The Justice Forum: Race and Justice – Past, Present and Future

The third in a series of roundtable discussions about criminal justice in the United States, the Center for Justice at Columbia presents Race and Justice: Past, Present and Future. The most recent incidences of police killings of unarmed Black men have ignited a national discussion about race and our justice system. However, the drivers of America’s current state of mass incarceration such as minimum mandatory sentencing, the war on drugs, and stop and frisk have always disproportionately impacted people of color. This roundtable examines the history of race-based injustices in America, how those practices have informed the criminal justice system today, and what implications they have for the future.

The roundtable features Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad; historian, author and media commentator who is the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Glenn E. Martin, a national leader and criminal justice reform advocate and founder of JustLeadershipUSA, who spent six years in prison and has written for the New York Times, and is a frequent guest commentator on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry; Valerie Purdie-Vaughns,  Director of the Laboratory of Intergroup Relations and the Social Mind,  Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University, core faculty for the Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program (RWJ Columbia-site), and research fellow at the Institute for Research on African-American Studies (IRAAS) at Columbia; and Thenjiwe McHarris, Human Rights at Home Campaign Director, who has worked with a number of social justice organizations and movements in the US and is helping to establish a global activist collective for organizers engaged in movement building work around the world. 

The roundtable is moderaterd by Columbia Dean of Social Science and Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies Alondra Nelson, who authored Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination (University of Minnesota Press).

About The Justice Forum

Issues of mass incarceration and justice are complex and cut across many systems, structures, cultures, and communities. As such, the efforts and dialogues around changing the current criminal justice system must also cross disciplines, structures, cultures, and communities. The Justice Forum provides a space for leading thinkers in justice work from a variety of disciplines and experiences to collectively examine some of the most critical justice issues today. The Forum seeks to create a space for cross pollination of ideas and perspectives and contribute towards the efforts to rethink our current policies and practices in criminal justice.

Cosponsors
The Center for Justice at Columbia University
Heyman Center for the Humanities
Center for the Study of Law and Culture
Institute for Research in African American Studies

Participants

Glenn E. Martin, Criminal Justice Reform Advocate

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Executive Director, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, Director of the Laboratory of Intergroup Relations and the Social Mind, Columbia University, Associate Professor of Psychology, Columbia University

Thenjiwe McHarris, activist and Human Rights at Home Campaign Director

Moderator

Alondra Nelson, Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, Columbia University