The MIT Media Lab controversy and getting back to ‘radical courage’, with Media Lab student Arwa Mboya

People win prestigious prizes in tech all the time, but there is something different about The Bold Prize. Unless you’ve been living under a literal or proverbial rock, you’ve probably heard something about the late Jeffrey Epstein, a notorious child molester and human trafficker who also happened to be a billionaire philanthropist and managed to become a ubiquitous figure in certain elite science and tech circles.

And if you’re involved in tech, the rock you’ve been living under would have had to be fully insulated from the internet to avoid reading about Epstein’s connections with MIT’s Media Lab, a leading destination for the world’s most brilliant technological minds, also known as “the future factory.” 

This past week, conversations around the Media Lab were hotter than the fuel rods at Fukushima, as The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow, perhaps the most feared and famous investigative journalist in America today, blasted out what for some were new revelations that Bill Gates, among others, had given millions of dollars to the Media Lab at Jeffrey (no fucking relation, thank you very much!) Epstein’s behest. Hours after Farrow’s piece was published, Joi Ito, the legendary but now embattled Media Lab director, resigned.

But well before before Farrow weighed in or Ito stepped away, students, faculty, and other leaders at MIT and far beyond were already on full alert about this story, thanks in large part to Arwa Michelle Mboya, a graduate student at the Media Lab, from Kenya by way of college at Yale, where she studied economics and filmmaking and learned to create virtual reality. Mboya, 25, was among the first public voices (arguably the very first) to forcefully and thoughtfully call on Ito to step down from his position.

Imagine: you’re heading into the second year of your first graduate degree, and you find yourself taking on a man who, when Barack Obama took over Wired magazine for an issue as guest editor, was one of just a couple of people the then sitting President of the United States asked to personally interview. And imagine that man was the director of your graduate program, and the reason you decided to study in it in the first place.

Imagine the pressure involved, the courage required. And imagine, soon thereafter, being completely vindicated and celebrated for your actions. 

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Arwa Mboya. Image via MIT Media Lab

That is precisely the journey that Arwa Mboya has been on these past few weeks, including when human rights technologist Sabrina Hersi Issa decided to crowd-fund the Bold Prize to honor Mboya’s courage, which has now brought in over $10,000 to support her ongoing work (full disclosure: I am among the over 120 contributors to the prize).

Mboya’s advocacy was never about Joi Ito personally. If you get to know her through the interview below, in fact, you’ll see she doesn’t wish him ill.

As she wrote in MIT’s The Tech nine days before Farrow’s essay and ten before Ito’s resignation, “This is not an MIT issue, and this is not a Joi Ito issue. This is an international issue where a global network of powerful individuals have used their influence to secure their privilege at the expense of women’s bodies and lives. The MIT Media Lab was nicknamed “The Future Factory” on CBS’s 60 Minutes. We are supposed to reflect the future, not just of technology but of society. When I call for Ito’s resignation, I’m fighting for the future of women.”

From the moment I read it, I thought this was a beautiful and truly bold statement by a student leader who is an inspiring example of the extraordinary caliber of student that the Media Lab draws.

But in getting to know her a bit since reading it, I’ve learned that her message is also about even more. It’s about the fact that the women and men who called for a new direction in light of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuses and other leaders’ complicity did so in pursuit of their own inspiring dreams for a better world.

Arwa, as you’ll see below, spoke out at MIT because of her passion to use tech to inspire radical imagination among potentially millions of African youth. As she discusses both the Media Lab and her broader vision, I believe she’s already beginning to provide that inspiration. 

Greg Epstein: You have had a few of the most dramatic weeks of any student I’ve met in 15 years as a chaplain at two universities. How are you doing right now?

Arwa Mboya: I’m actually pretty good. I’m not saying that for the sake of saying. I have a great support network. I’m in a lab where everyone is amazing. I’m very tired, I’ll say that. I’ve been traveling a lot and dealing with this while still trying to focus on writing a thesis. If anything, it’s more like overwhelmed and exhausted as opposed to not doing well in and of itself.

Epstein: Looking at your writing — you’ve got a great Medium blog that you started long before MIT and maintained while you’ve been here — it struck me that in speaking your mind and heart about this Media Lab issue, you’ve done exactly what you set out to do when you came here. You set out to be brave, to live life, as the Helen Keller quote on your website says, as either a great adventure or nothing. 

Also, when you came to the Media Lab, you were the best-case scenario for anyone who works on publicizing this place. You spoke and wrote about the Lab as your absolute dream. When you were in Africa, or Australia, or at Yale, how did you come to see this as the best place in the world for you to express the creative and civic dreams that you had?

Mboya: That’s a good question — what drew me here? The Media Lab is amazing. I read Whiplash, which is Joi Ito’s book about the nine principles of the Media Lab, and it really resonated with me. It was a place for misfits. It was a place for people who are curious and who just want to explore and experiment and mix different fields, which is exactly what I’ve been doing before.

From high school, I was very narrow in my focus; at Yale I did Econ and film, so that had a little more edge. After I graduated I insisted on not taking a more conventional path many students from Yale take, so [I] moved back to Kenya and worked on many different projects, got into adventure sports, got into travel more.

Epstein: Your website is full of pictures of you flipping over, skydiving, gymnastics — things that require both strength and courage. 

Mboya: I’d always been an athlete, loved the outdoors.

I remember being in Vietnam; I’d never done a backflip. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to learn how to do this.” But it’s really scary jumping backwards; the fear. Is, you can’t see where you’re going. I remember telling myself, ” Okay, just jump over the fear. Just shut it off and do it. Your body will follow.” I did and I was like, “Oh, that was easy.” It’s not complicated. Most people could do it if they just said, “Okay, I’ll jump.”

It really stuck with me. A lot of decisions I’ve [since] made, that I’m scared of, I think, “Okay, just jump, and your body will follow.” The Media Lab was like that as well.

I really wanted to go there, I just didn’t think there was a place for me. It was like, I’m not techie enough, I’m not anything enough. Applying was, ’just jump,’ you never know what will happen.

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Image from Arwa Mboya

Epstein: Back when you were applying, you wrote about experiencing what applicants to elite schools often call “imposter syndrome.” This is where I want to be, but will they want me?

Mboya: Exactly.

Epstein: Your mother asked what you would do you do if you don’t get in, and you basically said, “I don’t know, I’ll just keep going and apply again next year.”

Mboya: That was my mom’s biggest fear. We were traveling in Australia and she was like, “You’re all in on this school. What happens if it doesn’t work out?” I said, “Well, we’ll try it again or something else.”

I didn’t want to spend two or more years of my life doing a program or working at a job I didn’t enjoy. This field felt like the only place I could really pursue a variety of interests.

It all worked out and was everything I’d wanted and more. [The Media Lab] opened my eyes to so many things I didn’t even know existed. It was a year of learning. 

Epstein: You’re talking about learning about virtual reality?

Mboya: The virtual reality started before that. I’d taken an online course; that’s when I taught myself to program and to engage communities and start some exploratory projects.

Epstein: When you first got involved in VR, you didn’t know how to code it; you taught yourself some of the more technical aspects of it.

Mboya: Exactly. I liked having the ability to do online courses at night that if I had a really strict job I might not have been able to do.

I came [to the Media Lab] with that background already; I was very focused on VR, but then [realized,] “Oh, there’s all these other things that are interesting.” That’s when I started seeing myself more as an interaction and experience designer.

Epstein: You’ve even looked into amusement parks?

Mboya: I’m still using that as a model for my research. I was working at Disney and Imagineering this summer, which was an amazing experience. FYI I had been to a theme park once when I was at 10 – to Disney in Orlando, but I barely remember the experience.

Epstein: I was there with my family a few weeks ago and I barely remember.

Mboya: It’s overwhelming to say the least. But it’s a great space for children. 

Epstein: So you’re contemplating creating a theme park-type experience in Africa?

Mboya: That’s the long-term dream, for now. Slightly different than what you would think of when you think theme parks because there’s not a really structured model for it in Africa right now.

There’s amusement parks; not as much theme parks. I’m thinking about that, but for now my research is really narrowing it down to the root of why I want to do this and VR is the best medium to play with that. Just because it’s cheap, it’s affordable, it’s easy to disseminate in low-income environments where I can’t go and build a theme park, but I can make one in a headset.

Epstein: You’ve written about taking VR headsets around to slums, to areas where children wouldn’t have access to this sort of material.

What’s it like to put a VR headset on a child that’s never seen anything like it, and give them a new experience?

Mboya: It’s amazing. Before I worked at Disney, when I was asking people, should I work there? People who’d worked there before were like, “the best part about working for Disney is working on a project, then seeing it open and seeing the kids’ faces when they come out of the experience.”

I haven’t yet had that with Disney; next year when the project I was working on opens, I’ll feel a little bit of that. 

But when I first took the headset to Kibera [the largest slum in Nairobi, and the largest urban slum in Africa], I had that feeling. I didn’t make any of the content; I downloaded it from national geographic and Disney and [elsewhere]. I just really wanted to see, what is the reception? The excitement, questions and curiosity it sparked in the little children was amazing.

That’s not to say that they don’t have that day to day. The children are incredibly imaginative. But there’s also an expanding of their worlds, because a slum like Kibera, as much as it is an incredibly vibrant and creative place, is an engulfing space. It is hard to even imagine life outside of it, even in other parts of Nairobi. [VR means] opening the world, and not in National Geographic. 

There’s a lot of wildlife which Kenya is known for, but if you don’t have the money to go to the parks, you might never see that yourself. So they’re saying, “Oh, show me the lion, show me [this and that].” Because they know all these animals are theirs and this is home. 

The research question I’m asking is, can these immersive experiences enhance imagination, and allow [children] space to dream and think outside of their present situation? There’s something called the mental poverty trap that people reference a lot. I’m still figuring out the answers, like, ” can this type of frequency but short interactions, imagination labs or experiences help with reducing pressure?” I don’t know, but I want to find out.

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Image via Getty Images / bgblue

Epstein: You wrote, after Black Panther came out, about how you love the movie in many ways, but you want it to get beyond it, and certainly beyond “mineral porn,” or the idea that Africa is important because of its natural resources and not its human resources. You talked about reading the book When We Ruled, a famous history of ancient and Medieval Africa, by the historian Robin Walker. What I took from your writing was: when you open people up to understanding their own history, their own past, it can be tremendously empowering in terms of changing their future.

Mboya: Absolutely. First of all, that book is amazing. Everyone needs a copy, but I think it’s out of print. My grandpa, who’s a fierce academic, made me read it and it inspired me. I’m super educated; I’ve had everything I need to go to good schools and I was still shocked by the content [of the book]. What people don’t understand about the whitewashing in history is that STEM is inherently African.

It is an African concept that has been borrowed and disseminated in the world for hundreds and hundreds of years. I would argue the Nubians knew [Pythagoras’s Theorem] hundreds of years before Pythagoras was even born. Fractal math is everywhere in African culture, in our braids and neighborhoods; it is depicted hundreds of years ago, and not by mistake, there’s evidence that these were calculations that were done.

African women figured out the lunar cycle based on their periods, and they would mark them into these bones called Ishango bones. African women demonstrated understanding prime numbers a long time before that was ever a word.

[These ideas] inspired me. I ran from STEM for a long time; [the history]  encouraged me to dabble, and now I am deep in STEM.

How, through immersive and fun experiences, can you tell that to young children whose histories begin on colonialism, on poverty, who don’t know that Africa once consisted of hundreds and hundreds of amazing and powerful kingdoms before anyone ever came on the shores of the continent? That keeps me going. That excites me a lot.

Epstein: Thank you, that is an inspiring project. 

What I would like to do with this conversation is to pause there, now that we’ve understood some of the context of where you’re coming from and who you are. I’d like to fast forward for a bit, to go into these dramatic events that have happened with you over the past few weeks, at The Media Lab. When we’re done talking more about that we can come back and finish with more on the idea of African civics and imagination in general. Is that okay?

Mboya: Absolutely.

Epstein: Great. I’m glad people reading what we just discussed will get a much fuller sense of you than as just some person who wrote something in The Tech. 

But now I would like you to walk me through it: you’re here. It’s the summertime between your first and your second of the two-year master’s program. All hell breaks loose. 

You had met with Joi Ito before, and had thoughts about his situation. You decided to write it down and then… what? Were you contacted by the Tech or did you reach out to them? 

Mboya: We got this apology email [from Ito]. The apology seemed really watery and confusing to me. One of the messages in the email was something about Joi not witnessing or participating in any of the heinous crimes that Epstein was convicted of or seeing evidence of.

That was a confusing sentence; I think it was a lawyerly sentence. Actually I know Joi wanted to send a better apology, but I think there were a lot of constraints on it. So I responded to the email, that was very public, to all the Media Lab people. I just copy-pasted all the cases on Wikipedia about Jeffrey Epstein, from 2006 actually all the way to 2019.

I asked, “Did you know about any of these?” I didn’t get a response. A day or two later somebody else responded [telling] a story that didn’t sound very good. I responded again saying, “This is a very serious allegation. We need answers, can you respond?”

I still got no response. Based off those two emails that I sent, I already started getting press requests and started getting contacted by Media Lab faculty like, “Oh, I hear you feel very strongly about this, do you want to talk about it?” AlI I had done [at that point] was send two emails.

At that point, I had a Twitter following of 48 and hadn’t even posted on social media about [any of this], and I was already getting press requests because it was the only other voice [at the Media Lab that had been] heard about this, besides the apology.

Then Ethan [Zuckerman, an MIT professor, Director of the Media Lab’s Center for Civic Media, and Arwa’s academic advisor]’s blog goes viral almost, and he’s saying he has resigned. My plans are up in the air because I was planning on staying for a PhD. Ethan has a bit more information for our labs, so I’m like, “Okay, this sounds really shady. We’re still not getting answers.”

Then the New York Times reached out; I commented to them and I think that really started a spiral of people being like, why are you talking to the press? 

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(Photo by Jesse Knish/Getty Images for SXSW)

Epstein: You commented to the New York Times before you wrote your op-ed for The Tech?

Mboya: Yeah. To the Globe [also]. For both articles, they asked what I thought and I can’t remember exactly what I said, but something like, “We need answers,” or, “this is not acceptable.”

That’s when faculty and other people [started] getting upset with me: “Why are you telling the press?”

The problem with talking to The New York Times and the Globe was, they took a fraction of what I was saying. I was like, “I don’t want to be misunderstood. I want to lay out my views very clearly so if anyone else has anything to say, they can refer to my article.”

I reached out to both the people who interviewed me at the Globe and the New York times and ask them if I could write an op-ed on either one of their publications. They were both helpful and sent me to the op-ed editors. The Globe [passed]; the New York Times editor was like, “It’s too local.” I said, “It’s not local.” 

Epstein: I’m glad I’m not the only one who struggles with the New York Times op-ed page.

Mboya: Well, this is my first, I’m not a writer. 

Epstein: You haven’t been, you sure are now.

Mboya: Then the Tech reached out. I wrote it out rapid-fire. I just had all these feelings. like, “Ah, I’ve got to do it.” What was more frustrating than Joi’s silence was the ‘brush it under the rug’ attitude a lot of fellow students and faculty had. I totally get that people were afraid to speak up. I was afraid too. I totally get that people didn’t want to ruin the shine of the Media Lab.

This doesn’t look good for all of us. It’s not fun, it’s not comfortable. We could have done what Harvard did, like, “Wup, we’re not saying anything. Done.” The Tech agreed, they published it, and that was the beginning of the craziness.

Epstein: With the op-ed, or even that first email or two, what was it like for you to be aware that nobody had done anything like that yet? Did your finger hover over the send button on the email?

Mboya: I did the thing where you don’t think and you just jump. 

I did have an impetus to send an email. I wasn’t the first person that emailed; another person sent an email [before mine] saying, “Wasn’t he convicted in 2008?”

Mboya: By him saying that I was like, “Yeah, wasn’t he? And not just 2008…” And I posted it. Then I heard another female student came forward, also risking a lot to say something. The other thing that gave me courage was, at the same time I happened to be reading, Beneath The Tamarind Tree, which is a book by Isha Sesay, a former CNN anchor. 

It’s about the 276 girls that got taken from Chibok in Nigeria and started the Bring Back Our Girls campaign. She did amazing [work in] that book; she details everything happened. She gets interviews from the girls, like from when they get kidnapped, to how some of them escaped, the government response, the activists that pressured the government; she gets a full picture of how many people’s lives are affected.

The parents had no information. These girls are from a really poor village. Nigerians themselves had never heard of it before. The courage that was displayed by so many people in that book, from the girls who escaped, the girls who survived, some for two, four years.

There are still hundreds of girls that have not come back and the government’s shitty, shitty response to it was riling me up. I was already in some kind of mood reading that.

I was like, “Okay, this girl was asked to change her religion at gunpoint and she didn’t do it. She believed that much, that even at gunpoint, even with a risk of rape, with a risk of death, with the risk of all the other nasty things, she stood up for what she believed in.”

Coming soon: in part two of our interview, Arwa and I discuss human trafficking in Africa and in the United States, and how the two phenomena are more closely related than many might imagine; reading (or not) the comments on her The Tech op-ed calling on Joi Ito to resign; her reaction to receiving the crowd-funded “Bold Prize;” her feelings toward Joi Ito today; and how radical imagination can breakthrough systematic oppression, in Africa and beyond.