Alicia Maldonado-Zahra is a scholar-activist fellow working for Goshen College and the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She teaches courses in the peace, justice and conflict studies department, and works with student protest groups to ensure their voices are heard.
She also has gained a reputation within the college as having strong opinions on AI.Through Maldonado-Zahra’s work with the coalition, she has read through research on the environmental impacts of AI data centers. While the coalition is a Christian group, its practices are also rooted in Native American cosmology.
“Mennonites and Native Americans have a lot in common,” she said. “We are land and we are water. … In the stories of creation, God took some dirt and some water and breathed life into a human.”
Maldonado-Zahra said, “When it comes to data centers, we have to understand … it is not just taking our land, but it is also depleting it,”
Environmental impacts also include so-called “infrasound,” ultra-high frequencies that can affect sleeping patterns, and water usage. “I don’t think people understand the gravity of the water crisis we are in as an entire world,” she said.
“The Colorado River is just getting smaller and smaller in water level every single day. Our aquifers are being depleted at insane rates,” Maldonado-Zahra said. “And then we want to build data centers that consume water, and give back toxic water?”
“What’s the phrase? ‘The math is not mathing,’” she said.
Ana Alves Machado, a junior journalism major, over the summer, worked as an intern for the coalition, where she worked under Maldonado-Zahra.
Alves Machado spoke highly of Maldonado-Zahra: “She’s very determined. … She’s very passionate.”
Alves Machado has her own critical thoughts on AI. “Nowadays, it’s really hard to go around it,” she said.
Maldonado-Zahra agreed with Alves Machado’s opinion on the scope of AI. “People say it can cure cancer, well, cure cancer already. … Keep it within those very few, select places that are doing this very important work,” Maldonado-Zahra said.
“If I start listing everything that can go wrong with AI, we’re going to be here forever,” Alves Machado said.
Maldonado-Zahra was highly critical of the college’s response to and utilization of AI. “I think it’s dangerous to try and keep up with the Joneses. I also think it’s a contradiction to who we are as a Mennonite institution,” she said. “Mennonites are radical resisters. Let’s lean into that.”
As the club adviser to the Peace and Justice Collective, Maldonado-Zahra said that she supports student action against data centers. “The roots of Mennonites are very radical. How do we embrace that same radical resistance to empire?” she said.
This attitude towards AI has not always been well received within the college. “I have very strong convictions about this. And I think that maybe scares some people,” she said.
“That might deter people from a conversation, which is fine with me,” she said.
She then cited Matthew 10:14 which reads, “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.”
