Post by Neni Panourgiá

Academic Year 2024-2025 kept us alert and vigilant, as it also gave us moments of pride and elation. Two more JIE scholars were admitted to the School of General Studies: Darryl Robertson, JIE cohort 2020, GS’27; and Jeremy Spence, JIE cohort 2024, GS’27. At GS they join a line of illustrious JIE alumni currently working towards their Bachelor’s degrees—Zachary Witman, JIE cohort 2022, GS ’27; Abbie Bell, JIE cohort 2022, GS ‘2026; and Jonathan Wren, JIE cohort 2023, GS ’26. And a long line of JIE alumni who have graduated from GS, among them Anne O’ Connell, JIE cohort 2018, GS ’23, Columbia Law ’26; and Jarrell Daniels, JIE cohort 2018, GS ’23, who just finished his first year in the PhD program in Applied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt School. Check out the profiles of our JIE Scholars and Alumni on our website.

We currently have fifteen active JIE Scholars in our program. We have admitted four applicants for the 2025-2026 Academic Year, and we are in the process of admitting another three. All in all, since our establishment in 2015, we have trained 132 JIE Scholars, 70 of whom have completed the required gateway classes. Of those, 

• 10 have graduated from GS
• 6 are currently at GS of whom
• 1 is a regular contributor to MSNBC, the NYT, Salon, Ebony
• 1 is actively involved in the Justice Arts Conference
• 1 who completed PPI is working as a paralegal
• 1 majoring in Philosophy is collaborating with Columbia Law School to help rewrite the Juvenile Law Manual on the rights of incarcerated youth
• 3 have received Master’s at Columbia
• 3 have received Master’s elsewhere 
• 2 have received PhDs at Columbia
• 1 is currently at Columbia Law offered to work in restructuring at Kirkland & Ellis, and has been invited to finish her Law Degree at Oxford University in Spring 2026 
• 1 is currently at Columbia School of Nursing
• 1 is currently pursuing a PhD in Criminal Justice at John Jay
• 1 is currently pursuing a PhD in Psychology at NYU Steinhard School
• 4 have founded justice-related programs at Columbia 
• Paralegal Pathways Initiative, A collaboration with Columbia Law that trains people in paralegal studies 
• Justice Ambassadors, A Center for Justice program that offers mentorship and educational involvement to at-risk youth
• Justice-Through-Code, a collaboration with the Tamer Institute at the Business School that equips decarcerated people with computer science skills
• Beyond-the-Bars Justice Program 
• 1 graduated from Sociology with focus on Human Rights and was honored by Columbia as Researcher of the Year
• 4 have completed Paralegal Pathways Training (through Columbia Law School)
• 3 have attended intensive workshop programs at Tamer Center (Columbia Business School)
• 6 have completed Beyond-the-Bars Fellowships
• 5 have started their own businesses
• 2 have started their own non-profit organizations
• 1 works at Google and is involved in helping Hispanic women enter computer science.

Professor Cathernine Suffern was instrumental in the successes of the past two years, training our last two cohorts in academic writing in her University Writing class at GS, advising Scholars, writing recommendation letters, and keeping the JIE Scholars Program in balance, especially under times of duress for the university. In May, Kate decided to move from Columbia to a new position in the non-profit sector and while we will miss her presence and wisdom immensely, we are sending her way our best and most heartfelt wishes and deep thanks. Kate is grateful for her nearly two years as the Justice-in-Education Initiative’s Program Manager and almost eight years at Columbia. Favorite experiences with JIE have included teaching theater and drama courses at Taconic Correctional Facility and working closely with incoming JIE Scholars as the instructor of the gateway courses. Kate invites all fellow JIE community members please to stay in touch, including to reach out for academic and professional letters of reference. She plans to attend future Justice Forum sessions, both to continue learning from the illuminating speakers and to stay connected with the wonderful friends she made through JIE. In her new job, Kate is continuing a different sort of education access work (for K-12 students!) as a member of the development team at Kaufman Music Center in Manhattan. She also plans to revise her book-length dissertation manuscript on how late modern feminist theater in the United Kingdom used theatrical techniques to predict and respond in real time to the rise of carceral governance. Kate sends the following parting message:  To all former JIE students, teachers, and colleagues, Thank you for everything. I am sending you luck and solidarity in your art, advocacy, activism, scholarship, and other pursuits.

We are eagerly anticipating Professor Audrey Amsellem to take over from Professor Suffern as the Program Manager for JIE in August. For the past three years Dr. Amsellem has been teaching college-level music courses on Rikers Island through JIE. She frequently collaborates with students and Columbia partners, organizing workshops inside on financial literacy, music and the law, and leading independent studies. In her new role, in addition to continuing her teaching inside, she will provide support to the Justice Scholars Program, and alongside Sylvia Gindick she will co-teach the required gateway course Strategies for Academic Success for incoming Scholars.

We are also welcoming Sylvia Gindick in her new, enhanced role at JIE. Sylvia is the Senior Program Manager at the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities and runs the tech at Justice Forum. She has an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University and teaches creative writing at Rikers Island through JIE. Her first poetry collection, Sunbather, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. This year she will co-teach the course Strategies for Academic Success for incoming scholars alongside Audrey Amsellem. 

But the year also brought grief, when our JIE alumnus Nascimento Blair, was senselessly deported on his birthday, February 21. Blair is a brilliant person who received his BA in Behavioral Studies (Mercy University) and his Master’s in Leadership (NYTS, now Union Theological) while incarcerated. Once decarcerated, Blair worked tirelessly at reentry, first at Exodus and then at Harlem United, and was on the Board of Trustees at Rising Hope. Please read Blair’s own account of this ordeal here and also in this article featuring his case in the New York Times. 

The guards’ strike that took place in the winter throughout the New York prison system was precipitated by the violent homicide of Robert Brooks at Marcy Correctional Facility on December 9, 2024 https://apnews.com/article/new-york-prison-death-brooks-autopsy-bd9a38fd8940f2b3e210767dec5e11f4, something that was repeated in March with the homicide of our JIE student Messiah Nantwi https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/16/us/messiah-nantwi-new-york-inmate-death. The strike all but brought programming in the prison system to a standstill and deprived all incarcerated persons of any contact with the world outside of their cells. Classes, RTA, and chapel were all cancelled, as were family and legal visits, medical treatments, mess hall and yard. In addition to the homicides, seven incarcerated people died during the strike, deaths that have been attributed to the neglect of the incarcerated population during the almost two months that it lasted https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/nyregion/ny-prison-strike-guards.html. 

We had a very exciting year at Justice Forum. The film production and distribution company A24 sought us out last summer to propose that we host the first public screening of the Oscar-nominated film Sing Sing. We organized the screening and followed up with a panel discussion with actors from the film, RTA alumni, and film producer James Schamus. Also, the Sing Sing Prison Museum approached us to ask if we would be willing to host the first event on the 250th anniversary of the Sing Sing prison, so we organized an event with scholars and activists who work on the history of incarceration and the problem of mass incarceration. Justice Forum concluded in April with a panel discussion among Columbia faculty on “The Present Moment.” See the program of the entire year here. In Spring of 2024, we initiated a new partnership with the Petey Greene Program to pilot Justice Forum follow-up sessions focused on best practices for seminar discussion. Such sessions will form the spine of the Fall 2025 “Strategies for Academic Success” course in the weeks following the October and November Justice Forum seminars.