Martin Luther King, Jr.
Faculty Award Previous Recipients
The New York University Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award is sponsored by The Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Student Diversity Programs and Services (a division of Student Affairs), and the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs. Its purpose is to recognize faculty members who exemplify the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. through their positive impact within the classroom and the greater NYU community. NYU students nominate faculty members who are considered and then chosen by the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award Committee.
2013
At New York University, Professor Chazan served from 1987 to 1997 as chair of the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. He also
served as the founding Director of the Morse Academic Plan from 1995 through 2000. He now co-directs three new NYU programs: The Doctoral
Program in Education and Jewish Studies sponsored by the Steinhardt School of Education and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies;
the Double Masters Program in Education and Jewish Studies of the Steinhardt School and the Skirball Department; and the Double Masters Program in
Jewish Non-Profit Management sponsored by the Wagner School of Public Service and the Skirball Department.
Professor Chazan is a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Medieval Academy of America. He has been awarded honorary doctorates
by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and Gratz College and the Career Achievement
Award for Historical Studies by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.
Professor Chugh has a particular interest in how social science research and management education can contribute to leadership development in the
education reform movement. For example, she has worked with the KIPP charter school network since 2006 in facilitating the leadership capabilities
of their current and future school leaders, as well as their leaders of school leaders. She has been privileged to work with over 500 KIPP leaders
through which she has indirectly touched over 45,000 students.
Prior to becoming a professor, Dr. Chugh worked in both professional services and line manager roles at Morgan Stanley, Sibson & Company, Time Inc.,
Scholastic Inc., and Merrill Lynch. She received a B.A. from Cornell University where she earned a double major in Psychology and Economics and
served as a two-time co-captain of the Varsity Tennis Team (1990). She also received an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School (1994), and a PhD in
Organizational Behavior/Social Psychology from Harvard University (2006).
In addition to her clinical work, Professor Das engages in scholarship on deportation and detention issues, particularly at the intersection of
immigration and criminal law. Her recent articles include Immigration Detention: Information Gaps and Institutional Barriers to Reform (U. Chicago
Law Review, forthcoming) and The Immigration Penalties of Criminal Convictions: Resurrecting Categorical Analysis in Immigration Law (NYU Law Review,
2011). She is a member and subcommittee co-chair for the New York State Bar Association’s Special Committee on Immigration Representation and the
New York City Bar Association’s Criminal Courts Committee, and has co-authored reports for both organizations. Professor Das also serves as the
co-chair of the Board of Directors for Families for Freedom, a network of immigrants and families facing deportation and their allies. Prior to
joining the Immigrant Rights Clinic, Professor Das was an attorney and a Soros Justice Fellow with the Immigrant Defense Project, where she engaged
in strategic advocacy and litigation to address the immigration penalties associated with drug convictions and participation in alternatives to
incarceration. Prior to her work at the Immigrant Defense Project, Professor Das clerked for Hon. Kermit V. Lipez of the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the First Circuit.
Professor Das received her J.D. from NYU School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholar and a recipient of the
Vanderbilt Medal, Hy Frankel Award in Law and Social Welfare, and PSLawNet National Pro Bono Publico Award. Professor Das is also a graduate of
Harvard University (A.B. in Government) and NYU Wagner School of Public Service (M.P.A.). She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband
Nafees Tejani.
His present research is focused on Religious Leadership, Civil Discourse and Democracy in the Public Square: Advancing the Positive Role of
Faith in America by training young religious leaders to use their religious voices for constructive civic engagement. He also invests through
research and programs in helping sustain minority communities by engaging their Baby Boomer cohorts to consider encore careers and public service.
His recent RCLA study on Baby Boomers, Public Service and Minority Communities helped promote a focus on the civic role of Baby Boomers.
Professor Elcott teaches community organizing and social justice advocacy as well as a seminar on the future of Jewish communal life. He was
formerly the Vice-President of the National Center for Learning and Leadership, a think-tank tasked with rethinking contemporary community and
civic obligation. As Interreligious Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee and as the Executive Director of the Israel Policy Forum,
he has addressed a wide array of domestic and international public policy issues and has built interfaith and interethnic coalitions to address
Middle East peace, immigration reform, civil liberties and workers’ rights. Professor Elcott has served on a number of civic boards including
American Jewish World Service, Center for New Community, Clay Arts Center and the international team implementing the U.N. Rights of the Child
Resolution for faith communities. He has written A Sacred Journey: The Jewish Quest for a Perfect World and numerous articles and monographs on
power and war, minority civic engagement, and cross cultural pluralism. He has represented the Jewish community in interfaith settings in Europe,
South America and Asia.
A sixth-generation New Yorker growing up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, Professor Guerriero has never strayed far from her first love, politics.
She has participated actively in the New Era Democrats political club in Brooklyn and the Congress of Italian American Organizations (CIAO) for
twenty years. Her political mentor, Democratic political activist Mary Sansone, 97, instilled in her a sense of the political power of community
and the almighty power of people’s voices. Professor Guerriero has participated tirelessly on numerous political campaigns over these last two
decades. Dr. Guerriero also worked for the Archdiocese of New York for close to a decade, as the Director of Strategic Planning for Edward Cardinal
Egan and as Director of Government Relations for Catholic Charities. As Associate Director for the Pope Benedict XVI Papal Visit in 2008, Professor
Guerriero managed the travel and safety of hundreds of thousands of people in and out of New York City as well as successfully networked between
the needs of the New York City government, the Vatican, the Archdiocese and the Secret Service. A lifelong athlete and Division I college athlete,
Professor Guerriero also put herself through graduate school as a Sports Reporter for the Staten Island Advance. In addition to teaching at NYU,
Dr. Guerriero has been a Senior Adjunct at Teachers College for the last twelve years.
The oldest of six children raised in a family of teachers and firefighters, Professor Guerriero grew up understanding the importance of taking
care of others. Today, Dr. Guerriero is taking her lifelong call to service to the next step and running for citywide office, that of the Public
Advocate of the City of New York. Professor Guerriero lives on the Lower East Side with her husband, Anthony and their three-year-old daughter,
Annarose.
Professor Warren builds on this ideal in her other scholarly and popular writings, as the costs of failing, to-date, to achieve land health and the
inclusive justices it comprises, ripple across the globe with climate change. She also co-labors with the local "NYU Sustainability" community and
with 350.org, a climate justice organization. 350.org is part of a now-expanding moral coalition aiming to liberate participatory democracy and earth
from shared bondage within a system of moneyed special interests. As part of that work, under the leadership of NYU students, along with NYU
alumni and other colleagues, Professor Warren is most recently involved with building NYU Divest: Go Fossil Free! This is part of a wide spreading
national campaign to stop universities from subsidizing the "rogue fossil fuel industry" that is altering the whole living earth in ways that
foreclose dreams of their students and people everywhere. While pursuing his academic interests, Shankar has also been actively involved in the private sector. After completing his PhD, he worked in a hedge fund in New York City
and in 2008 left the fund to co-found a health informatics company for which he currently serves as the Chief Marketing Officer and Director of US Operations. His company develops
and implements customized, research-enabling software and database systems for dental and medical health centers in India, Africa, the Middle East and North America.
Currently, his company is the largest dental EMR in India.
Shankar also co-founded and serves as CEO of yourlist.org, an online platform to revolutionize the way we communicate with our government by making the political process more
transparent and accountable. Yourlist.org was alpha-launched last Spring, and has been selected for the semi-finals of the NYU Social Venture Entrepreneurship competition.
His research and teaching interests include immigration policy; intersections of race, religion and politics; the American Presidency; financial regulation; quantitative
analysis; research design; and public policy. Shankar graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Rutgers College in 2002 with a BA (Honors) and BS (Honors) in Finance, Political Science and French. Joe serves as the Artistic/Education Director for Learning Stages, an award-winning youth theatre company in southern New Jersey. He also regularly consults for YoungArts,
the signature program of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. From 2003-2009 Joe served as the curriculum consultant for Dance Theater Workshop's schooltime series,
creating curriculum guides for twenty dance and theatre productions, most of which were premieres. Prior to joining New York University School of Law, she was an Associate Professor of Law at Stanford. When she joined Stanford’s faculty in 1991, she was the first woman
of color hired on the tenure track. While at Stanford, Professor Taylor-Thompson received the John Hurlburt Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Outstanding Teaching Award.
Since joining the School of Law, she has taught the Criminal and Community Defense Clinic, Criminal Law, and she has co-taught Criminal Litigation, Evidence: Litigation Planning
and the Juvenile Rights Clinic. Through an interactive approach to teaching, she helps students bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Before entering academia, Taylor-Thompson spent a decade working in the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. While there, she held various supervisory
positions, ultimately rising to the position of Director at the age of 32. For three years, she ran the office of 75 lawyers and 75 staff. Yu Zhang, PhD, Assistant Professor, College of Dentistry Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean of Tisch School Karen King, Associate Professor of Mathematics Education Robert Leibson Hawkins, Assistant Professor of Social Work Yaw Nyarko, Professor of Economics, and former Vice Provost for Globalization and Multicultural Affairs
Robert Chazan, Ph.D., S. H. and Helen R. Scheuer Professor of Jewish History in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
at New York University, has published widely in medieval Jewish history. His most recent books include: The Jews of Medieval Western
Christendom (Cambridge, 2006); Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe Cambridge, 2010). Professor Chazan has published numerous articles
in scholarly journals in the United States, England, France, Germany, Spain, and Israel.
Dolly Chugh, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Management and Organizations Department at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
She teaches the “Leadership in Organizations” and “Collaboration, Conflict, and Negotiations” courses to MBA students, giving particular attention
to issues of social justice and society-enhancing outcomes. Trained as a social psychologist, Professor Chugh’s research focuses on implicit bias,
discrimination, and ethics, and has been published in journals such as Social Justice Research, Psychological Science, American Economic Review,
Harvard Business Review, and the European Review of Social Psychology, as well as chapters in edited volumes such as Diversity at Work and Conflicts
of Interest.
Alina Das, J.D., is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Law and Supervising Attorney at the New York University School of Law.
Professor Das is Co-Director of the NYU Immigrant Rights Clinic, a leading institution in local and national struggles for immigrant rights. She
and her students represent immigrants and community organizations in litigation at the agency, federal court, and Supreme Court level, and in
immigrant rights campaigns at the local, state, and national level. Their current cases and campaigns address issues involving defenses to
mandatory deportation and detention, the advancement of immigrants’ constitutional rights, challenges to local enforcement of federal immigration
law, the promotion of labor rights for immigrant workers, advocacy for access to education for immigrant youth, and the exposure of detention
conditions and the need for reform.
David Elcott, Taub Professor of Practice in Public Service and Leadership at the Wagner School of Public Service, has spent the last twenty-five
years at the intersection of community building, the search for a theory of cross-boundary engagement, and interfaith and ethnic activism.
Trained in political psychology and Middle East affairs at Columbia University and Judaic studies at the American Jewish University, Dr. Elcott
is the Taub Professor of Practice in Public Service and Leadership at the Wagner School of Public Service at NYU, associated faculty at the
Research Center for Leadership in Action and Faculty Director of Wagner's Executive MPA program.
Catherine Guerriero, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor in Steinhardt, is proud to say that she has spent most of her professional career never far from NYU.
After receiving her MPA from the Robert Wagner School of Public Service at 22-years-old, she began her PhD in Educational Administration at the
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development the next year after taking a course with Professor Terry Astuto that changed her life.
Through most of her 20’s, she worked in assistantships and graduate positions at Steinhardt before graduating with honors. She has been an adjunct
professor for the last five years at Steinhardt, teaching courses in education politics and internship seminars.
Julianne Lutz Warren, Ph.D., is a Professor of Environmental Studies and NEH Summer Institutes. With roots in the Catskills, Professor Warren received
her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in wildlife ecology and conservation biology. She teaches at NYU in the areas of
environmental studies and also has served as core faculty for two NEH Summer Institutes exploring ideas about human relationships with the
rest-of-nature and the relationships between science and the humanities. Professor Warren is author of Aldo Leopold's Odyssey. This book traces,
within the context of the historic American conservation movement, the unfolding of intellectual-activist Leopold's (1887-1948) concept of land
health. His vision of land-health--respecting the long-evolved capacity of ecological communities to self-renew--contrasts with a culture of
domination. Land health weaves scientific understandings into a moral narrative of non-violence and intelligent compassion. Because of Earth's
interconnectedness, it encompasses the whole diverse world-of-life, including all its people, living in creative concert.
2012
Pedro Noguera, Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, is an urban sociologist whose scholarship and research
focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions in the urban environment. He holds faculty appointments in the departments of Teaching
and Learning and Humanities and Social Sciences at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Development, as well as in the Department of Sociology at New York University.
Dr. Noguera is also the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and the co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Globalization and Education
in Metropolitan Settings (IGEMS). In 2008, he was appointed by the Governor of New York to serve on the State University of New York Board of Trustees.
Dr. Shankar Prasad, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Public Administration, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, completed his PhD in Political Science from Brown
University in 2006 with a focus on political learning within immigrant communities in the United States. As part of his doctoral work, Shankar conducted a national survey and
numerous focus groups across the country to develop a detailed understanding of the process of partisan affiliation among newly entering communities. Shankar's dissertation
"Red, Brown and Blue: The Political Behavior of Asian Indian Americans" analyzes the politicization of the Indian American community and suggests that religion is a primary
factor in explaining the disproportionate association of this group with the Democratic Party. His dissertation has expanded to other research projects which focus on comparing
the influence of religion on politics among Latinos, African Americans and other minority groups. He recently presented a paper at Columbia Law School on gendered perspectives
on political learning and a book chapter on this subject is forthcoming. He is also currently working on publishing his dissertation.
Dr. Deirdre A. Royster, Associate Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Science, joins the Department of Sociology and Wagner Graduate School of Public Service as an
Associate Professor. She earned her B.S. in Sociology and Psychology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (1987) and her M.A. and Ph. D. from Johns
Hopkins University (1991, 1996). Previously, she taught at UMass-Amherst (1996-2001), where she was an award-winning teacher, and most recently at the College of William and
Mary, where she chaired the Department of Sociology (2003-06) and directed the Center for the Study of Inequality (2004-08) and the Black Studies Program (2007-08).
Joseph M. Salvatore, Clincial Assistant Professor of Educational Theatre, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, is a playwright and director and
has been on the faculty of the Program in Educational Theatre since Fall 2002. He teaches courses in acting, directing, Shakespeare, applied theatre, new play development,
and theatre pedagogy. Since August 2005, Joe has also served as a Faculty Fellow in Residence in the Third Avenue North residence hall. Recent original plays include open heart
(FringeNYC 2010) and III (FringeNYC 2008-Overall Excellence Award for Outstanding Play). Past directing projects for NYU include Plays from the Provincetown Players,The Class
Project, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, As You Like It, Polaroid Stories, Cartographic Musings, Measure for Measure, Richard II, transfigured, Romeo and Juliet, Pericles, and
5 X Wilder: Plays from the Seven Deadly Sins Cycle by Thornton Wilder.
Kim Taylor-Thompson, J.D., Professor of Clinical Law, School of Law, has recently returned from leave, having served for three years as the Chief Executive Officer of Duke
Corporate Education, a global organization ranked by Financial Times as the #1 provider of customized executive education. In that role, she worked with Fortune 500 companies
and governments in developed and emerging markets and taught in numerous programs focusing on translating and executing strategy, developing strategies to enter new markets
and leading in complex environments.
2011
Rogan Kersh, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, has been a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in Health Policy, a Mellon
Fellow in the Humanities, and Luce Scholar. His publications include Dreams of a More Perfect Union (Cornell University Press, 2001), a study of U.S.
political history; Medical Malpractice and the U.S. Health Care System (Cambridge University Press, 2006); and articles and op-ed pieces in numerous academic
and popular journals. He is also a frequent television and radio commentator on U.S. political issues. Professor Kersh's professional activities include
ongoing work with Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, where he was a Distinguished Fellow in 2006, and board memberships of the Critical Review
Foundation and Nancy Susan Reynolds Foundation. In 2008 he was named a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Adminstration. At Wagner, Prof. Kersh is
working with Dean Schall, the faculty, and the administration to recruit faculty, develop curriculum, and to attract, train and prepare the next generation
of public service leaders who can accomplish sustainable impact on problems of great social importance. He teaches three classes per year while he is
Associate Dean and continues his research activities, which currently focus on the politics of obesity and on interest-group lobbying. Prof. Kersh received
his Ph.D. in political science from Yale, and his B.A. from Wake Forest University.
Dr. Jaqueline Mattis is a Professor of Applied Psychology and the Chair of the Applied Psychology Department. Her research focuses on the role of
religiosity and spirituality in the lives of African American adults. Dr. Mattis is particularly interested in the ways in which religion and spirituality
inform prosocial development and positive psychological outcomes (e.g., altruism, volunteerism, civic engagement, optimism, and forgiveness) among African
Americans.
Crystal Parikh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. She
received her Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Maryland at College Park. Her areas of research and teaching include Asian
American studies, Latino studies, Critical Race Theory, theories of gender and sexuality, and twentieth-century American literature. Professor Parikh has
recently published An Ethics of Betrayal: The Politics of Otherness in Emergent U.S. Literature and Culture with Fordham UP and is currently working on a new
book about human rights discourses and contemporary U.S. writers of color.
William Parrish is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Construction Management at NYU, and the President and CEO of Noble Strategy, LLC. Mr. Parrish started Noble Strategy as a one-man consultancy in 2002. Within three years, he had forged strategic partnerships and won several state agency contracts for construction management, based on his previous 20 years in construction management. Mr. Parrish teaches Managing Municipal Contracts and Claims, Business Development and Management, and Operating and Managing a
Construction Organization for the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate. Mr. Parrish earned a BS degree at Hampton University in 1989, and an MS at Polytechnic University of New York in 1999.
Nikhil Pal Singh is an Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History and Director of the Graduate Program in American Studies at NYU. Singh is the author of, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Harvard, 2004), winner of the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians and the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. He has published on topics ranging from US liberalism to the role of race in US foreign policy. Climin’ Jacob’s Ladder: The Black Freedom Movement Writings of Jack O’Dell, a collection of the writings of the legendary civil rights activist was recently published by the University of California Press. He is working on a new book, Exceptional Empire: Pluralism and Sovereignty in the Long War.
2010
Renee Blake is an Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Dr. Blake conducts research on Urban Sociolinguistics, African American Vernacular English, and languages and cultures of the Caribbean. Dr. Blake has won numerous fellowships and honors including the Dorothy Danforth Dissertation Grant (1995), and the Graduate Fellowship from Stanford University (1994). Additionally, Dr. Blake has published in journals such as the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, and Language Variation and Change.
Dana Burde, Assistant Professor of International Education, served as a visiting assistant professor at Steinhardt from 2007-2009. She conducts research on education and humanitarian action in countries and regions affected by conflict. Dr. Burde is currently studying education in emergency situations, and recently employed a randomized trial in Afghanistan to examine the impact of community-based schools on children's educational outcomes and life chances. This work is supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the US Institute of Peace, and the Weikart Family Foundation. Burde has published articles in Current Issues in Comparative Education and Forced Migration Review, and has consulted on a variety of international education programs in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Pakistan, and Central Asia. She earned her Ph.D. in comparative education with a concentration in political science from Columbia University. Beyond the university, Dr. Burde’s work as an international education consultant includes assessment and evaluation of post-conflict programs in the Balkans; civil society building in the Caucasus; refugee education in Pakistan; and research on parent and community participation in community schools in Central Asia, Central America and Mali.
Ellen McGrath is a Clinical Associate professor of Public Administration and currently serves as an adjunct professor in the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. She has been a faculty member at the University of California Irvine Medical School for the past twelve years, in addition to the University of Rochester School of Medicine for the past four years. Dr. McGrath primarily works as a clinical psychologist and as the Head of the Behavioral Section of the La Palestra Weight Management Program. She was the director of the Outpatient Eating Disorders Clinic at University of California Irvine Medical School for the past five years. In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. McGrath works as a coach and consultant for a number of Fortune 500 companies and their executives, as well as family owned businesses and individual executives. Listed by three magazines as one of the top therapists in the country, Dr. McGrath was honored again in 2001 as the Outstanding Psychologist of the Year by the Psychotherapy Division of the American Psychological Association. In 1995, she was chosen "Business Woman of the Month" by Orange Coast Magazine. She was selected to be the retreat leader for the Women's Young President Organization (YPO), a group of female company presidents and CEOs who are interested in successful coaching strategies.
Robert Teranishi is Associate Professor of Higher Education at New York University and Principal Investigator for The National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, a project funded by the College Board and USA Funds. He is also a faculty affiliate with The Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy and a consultant for the Ford Foundation’s "Advancing Higher Education Access and Success" initiative. Prior to joining the faculty at NYU, Teranishi was a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. Teranishi's research is broadly focused on race, ethnicity, and the stratification of college opportunity. His work has been influential to federal, state, and institution policy related to college access and affordabiity. Teranishi has provided congressional testimony regarding the Higher Education Reauthorization Act and No Child Left Behind, informed state policy decisions related to selective college admissions, and his research has been solicited to inform U.S. Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and school desegregation.
Anthony Thompson is a Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law. He teaches courses related to criminal law and civil litigation. His scholarship focuses on race, offender reentry, and criminal justice issues. Professor Thompson earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1985. In his recent book published by NYU Press “Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities,” he takes an in-depth look at the issues of Reentry, Race and Politics. He analyzes the media’s involvement in shaping public policy as well as the role that race plays in reentry. Professor Thompson has also designed and developed the first course in the country focusing on offender reentry. The Offender Reentry Clinic explores, in depth, the legal, social and political impediments to the smooth reintegration of individuals back into their communities after periods of incarceration. Courtroom advocacy, legislative advocacy and media advocacy are all addressed in this course. In an expansive article titled, "Stopping the Usual Suspects: Race and the Fourth Amendment," Thompson demonstrates that the Court's treatment of racially motivated searches and seizures is counter to the intention of the authors of the Fourth Amendment. In fact, he argues that the amendment was intended to protect minorities from selective search and seizure. Considered a substantial contribution to the field, it has been frequently cited by legal scholars and the media when exploring race and the criminal justice system.
2009
Christina Marín is an Assistant Professor in the Program in Educational Theatre where she teaches courses in Applied Theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed, Research Methodology, and Diversity. At NYU she also supervises the Master of Arts in Educational Theatre for Colleges and Communities. Her research interests include the employment of theatre pedagogy in Human Rights Education. She has published in national and international journals such as Gender Forum, Youth Theatre Journal, and STAGE of the Art. Her work has been presented at the annual conferences of the American Alliance for Theatre & Education, the American Educational Research Association, the American Society for Theatre Research, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, and Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed. She has worked in rural, private boarding schools; behavioral health & prevention agencies; urban institutions; after-school settings; group homes; national leadership conferences; and intergenerational programs, in which university students have worked side by side with her to facilitate workshops with high school students. She has also conducted workshops in Colombia, Ecuador, South Africa, Ireland, Singapore, and Mexico.
J. Ward Regan has a Ph.D. in Labor and Cultural History. He teaches history and philosophy at New York University. He has been part of the New York Council for the Humanities Speakers in the Humanities Program since 2003. He has worked in off-Broadway theater and independent film in New York for twenty years. His one-man show, A Paranoid's Guide to History, recently concluded a successful run off-Broadway.He helped found and was the first president of UAW 7902, the union that representing part-time faculty at New York University and the New School University. He recently joined the Progressive Strategies Group, a New York based political consulting firm as its Director of Communications.
Walter Stafford, (1940 - 2008) Professor of Public Policy and Planning, taught courses on public policy, economic development, human rights, and race and class. His research focused on race relations, race and planning, labor markets, gender issues, and economic development. His publications included Race, Gender and Welfare Reform: The Need for Targeted Support(State of Black America 2003), Women of Color in New York City: Still Invisible in Policy. Professor Stafford worked in the U.S. Senate, the National Urban League, and was a senior researcher with the Community Service Society of New York. Professor Stafford earned his Ph.D. in public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.
Ella Turenne is an artist, activist and educator. Her teaching and research interests include art and social change, the prison industrial complex, Caribbean arts and literature, theatre and media studies. She is currently an instructor in the Gallatin School's Community Learning Initiative and Director of Special Projects at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts where she develops initiatives in civic engagement and diversity. Her work has been published in various anthologies including Letters From Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out and Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees, which was nominated for a 2007 NAACP Image Award. She is also the editor of a volume of visual art and poetry commemorating the Haitian revolution entitled revolution|revolisyon|révolution 1804 - 2004: An Artistic Commemoration of the Haitian Revolution. Her most recent academic chapter on murals and prisons was published in Searching for America by Cambridge Scholars Press. As a filmmaker, Ella's work has been an official selection of various national film festivals as well as the Montreal International Haitian Film Festival where her short film woodshed was nominated for Best Short Film. She recently became a winner of the HBO Who's On Your Black List contest for her entry on Black women's' hair politics and journeys. As an activist, she is an advisory board member of the Blackout Arts Collective, a grassroots organization whose mission is to empower communities of color through arts, education and activism. With Blackout, Ella participated in Lyrics on Lockdown, a national tour where she performed and facilitated workshops educating communities about the prison industrial complex. She works with incarcerated youth and has developed arts based workshops with youth whose parents are or have been incarcerated. Ella also is a steering committee member of the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program. Ella has a BA in psychology from Stony Brook University and an MSW from Boston University.2008