Dr. Craig Gundersen, Snee Family Endowed Chair and professor of economics and Baylor University, will lead a lunch and learn on “Data Analysis at the Service of Social Justice” on Friday, Sept. 4, at 1 p.m. in O’Brien Hall 150 AB.
Lunch will be provided for the first 20 registrants. Register by Wednesday, Sept. 2.
This event is co-hosted by the Poverty Research Initiative, Office of Research and Innovation, Center for Peacemaking, College of Business Administration, College of Nursing and Department of Economics.
Data is never neutral. The decision to measure something (and how) shapes what a society is willing to see and act on. Few researchers have demonstrated this more concretely than Gundersen, whose work on food insecurity underlies Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap and has informed how policymakers understand hunger at the county level.
In this lunch-and-learn, Gundersen is joined in conversation by Rev. Stephen Pitts, S.J., Francis C. Wade, S.J. Chair and visiting Jesuit assistant professor of economics in the College of Business Administration, for a wide-ranging discussion about doing quantitative work in service of justice.
What makes a measure trustworthy enough to build policy on? Where do statistical models illuminate inequity, and where do they flatten the people behind the data? At a Jesuit university, research begins with encounter. Catholic Social Teaching insists on the inviolable dignity of every person, a preferential option for the poor, and the pursuit of the common good — commitments that bear directly on how we measure need and whom our research is ultimately for.
The second half of the discussion turns the question back on the room. Researchers rarely choose their subjects at random; something in our commitments, our histories or our faith draws us toward particular problems and not others. In small groups over lunch, participants will have the chance to name what animates their own work and to hear the same from colleagues across the disciplines — a small exercise in the kind of discernment a Jesuit institution asks of us. Faculty, staff and students from every discipline are welcome. No statistical background is assumed.
