Related Guides
Exhibit Sources: Films
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Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window
Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types.
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Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Kanopy is a provider of documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases available as streaming video. Clips from the videos can be embedded in presentations or shown in class. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
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BU Libraries Search This link opens in a new window
BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of research material provided by the library. Resources covered by the search includes books and eBooks, journals, scores and sheet music, video and audio recordings, and other physical and electronic items held by the library. Coverage encompasses materials relating to the prehistoric and antique world through to the present.
Featured Films
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George Orwell (streaming, Academic Video Online) Follows George Orwell's developing political awareness, his involvement in the Spanish Civil War, and his success as a writer.
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Race to Execution (streaming, Academic Video Online) "Race to Execution" is a gripping documentary that offers a compelling investigation of America’s death penalty, probing how race discrimination infects our capital punishment system.
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At the Death House Door (streaming, Academic Video Online) An impassioned exploration of the legal and ethical issues surrounding capital punishment, At the Death House Door looks at the death penalty through the eyes of Pastor Carroll Pickett, who served as the first death house chaplain at the infamous "Walls" prison unit in Huntsville, Texas.
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Who Lives, Who Dies: Rationing Health Care (streaming, Academic Video Online) This powerful documentary shows that despite America's extraordinary medical resources, our health care system is failing a large part of the population.
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Critical Condition (streaming, Academic Video Online) What happens when you're sick and uninsured? The unforgettable people in this film discover that it can cost you your job, health, home, savings, and even your life.
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Unnatural Causes Collection (streaming, Kanopy) UNNATURAL CAUSES sounds the alarm about the extent of our glaring socio-economic and racial inequities in health and searches for their root causes. But those causes are not what we might expect. While we pour more and more money into drugs, dietary supplements and new medical technologies, UNNATURAL CAUSES crisscrosses the country investigating the findings that are shaking up conventional understanding of what really makes us healthy or sick.
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I am not your negro (streaming, Kanopy) An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism.
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A More Perfect Union: 1968-2013 (streaming via Academic Video Online) After 1968, African Americans set out to build a bright future on the foundation of the civil rights movement's victories, but a growing class disparity threatened to split the black community. As African Americans won political office across the country and the black middle class made progress, larger economic and political forces isolated the black urban poor. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, many hoped that America had finally transcended racism. By the time of his second victory, however, it was clear that many issues, including true racial equality, remain to be resolved. How will African Americans help redefine the United States in the years to come?
TED Talks
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What You Need to Know About Face Surveillance Privacy isn't dead, but face surveillance technology might kill it, says civil rights advocate Kade Crockford. In an eye-opening talk, Kade outlines the startling reasons why this invasive technology -- powered by often-flawed facial recognition databases that track people without their knowledge -- poses unprecedented threats to your fundamental rights.
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What your smart devices know (and share) about you Once your smart devices can talk to you, who else are they talking to? Kashmir Hill and Surya Mattu wanted to find out -- so they outfitted Hill's apartment with 18 different internet-connected devices and built a special router to track how often they contacted their servers and see what they were reporting back. The results were surprising -- and more than a little bit creepy.
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What will a future without secrets look like? The line between public and private has blurred in the past decade, both online and in real life, and Alessandro Acquisti is here to explain what this means and why it matters. In this thought-provoking, slightly chilling talk, he shares details of recent and ongoing research -- including a project that shows how easy it is to match a photograph of a stranger with their sensitive personal information.
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When technology can read minds, how will we protect our privacy? Tech that can decode your brain activity and reveal what you're thinking and feeling is on the horizon, says legal scholar and ethicist Nita Farahany. What will it mean for our already violated sense of privacy? In a cautionary talk, Farahany warns of a society where people are arrested for merely thinking about committing a crime (like in "Minority Report") and private interests sell our brain data -- and makes the case for a right to cognitive liberty that protects our freedom of thought and self-determination.
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Your smartphone is a civil rights issue The smartphone you use reflects more than just personal taste ... it could determine how closely you can be tracked, too. Privacy expert and TED Fellow Christopher Soghoian details a glaring difference between the encryption used on Apple and Android devices and urges us to pay attention to a growing digital security divide. "If the only people who can protect themselves from the gaze of the government are the rich and powerful, that's a problem," he says. "It's not just a cybersecurity problem -- it's a civil rights problem."
Exhibit Sources: Podcasts
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BBC Digital Planet: Orwell and the Future of Surveillance Orwell wrote of webcams, mass surveillance and the death of privacy in his dystopian classic, many of his ideas resonate to this day. So why is his work still relevant and what can it teach us about our relationship with our privacy and technology?
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TED Radio Hour: The End of Privacy In this hour, TED speakers explore our changing notions of privacy, the consequences, and whether privacy will soon be a relic of the past.
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RadioLab: Henrietta's Tumor Writer Rebecca Skloot takes us on a journey into Henrietta's world, with Henrietta's daughter Deborah as the guide.
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NPR Fresh Air: 'Henrietta Lacks': A Donor's Immortal Legacy In 1951, an African-American woman named Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. She was treated at Johns Hopkins University, where a doctor named George Gey snipped cells from her cervix without telling her. Gey discovered that Lacks' cells could not only be kept alive, but would also grow indefinitely,
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Enoch Pratt Free Library: From Fortune to Henrietta Lacks and Beyond When Fortune, a slave, died in 1798, his owner, Dr. Porter, dissected his body and preserved the skeleton. Fortune's bones remained in the doctor's family until they were given to the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1930.
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PRIM&R: Henrietta Lacks - Importance of Consent, Communication and Ethics in Medicine n today’s episode of More than Meets the IRB, we listen in on a conversation from PRIM&R’s AER14 Conference among members of Henrietta Lacks’ family, a member of the NIH, and a representative from Johns Hopkins University.
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More podcasts from PRIM&R (Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research) Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) advances the highest ethical standards in the conduct of biomedical, behavioral, and social science research. We accomplish this mission through education, membership services, professional certification, public policy initiatives, and community building.
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What is 23andMe Doing With Your DNA? (Sway) Anne Wojcicki is sitting on a treasure trove of genetic data. The co-founder and chief executive of 23andMe has led the genetic testing company through 14 years in which it has collected data from millions of customers through their at-home DNA spit test kits. In 2018, the company announced a collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline to use this anonymized, aggregated data to develop new pharmaceutical drugs — and attracted a $300 million investment from the pharmaceutical giant. And in June,
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New York Times: The Daily: The End of Privacy as We Know It? A secretive start-up promising the next generation of facial recognition software has compiled a database of images far bigger than anything ever constructed by the United States government: over three billion, it says. Is this technology a breakthrough for law enforcement — or the end of privacy as we know it?
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The Appeal: Justice in America Justice In America is hosted by Josie Duffy Rice, president of The Appeal, along with guest hosts Darnell Moore, Donovan X. Ramsey, Derecka Purnell, and Zak Cheney Rice. Each episode explains a new criminal justice issue and features conversations with experts and advocates.
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New York Times: 1619 “1619” is a New York Times audio series, hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones, that examines the long shadow of American slavery.
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Ministry of Ideas: White Balance Understanding race in America requires understanding its relationship to class.
Exhibit Sources: Images & Other Primary Sources
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ARTstor This link opens in a new window
ARTstor is a database of images from museums, artists, libraries, colleges and universities, scholars, private collections, and photo archives available for teaching, education, and scholarship, with all images cleared for educational use.
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Associated Press Images Collection This link opens in a new window
Associated Press Images Collection is a searchable collection of recent and historical photos from the Associated Press, plus AP graphics, articles, and brief sound clips.
Exhibit Sources: Opinion Polls
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Roper Center Public Opinion Archives This link opens in a new window
The Roper Center is a public opinion archive that preserves the data from polls conducted by many leading survey organizations. Most of the data are from the United States, but over 50 nations are represented. The iPOLL databank offers access to nearly half a million survey questions and answers asked in the U.S. by more than 150 survey organizations. Direct links are given to study documentation and datasets.
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Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. We conduct public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. We do not take policy positions.
