The Justice Lab

For next semester’s Justice Lab, Profs. Justin Clark, Robert Knight, Chaise LaDousa, and Sharon Rivera will teach four connected courses in which students will study the relationship between justice and technology from both a local and global perspective. With an emphasis on the ethical use of technology, its potential to promote a more just world and the potential threats that technology may pose, students will study the issues through the lens of philosophy, photography, and anthropology.

Professor Knight will teach an introductory photography course focused on social justice, Professor Clark’s course on justice and the good life will introduce various theories of justice within moral philosophy while focusing on ethical issues related to emerging technologies, and Professor LaDousa course will investigate the impacts of digital technology on social change. Professors Clark, Knight, and LaDousa’s courses are required for all Lab participants. Lab students may choose to take Professor Rivera’s Digital Human Rights Investigation course as an optional fourth course.

The Lab will be rooted in multiple experiential learning opportunities, including regular trips to Utica for both the photography and anthropology courses. Students who opt into the Digital Human Rights Investigations course will learn and apply digital investigative techniques to the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children by Russia and will take a trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with practitioners. Fridays will be set aside for field study and trips.  Application deadline is October 30th. Apply here.

For the Fall 2024 semester’s Justice Lab, Profs. Frank Anechiarico, Marianne Janack, Jeff McArn, and Judge Ralph Eannace (ret) will teach four connected courses in which students will study the root causes of youth gun violence in the local area, research best practices for addressing this violence, and investigate alternative forms of justice, while also writing and reflecting on their own experiences of fear and safety. The Justice Lab’s Community Partner, former Oneida County District Attorney Scott McNamara, will join them.

The Lab will be rooted in multiple experiential learning opportunities, including periodic observations in local area courts and visits to relevant community organizations. Professor Janack’s course will consider the ways that we think about safety, places, and protection, including a visit to a shooting range and a focus on writing for a public audience. Justice Lab students and faculty will also participate in an overnight trip to learn about comparative gun violence prevention, with the location and date to be determined. Application deadline is April 7th. Apply here.

For the spring semester 2024 Justice Lab, Profs. Jaime Kucinskas, Jeff McArn, Heather Sullivan, and Joel Winkleman are teaching four connected courses on community building and social change. The Lab is rooted in two experiential learning opportunities. Professor Kucinskas is co-teaching her course with the Rev. Sharon Baugh of Hope Chapel AME Zion Church where students are helping develop poverty alleviation programming in Rev. Baugh’s neighborhood in Utica and across congregations in the city. The Lab also involves a popular education methodology component in Prof. Winkelman's course, with a required spring break retreat (March 11-14) at the legendary Highlander Research and Education Center led by Prof. Margo Okazawa-Rey and with all expenses paid for by the Levitt Center. Prof. Sullivan is teaching a course on the politics of equality in which students will think systematically about the kinds of inequalities that they will be working to address in Utica as well as pathways for change. And in Prof. McArn’s course on social justice at Hamilton College, students have the opportunity to think about the history of social change in their own campus community.

How have human rights developed? How are they defined, and who enforces them?  These questions are immediately relevant to migrant and refugee populations, the movement for racial justice, the status of indigenous populations, as well as the protection of civilians in times of war. Most basically, the study of human rights asks how we can guarantee personal dignity and the ability of all people to live free from persecution, discrimination, and bias. In Fall ’23, the Justice Lab took up these questions historically and legally at the international, national, and local levels. Courses required for the Justice Lab Fall 2023 semester included: 

• Justice Lab Experience and Observation (GOV/Public Policy 274W) Prof. Andrea Peña Vasquez (Government)
• International Law (GOV 254) Prof. Alan Cafruny, Bristol Professor of International Relations: An introduction to international law (Government)
• Humanitarianism and Human Rights (HIST 255) Prof. Kevin Grant, Graves Professor of History (History) 
• The American Constitution and Human Rights (GOV 269) Prof. Frank Anechiarico, Maynard-Knox Professor of Government and Law (Government)

In the past decade, the global refugee population has more than doubled according to the UN with over 80 million people who have been forcibly displaced worldwide. The Utica area has played a prominent role in refugee resettlement in the United States since the 1970s. The Spring 2023 Justice Lab was a four-course semester focused on issues of resettlement, religious traditions, and ethical questions related to asylum and immigration policy, both locally and globally.

Courses for the Spring 2023 Justice Lab included: 

• Politics of Asylum with Professor Andrea Pena-Vasquez (Government)
• Religion and Immigration in Central New York with Professor Brent Rodriguez-Plate (Religious Studies)
• Philosophy of Immigration with Professor Alessandro Moscaritolo Palacio (Philosophy)
• Justice Laboratory: Internship and Observation with Professor Andrea Pena-Vasquez

Community wellness is a holistic concept that includes public safety, care of vulnerable populations, and access to quality medical services and public health (vaccination, mental well-being, sanitation, etc.). The fall 2022 Justice Lab focused broadly on these issues with particular attention to the homeless population in Utica. Students took four-courses concurrently which included an internship and regular interaction with local leaders in public health, community wellness, and civic institutions.

Courses for the Fall 2022 Justice Lab included:

• Health Care Systems with Professor Herm Lehman (Biology)
• Urban Homelessness and Social Policy in the US with Professor Gwen Dordick (Government) 
• Utica in the Context of US History with Professor Phil Bean (History) 
• Justice Laboratory: Internship and Observation with Professor Frank Anechiarico

New York State passed two major legal system reforms in 2019 that had a substantial effect on the Oneida County Criminal Justice System: the abolition of cash bail for most offenses and an accelerated and expanded evidence discovery process, both of which took effect in January, 2020. These reforms gave students the opportunity to observe and participate in the implementation of significant changes in criminal procedure. The inaugural Justice Lab featured two concurrent courses, a traditional seminar course taught by Professor Frank Anechiarico and an internship and observation course co-taught by Professor Anechiarico and Utica City Court Judge Ralph Eannace.