The Torn Apart/Separados digital project aims to geographically map the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy. Torn Apart is an example of the application of digital humanities.
Roopika Risam, assistant professor of English and faculty fellow for digital library initiatives at Salem State University, is part of the team of academics who created Torn Apart/Separados.
Risam works in the field of digital humanities, which covers a wide interdisciplinary range.
“It includes creating digital archives likeChicano Por Mi Raza, which is a wonderful project directed by Maria Cotera and Linda Garcia Merchant that is recovering ChicanX activism and the untold history of that in the United States,” she said.
In the case of Torn Apart/Separados, digital tools are being applied to broaden social awareness in the topic of immigration and migrant detention.
Risam said she has a personal connection to this project.
“I’m an immigrant who was brought to the United States as a child by my parents,” she said. “Our experience with immigration was one of great privilege and of great ease. I’m consistently struck by the fact that there are so many people who are fleeing such desperate situations who need to be in the United States far more than my family ever did. To see them being dehumanized and criminalized is very troubling to me.”
Though Risam works at an academic institution, she has discovered that some universities are unconsciously complicit in assisting the efforts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I actually pulled the data on all the ICE contracts from the last five fiscal years. While there are a few universities that have contracts with ICE — University of Maryland at College Park, John Hopkins University, Northeastern University, University of Alabama Birmingham, Vermont state colleges — that’s actually a tiny drop in the bucket of all the corporations that are making massive amounts of money off contracts with ICE. I thought it was going to be worse. It should be zero.”
Risam sees this collaboration as being an ethical issue, one of which she wants no part.
“I was a grant writing event a couple of weeks ago. They brought people in to show us where to find money. Someone said to me, ‘What about DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Projects Agency)?’ Department of Defense money? I just looked at this person and said, ‘Yeah, no. I’m not asking them for money.’ ”
Norma Martinez can be reached by email at norma@tpr.org and on Twitter @NormDog1
