Friday, March 18, 2022

Q and A with the experts: The cyber threat to Ukraine's history

The University of Waterloo has a number of experts available to speak about the issues of the day.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly claimed Ukraine is not a country. History says otherwise. Ian Milligan is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo whose research focuses on ways historians can use web archives, as well as the impact of digital sources on historical practice. He weighs in on Russia trying to erase Ukrainian history and what Ukraine can do to stop it.

Why is data a potential casualty of this invasion?

War is bad for information preservation. This is often just a casualty of conflict, affecting digital and physical information alike. The destruction of the Ivankiv museum near Kyiv is an example of this, where priceless paintings and artifacts were destroyed. Servers are in some cases even more vulnerable: power loss, connectivity loss and beyond, and the information can disappear from the Internet in an instant. Without proper backups, or even if off-site backups are somewhere else in the country, you can imagine them being lost, given the scale of the Ukrainian conflict. The physicality of data can never be forgotten. The cloud seems like a magical thing, but of course, the cloud is just a bunch of servers.

Sometimes there is the deliberate deletion of information in a conflict. During the invasion of the Crimea in 2014, for example, gunmen seized the Crimean Center for Investigative Journalism's offices. Staff were worried about the integrity of their website and contacted staff at the Internet Archive to say that they needed their material downloaded immediately. Within hours, copies were being saved by the Internet Archive.  

Finally, there are sometimes also individuals who want to delete evidence of wrongdoing in a conflict zone. Perhaps the most famous example of this was the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014. Shortly after its shoot-down, but before the crash was public knowledge, militants claimed they had successfully shot down a large plane. While they quickly moved to delete this post and evidence of it, the Internet Archive had already archived it.

What type of data is at risk?

Everything. This isn't hyperbole. Newspaper archives, personal webpages, government webpages, and beyond. Digital infrastructure is fragile.

What are the short- and long-term implications of data being missing or gone? 

Short term, there are implications around our understanding of what's going on in Ukraine. Local journalists on the ground, newspapers, all of this provide crucial corridors of information to those of us who are not in Ukraine. There is also an ongoing propaganda battle being fought around the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government and/or the legitimacy of the Russian invasion, and taking this sort of information offline has dramatic implications for the global understanding of this context. 

Long term, this all forms the historical record that in 20, 30, 40 years we will use to try to understand what happened. For example, social historians may use web data to understand what it was like living in Kyiv or Kharkiv during the onslaught or the trauma of fleeing one's home and family in such a terrible conflict. Political historians may want to use official digital records to explore policy decisions. Political scientists, economists, sociologists and others will use this data to answer various pressing research questions. While there have been many wars and conflicts in the digital age, Ukraine is developed and connected enough that the digital record left behind by the conflict will be exhaustive in nature.

How would they go about re-assembling this data if Russia leaves Ukraine?

Reconstructing digital data that's been archived outside of the country is difficult. Some of the data may have been saved, but it would be held by institutions such as the Internet Archive. But those links are permanent and long-lasting, and I suspect that there might be opportunities to work with cultural organizations to repatriate the data and bring it back home. But, without a doubt, there is a long road ahead.

Ian Milligan is Associate Vice-President, Research Oversight and Analysis in the University of Waterloo's Office of Research. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of History. In his service role, Milligan provides campus leadership for research oversight and compliance, as well as helps to coordinate data management strategies and bibliometrics. Milligan's primary research focus is on how historians can use web archives, as well as the impact of digital sources on historical practice more generally. 

Student Course Perception survey launches

By Dr. Sonya Buffone, Director of Teaching Assessment Processes.

The new Student Course Perception survey (SCP) is launching this term. Members of the Waterloo community have been hard at work to revamp the system of collecting student input since 2014, as part of our response to concerns about equity and efficacy with the existing surveys and their use. The SCP will be one instrument in a holistic system of teaching assessment that is currently in development; further information about other instruments (peer review and teaching dossiers will be released later this year).

Resources

Visit the new Teaching Assessment Processes website for:

• Frequently asked questions;
• The core survey questions;
• Resources for instructors reviewing their own SCP scores; and
• Resources for academic administrators reviewing SCP scores

 The Centre for Teaching Excellence has also developed some guidelines for instructors: Teaching Effectiveness & the Student Course Perceptions Survey 

Your input

This is the first step in a massive institutional culture shift that will require ongoing consultation and communication. Later this year, instructors and academic administrators (e.g., department Chairs) will be invited to share concerns and challenges via a survey. Your feedback will be critical to fine-tuning processes and resources.

Important concerns

We know that there continue to be concerns around a number of things, including biases in SCP data. We will be able to assess associations between SCP scores and race this term, using data now collected by the university, and will be looking at this analysis across a couple of terms. We will also continue to assess associations with other variables, like gender.

Contact Dr. Sonya Buffone, Director, Teaching Assessment Processes with any questions or concerns.

World Water Day lecture looks at the legacy of environmental racism

A message from the Water Institute.

Join the Water Institute on March 22, for United Nations World Water Day, celebrating water and raising awareness of the 2 billion people currently living without access to safe water. A core focus of World Water Day is to inspire action towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030.

One of this year’s events will feature presentations from two high-profile advocates who are leading community-level resistance movements against environmental racism followed by an interactive, student-led discussion.

Dr. Ingrid Waldron is the 2022 Water Institute RBC Distinguished Lecturer, HOPE Chair in Peace and Health at McMaster University and author/producer of the book and Netflix documentary There’s Something in the Water. Dr. Waldron will examine the legacy of environmental racism in Canada by highlighting cases in Indigenous and Black communities, the grassroots mobilization and resistance activities communities have engaged in, and the recent "wins" that have resulted from these efforts. 

Monica Lewis-Patrick is the 2022 University of Waterloo Jarislowsky Fellow, co-founder of We the People of Detroit, and known in the environmental justice community as The Water Warrior. Ms. Lewis-Patrick will describe how five Black women leaders in Detroit developed a network of volunteers to fight austerity measures and present a critical counter narrative to show the socio- economic consequences of these policies on access to clean water in Detroit and across the USA.

Register for World Water Day celebrations on the event website.

Voting now open for GreenHouse People's Choice Awards

A message from St. Paul's GreenHouse.

Each term, the  GreenHouse social impact incubator at St. Paul’s University College hosts its Social Impact Showcase. It celebrates the amazing work GreenHouse students accomplish through their journeys of social innovation and entrepreneurship, while also providing an opportunity for students to acquire seed funding for their ideas. This term, GreenHouse will also reach a significant milestone as they celebrate the 25^th Social Impact Showcase

While the initial adjudication decisions have already been made, there is still time to vote for your favourite social venture in the People’s Choice Awards.

The People’s Choice Award will be given to the social venture with the most online votes, alongside an additional $1,000 in funding. Some of the problems the 10 ventures pitching this term aim to address include: encouraging Indigenous youth to become leaders in climate justice, digital volunteer mentorship and community growth tools, creating and improving employment opportunities for marginalized youth in Waterloo Region and helping individuals reduce their environmental footprint.

Voting opens today, March 18, and closes Monday, March 21 at 11:59 p.m. The winners of the People’s Choice Awards will be announced on Thursday, March 24 at 5:00 p.m. via the GreenHouse Instagram account and in person at the Social Impact Showcase.

Learn more about the 10 ventures and vote for GreenHouse’s People’s Choice Awards today.

Friday's notes

Waterloo alumnus Bridget King celebrated Holi with children during a co-op term in Chandigarh, India. Read her story, "The Experience of a Lifetime," on Waterloo News.

Today marks the Hindu festival Holi, also known as the festival of colours, which is celebrated mainly on the Indian subcontinent and around the world in the South Asian diaspora. Holi celebrates the start of the spring season and is known for large public gatherings involving coloured paint powder and other traditions. There will be a colour ceremony at Kitchener's Shri Ram Dham temple on Sunday, March 20 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Sunday, March 20 also marks the holiday Nowruz, the start of the Persian New Year. One of the world's oldest holidays, Nowruz, which means "new day," is celebrated around the time of the spring equinox.

The School of Accounting & Finance is hosting two Master of Taxation (MTax) information sessions today and tomorrow. The first is a virtual information session at 1:00 p.m. where you can learn about the MTax advantage, and the second is being held in-person on Saturday, March 19 at 10:00 a.m. in the MTax Centre in downtown Toronto. To register visit www.mtax.ca.