This Coursera course aims to help learners understand how inequity and injustice can become embedded in technology, science, and associated policies, and how this can be addressed.

More than ever, technology is shaping, and being shaped by, public policy. This has an enormous impact, particularly for marginalized communities. The artificial intelligence and computer algorithms increasingly driving government and industry decisions—from the allocation of social services to hiring—are reflecting and reinforcing social biases towards women, people of color, and disabled people, among others. Global climate change is having a disproportionately negative impact on low- and middle-income countries, and on historically disadvantaged communities of color in the United States. Communities are increasingly concerned they are not benefiting from government research funding, and that the regulation of emerging technologies is inadequate.

The interconnectedness of technology, policy, and equality raises crucial questions for scientists, technologists, and leaders in public policy, civil society, and industry. How can technology be built, implemented, and governed more equitably? How can the concerns of marginalized communities be integrated better into technology and related policies? How should community knowledge and concerns be integrated with technical expertise and scientific evidence in the development of public policies?