Book Talk with danah boyd: Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census

Join the Centre for the Study of the United States (CSUS) at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy for a conversation with danah boyd, Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, on her new book Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census (University of Chicago Press).

 

The US census is one of the largest and most consequential data-making operations in the world — determining how political power and federal funding are distributed across the country. Drawing on rare, unprecedented access to the US Census Bureau, boyd spent years observing and interviewing the civil servants who carried out the 2020 census amid a global pandemic, natural disasters, and sustained political interference. The result is a revelatory account of what it actually takes to produce the data that underpins American democracy, and a warning about how fragile that infrastructure has become. boyd calls this dynamic "Jenga politics": as political actors repeatedly pull pieces from the administrative state, pressure mounts on the civil servants working to keep it standing.

 

boyd will discuss the book's central arguments and what they mean for the future of public data and democratic governance. The conversation will be moderated by Aaron Gluck-Thaler, Assistant Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

 

 

About the Speaker:

danah boyd is the Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University. Dr. boyd’s research focuses on the intersection of technology and society. Her upcoming book “Data are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census” is an ethnography of the US Census Bureau, Jenga politics, and the struggle to make democracy’s data in 2020. Her first monograph “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens” examines young people’s relationship to social media. Dr. boyd founded Data & Society, where she currently serves as an advisor.  She is currently a fellow of AAAS, a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow, a non-residential fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a trustee of the Computer History Museum, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and on the advisory boards of Electronic Privacy Information Center. She was also a founding director of Crisis Text Line, a mental health organization that serves people in crisis.  She received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Brown University, a master’s degree from MIT Media Lab, and a Ph.D in Information from the University of California, Berkeley.