Faculty Award

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

Professor Chazan 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.

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.

Dolly Chugh, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Management and Organizations Department at New York University’s Stern School of Business

Dolly Chugh 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.

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).

Alina Das, J.D., Assistant Professor of Clinical Law and Supervising Attorney at the New York University School of Law

Alina Das is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Law and Supervising Attorney at the New York University (NYU) 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.

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.

David Elcott, Taub Professor of Practice in Public Service and Leadership at the Wagner School of Public Service

David Elcott 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.

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.

Catherine Guerriero, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor in Steinhardt

Catherine Guerriero 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.

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.

Julianne Lutz Warren, Ph.D., Professor of Environmental Studies and NEH Summer Institutes

Julianne Lutz Warren, with roots in the Catskills, 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.

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.