Can we retell history and write an encyclopedia
as if all people are equally valuable?

Yes.

On January 13, I invited to Wikimedia NYC’s celebration of the 18th birthday of Wikipedia to address this question, which I answer strongly in the affirmative. I talk about how long-running changes in the academy have created a font of high quality, well-sourced knowledge about marginalized people: women, indigenous people, Afro-descendant communities, sexual minorities, disabled people, working-class and poor people, and on and on. The challenge now—at least for Wikipedia—is to share this knowledge with the widest possible public in free form. But to do so, we will have draw new maps of geography, history, and our own collective writing process that put those who have been left out back on the map.

Here’s the talk in video form thanks to the Internet Society of New York:

I gave a longer version of this talk at Worlds of Wikimedia in Sydney in June 2019. Here are the slides from that talk.