school now advertises that he attended
- •A jack of all trades is often better than a master of one
- •Ruha cites Edward Said on amateurs, whose work is led by love rather than status
- •The hosts joke about listing her credentials, including the MacArthur grant and Princeton tenure
Has DEI Failed? Diversity Without Transformation
Trevor asks whether DEI failed or was bound to. Ruha says she was never a booster, seeing it as a placeholder that corrals troublemakers, and explains why 'Black faces in high places' won't save us, citing her own experience and Black administrators doing institutions' dirty work.
- •DEI as a concession and placeholder that may be doing what it was designed to do
- •Those hired after George Floyd's killing are now losing jobs
- •Ruha describes being enlisted as the Black face of a scientific program as a grad student
- •Black administrators are used to repress protest, giving business as usual a cosmetic veneer
Inclusion Into What? Plantations, Probation and Theory vs. Praxis
Ruha argues the question is what people are being included into, noting plantations were diverse. She discusses her probation at Princeton for accompanying students at a sit-in, how institutions later honor those they once suppressed, and why she keeps one foot out of the academy.
- •Diversity and domination can go hand in hand
- •Educators of color hired as window dressing are being let go once they use their voices
- •Ruha is on probation for a year for accompanying students at a sit-in
- •Universities later honor figures like Mandela and Alice Walker whom they opposed
- •She sees herself as a kindergarten teacher in professor drag
Universities as Boxing Grounds and Hedge Funds
Trevor says universities should teach students to fight over ideas constructively, using the example of blocking speakers. Ruha distinguishes this from combative debate-bro style and argues the crackdown on protest reflects universities' economic and military entanglements.
- •Trevor argues universities should immunize students against radical ideas
- •Ruha separates constructive wrestling with ideas from debating to win
- •A university described as a hedge fund that offers classes
- •Protests threaten the institutions' ties to the military industrial complex
Understanding Trump Voters and the Love Behind Hate
Trevor says many people can't fathom why anyone would vote for Trump. Ruha says double consciousness makes switching perspective a survival skill for marginalized people, and that bonds of affinity and distorted love can drive movements, citing the cafeteria video and Women and the Klan.
- •Being unable to take another's perspective is a privilege
- •Double consciousness as a learned capacity to see through others' lenses
- •Parents backing the wall may be motivated by a distorted love for their children
- •Ethnography of Klan women found potlucks and mutual care alongside hatred
- •Bonding through opposition is a pattern, not inevitable
Abolition, Accountability and Whether Trevor Should Have Been Expelled
Prompted by a question about her abolitionist politics, Ruha says abolition includes accountability and a rethinking of school discipline. Trevor insists he should have been expelled, arguing exclusion is unavoidable and expelled kids need somewhere like a magic school, while Ruha points to disparities and Finland's play-based model.
- •Abolition pairs with accountability and building a social fabric that prevents repeat harm
- •School-to-prison logics show up in suspension and detention, and recess and art are cut first
- •Trevor argues exclusion is inherent and systems serve the average
- •He proposes a school for expelled kids, like Harry Potter's magic school
- •Ruha notes stark expulsion disparities and that other countries organize schooling without them
- •Finland prioritizes play and still out-tests others
Was Integration the Right Move? Imagined Identities
Trevor asks, as a loaded question, whether integration was the right solution, noting Finland's homogeneity and the trust of shared codes. Ruha says segregation and integration weren't the only options, that national identities are made up, and that creativity used to build hierarchies could build solidarity.
- •Trevor separates integration from oppression and cites implicit trust among similar people
- •Ruha asks what people are being integrated into, a supremacist culture
- •National identities are created and maintained, not fixed
- •Japan's treatment of people of Korean descent shows hierarchies made from nothing
- •She asks who her pessimism serves
Growing Up as an Outsider: Marshall Islands and Parallel Worlds
Trevor asks how Ruha's childhood moves, including the Marshall Islands, shaped her. She says she carried home within her, and seeing how norms differ between places, plus her love of sci-fi, taught her that realities are made and can be changed.
- •Trevor links her Marshall Islands upbringing to Cold War history and displacement
- •Belonging cultivated internally can't be taken away
- •Racial classifications and beauty standards differ across places
- •Moving every five or six years was her classroom for seeing alternatives
- •Star Trek and sci-fi sparked her sense of parallel universes
AI Optimism vs. Skepticism: Costs, Labor and Other Kinds of AI
A host says Trevor is an AI enthusiast and she is a technophobe, and asks Ruha what good AI could do. Ruha describes ancestral intelligence, abundant imagination, and the hidden labor and environmental costs of artificial intelligence, while Trevor argues for AI's medical, educational and energy benefits.
- •Ruha names ancestral intelligence and abundant imagination as other types of AI
- •Content moderation labor is outsourced to places like Kenya and the Philippines
- •Trevor disagrees that AI is like the atom bomb because it has many uses
- •He cites breast cancer detection, tutoring and data center energy savings
- •He argues AI is 'bustable' because bias can be found and coded against
Facts Won't Save Us: Biased Data and Training AI Differently
Ruha cautions that data doesn't change minds, citing a Stanford study, and that healthcare and education algorithms reproduce bias. She offers a positive example of AI trained on patients' self-reported pain, and suggests turning the lens on those with power. Trevor extends this to judges and to country-specific AIs.
- •Presenting incarceration data led some white Americans to support the policies creating the disparities
- •A healthcare algorithm discriminated against Black patients because of biased training data
- •An AI trained on patients' own pain reports was more accurate and less biased
- •Ruha proposes using AI to find which adults and departments create risk for students
- •Trevor imagines auditing judges and expects many community-specific AIs
Phoenix of Gaza VR and Technology for Cultural Preservation
Asked about her favorite tech, Ruha describes a VR exhibit she helped host, Phoenix of Gaza. It uses footage of everyday life and demolished buildings, created by and for Palestinians, to support preservation, rebuilding and a right of return.
- •Ruha had been critical of VR as trauma porn
- •The project shows weddings, poetry, children playing and now the aftermath
- •360 footage records demolished churches and mosques
- •Who creates a technology and with what values matters
- •She calls it truly liberatory
Language, Intention and Who Gets to Police Speech
Trevor wrestles with how people hear the same words differently, using the 'from the river to the sea' chant and Mandela's speeches. Ruha says Mandela's caution reflects a keen historical imagination, and argues that telling oppressed groups how to speak is a tool of censorship, leading to a debate on free speech and power.
- •Palestinians and Jewish or Israeli friends interpret the chant very differently, according to Trevor
- •Mandela said he opposed oppression of both Black and white people
- •Ruha sees oppressed groups reproducing domination once in power as the reason for his caution
- •She calls telling an oppressed group how to talk about its oppression hubris and censorship
- •A host stresses who actually bears consequences, and Trevor separates this from his question about communication
Glimmers of Hope: Jewish Students Standing in Solidarity
Trevor asks whether Ruha has seen a breakthrough in communication among students. She points to Jewish students who joined others against genocide because of their values, showing the issue doesn't divide neatly along identity lines.
- •Trevor asks for a glimpse of hope from the campus hotbed
- •Ruha says the breakthrough is action, not liberal speech exchange
- •Jewish students acted from the belief that all life is sacred
- •They risked their own status and wellbeing in solidarity
Single-Gender Spaces, Adversity and the Sisterhood
Trevor raises whether same-group spaces such as girls' schools or women-only labs might help, and relays military accounts about mixed units, while noting the paradox of exclusion. Ruha says the value of spaces like Spelman is discovering the differences within a group.
- •Trevor cites a scientist's remark about women in labs and asks if homogeneity is the only way
- •He mentions research on girls in mixed classes and says he is pro girls' school
- •He argues adversity can be a friend if people are taught to handle it
- •Ruha says sisterhood reveals differences of skin tone, region, class, religion and sexuality
- •Such spaces let people wrestle with fault lines rather than keep a false sense of unity
Hope for Institutions: Building Constellations
Asked about the future of education, Ruha says she is terrible at prediction, partly because AI prediction closes off possibilities. She sees the current moment as pulling back the curtain on institutions and finds hope in her department, which cultivates a constellation rather than stars.
- •Prediction in AI closes off futures
- •Protests exposed donor interests that were always there
- •The moment invites truthfulness about institutional complicity
- •Her department acts on different values, building community instead of stars
- •Small groups can seed alternative models

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