On the next Fiat Lux Redux, Tuesday, September 29 at 9 AM, Dr. Jabari Mahiri, professor in the Berkeley School of Education, William and Mary Jane Brinton Family Chair in Urban Education, and Faculty Director of Leadership Programs at UC Berkeley, speaks with Dr. Tiera Tanksley, Assistant Professor and scholar specializing in algorithmic racism, anti-Blackness in technology, and abolitionist techno-futures at University of Colorado Boulder and a Critical Race Technology Fellow at UCLA, about the need to ‘talk back’ to AI tools.
AI systems frequently encode and perpetuate systemic anti-Blackness, bias and discrimination. This algorithmic racism affects the schooling experiences and daily lives of Black youth. Tanksley insists that we must talk back and get accountability from developers and challenge harmful tech models. By doing this we create the potential for contemporary educators and youth to build equitable, human-centered technological futures.
The Equity Leadership Now! program is housed withing the Berkeley School of Education at UC Berkeley and explores conversations at the intersection of educational research, policy, and practice focusing on equity conscious leadership to transform educational structures for marginalized groups.
This conversation originally took place on June 30, 2026 and was edited for KALX by Paula Burch. If you have questions or comments about Fiat Lux Redux, contact our executive producer: lisa.katovich@gmail.com.
Fiat Lux Redux presents previously aired lectures, conversations, and podcasts originating on the campus of UC Berkeley every other Tuesday from 9am to 9:30am. These often-lengthy original programs have been edited to a 30-minute format by experienced KALX producers. The show’s name, Latin for “Let there be light”, is a reference to the University of California’s motto, which is also Fiat Lux. The show’s goal is to provide listeners with a window into the intellectual and cultural life of UC Berkeley and to showcase the wide range of subjects and diversity of thought and ideas that are present at UC Berkeley.
