Community invited to participate in NIC Cardinal Reads

North Idaho College is launching a new cycle of Cardinal Reads, the college’s common read program, with a virtual event on Sept. 23, from 1 to 2:15 p.m. featuring Virginia Eubanks, author of “Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor,” the book selection for 2020-2022.

In this book, Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile.

In a pre-recorded conversation that NIC will stream via Zoom, https://nic.zoom.us/j/93634351468.

Eubanks will introduce her book to readers and discuss aspects of automation as it relates to current events. NIC Cardinal Reads Committee members will discuss future events, including chapter-by-chapter group discussions in October and November, for those who care to participate.

Members of the North Idaho community are invited to attend these free events and participate in Cardinal Reads.

NIC is among roughly 300 colleges and universities nationwide that offer common read programs like Cardinal Reads. Common reads aim to connect and engage people through a shared experience. These programs encourage critical thinking and courteous, thoughtful discourse, even when opposing opinions emerge.

Cardinal Reads is an NIC Diversity Council program that provides book selections in coordination with a biennial theme designed to encourage diversity awareness on campus. The theme at NIC for 2020-2022 is Common Ground: Science, Technology and Society. Eubanks’ “Automating Inequality” was selected by the Cardinal Reads Committee from 16 books suggested by members of the NIC community.

Cardinal Reads is also featured by North Idaho College Community Conversations, a lecture and event series designed to foster engaging, informational discovery and thoughtful discourse related to cultural, economic, environmental, social and political issues affecting the people of North Idaho and beyond.

Community members interested in reading “Automating Equality” may inquire at the check-out desk in the Molstead Library on the North Idaho College campus, 1000 W. Garden Ave., Coeur d’Alene.

For more information about the Sept. 23 event or NIC Cardinal Reads, visit nic.edu/cardinalreads or send an email to cardinalreads@nic.edu.