On 10/20, we hosted Kristin Henning, Matt Kautz, and Jason Nance for a cross-movement conversation about school discipline and (de)segregation, moderated by Olatunde C. Johnson.
About the panelists:
Kristin Henning is the Blume Professor of Law and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown Law, where she and her law students represent youth accused of delinquency in Washington, DC. Kris was previously the Lead Attorney for the Juvenile Unit of the D.C. Public Defender Service and is currently the Director of the Mid-Atlantic Juvenile Defender Center. Kris has trained state actors across the country on the impact of racial bias and trauma in the juvenile and criminal legal systems. Her workshops help stakeholders recognize their own biases and develop strategies to counter them. Kris also worked closely with the McArthur Foundation’s Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network to develop a 41-volume Juvenile Training Immersion Program (JTIP), a national training curriculum for juvenile defenders. She now co-hosts, with the National Juvenile Defender Center (NJDC), an annual week-long JTIP summer academy for trial lawyers and a series of “Train the Trainer” programs for experienced defenders. In 2019, Kris partnered with NJDC to launch a Racial Justice Toolkit for youth advocates, and again in 2020, to launch the Ambassadors for Racial Justice program, a year-long program for juvenile defenders committed to challenging racial injustice in the juvenile legal system through litigation and systemic reform. Kris writes extensively about race, adolescence, and policing. Her new book, The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth, will be released by Penguin Random House in 2021.
Learn more: Cops at the schoolyard gate (Vox,
Matt Kautz is a PhD candidate in the History and Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. His research studies changes in school discipline policy during the era of desegregation and its connections to concurrent changes in law enforcement. His work documents how school disciplinary policies. Prior to pursuing his doctorate, Matt was a high school teacher in Detroit, MI and Chicago, IL.
Jason P. Nance is the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He teaches education law, remedies, torts, and introduction to the legal profession. He focuses his research and writing on racial inequalities in public education, cognitive biases and their effects on education systems, the intersection of criminal justice and public education, and the legal profession. Professor Nance also served as the reporter for the American Bar Association’s Joint Task Force on Reversing the School-to-Prison Pipeline, where he co-authored a report and proposed resolutions that the ABA adopted to help dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline nationwide. In addition to earning a J.D. at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Professor Nance has a Ph.D. in Education Administration from the Ohio State University, where he also focused on empirical methodology. Before attending graduate school and law school, Professor Nance was a public school math teacher in a large, metropolitan school district.
Learn more: Student Surveillance, Racial Inequalities, and Implicit Racial Bias
About the moderator:
Olatunde C. Johnson is the Jerome B. Sherman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where she teaches legislation and civil procedure and writes about modern civil rights legislation, congressional power, and innovations to address discrimination and inequality in the United States. Johnson clerked for David Tatel on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and for Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. From 2001 to 2003, Johnson served as constitutional and civil rights counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Prior to that, Professor Johnson worked at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), where she conducted trial and appellate level litigation to promote racial and ethnic equity in employment, health, and higher education. Professor Johnson graduated in 1995 from Stanford Law School where she was Order of the Coif, and received her B.A. in Literature Cum Laude from Yale University in 1989. She serves as the board chair for the Poverty and Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), where NCSD is housed.