@John Jay News and Events of Interest to the College Community

April 1, 2009

Worth NotingApril 1 3:15 PMIndoor Triathlon10 minutes each of swimming,cycling and running

Pool & Cardiovascular Fitness Center,Haaren Hall

April 6 2:00 PMJudas on Trial:Theatre and TheologyGuest lecture by the Rev. James Martin, SJ, advisor to the off-Broadway production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.Presented by the Department of Communication and Theatre Arts

Room 330, Haaren Hall

April 21 3:30 PMChangüí and thePan-Caribbean Rootsof Cuban Popular Musicin GuantánamoPresentation, Performance andBook Signing by Benjamin Lapidus

Room 630, Haaren Hall

April 21-25 8:00 PMThe Last Days of Judas IscariotPresented by the Department ofCommunication and Theatre Arts

Gerald W. Lynch Theater(Call 212-695-6908 for ticket reservations.)

April 23 5:00 PMConversations inLiterature & LawConspiracy, Inc.: Zoot Suits,Cockroach People and Chicano Culture’s Rethinking of Legal DiscourseCarl Gutierrez-JonesUniversity of California, Santa Barbara

Room 630, Haaren Hall

The Rev. Al Sharpton paid a call on John Jay on March 17, where he challenged students and others to help close the gap in treatment of people based on race.

“Institutional inequality in the United States hasn’t changed just because we’ve elected a black president,” said Sharpton, who ran for president himself in 2004.

At some point, you must have the courage to get in the game, to get involved,” he said, calling on students to “help formulate an agenda that will make this all work in your time, in your generation.”

Taking note of his surroundings — the nation’s premier college of criminal justice — Sharpton took issue with those who suggest that he and his civil rights organization, the National Action Network, are anti-police. “There’s a misnomer that we are anti-police because we are against police brutality,” Sharpton said. “We are no more anti-police than every cop who arrests a criminal in a minority neighborhood is anti-minority.”

President Jeremy Travis traveled to Washing-ton, DC, on March 12 to participate in a week-long series of hearings by a House Appropriations subcommittee on prisoner reentry and other criminal justice challenges.

“Our nation has never before witnessed the phenomenon of prisoner reentry at the scale we see today,” Travis told members of the Sub-committee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies. “There is a simple explanation: More people are coming home because we are putting more people in prison.”

The people coming home from prison — 90 percent of them male — face significant barriers to their reintegration, Travis said, and in many cases their return places huge burdens on urban localities already struggling with poor schools, poor health care and weak labor markets.

Travis said the historic Second Chance Act, passed with broad bipartisan support last year, has made an enormous difference in the nation’s

“If you have a hostility or disconnect between police and the community, it makes the police job that much more difficult,” noted Sharpton, who has been an invited speaker at recent police recruitment rallies.

Citing a number of cases of police brutality or excessive use of force, including the shooting of Sean Bell outside a Queens nightclub and the sodomizing of Abner Louima at a Brooklyn

The Rev. Al Sharpton greets Charly Feliz, a sophomore criminal justice major, outside the Gerald W. Lynch Theater following

his March 17 talk on the new civil rights movement.

approach to the reentry issue, but federal fund-ing for reentry initiatives remains woefully inad-equate. “The point is obvious,” said Travis. “If the federal government wishes to make a signifi-cant change in the experience of people leaving prison, much more money will be needed.”

Noting that recent and ongoing research has provided volumes of information on which inter-vention approaches work to promote prisoner reintegration, Travis told the subcommittee: “We should now marshal our resources to fund those interventions and to insist that all reentry pro-grams meet a standard of proven effectiveness.”

Travis urged Congress to provide support for several promising innovations, including offender notification forums, comprehensive interagency initiatives, reentry courts and community-based interventions. Such efforts, he said, “represent a new frontier in reentry innovation.”

[President Travis’s testimony can be read online at http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/2308.php.]

Travis Talks Reentrywith House Committee

Sharpton: “It’s Time to Get Involved”

It’s no secret that John Jay is a college filled with high-achieving students. LaKisha Hoffman, a 28-year-old undergraduate, is looking to add her name to the list, but in a rather unconventional way: She and her sister are contestants on the popular TV reality show “The Amazing Race.”

LaKisha, a youth program coordinator and basketball coach, recently transferred to John Jay from Western Illinois University. Both she and her 24-year-old sister, Jennifer, are former Division I college athletes, and they are hoping to become the first all-female team to win the around-the-world race.

“The same strengths that make me a good coach — patience and a strong competitive nature — will ultimately make me the best racer the game has seen,” LaKisha said.

The race was completed as this issue went to press, but the competitors are strictly prohibited from divulging any details as to the contest’s outcome. In one recent episode, the Hoffman sisters and other racers found themselves in Novosibirsk, Russia — 400 miles inside the Siberian heartland. There, they faced a series of challenges that included driving a balky, four-

speed Lada sedan over snowy streets to take a Russian bride to her wedding.

In another challenge, Jennifer was required to pair up with two local runners for a 1.4-mile jog to the local ballet and opera theater. There was just one hitch: she had to complete the run Siberian-style — in her underwear. Fortunately the weather was a balmy 27 degrees Fahrenheit, and Jennifer stripped down without hesitating, asking those around her, “Don’t I look hot?”

Prior to “The Amazing Race,” neither LaKisha nor her sister had traveled extensively outside of the United States. To them, the race is a “journey of a lifetime.”

John Jay Student and Sister Tackle “The Amazing Race”

Jennifer Hoffman jogs through a Siberian city in her underwear, accompanied by

her sister LaKisha (left) and a more sensibly clad Russian runner during an episode

of “The Amazing Race.”

Steamboat Is In, and Wallace Is AboardStudent Council President Wins Prestigious Summer Scholarship

Congratulations are in order to Shaheen Wal-lace, president of the John Jay Student Council, for winning the prestigious Steamboat Founda-tion Summer Scholarship. He topped a field of more than 300 eligible students to become the third John Jay student to win the coveted honor.

Like the two winners who preceded him — Abdoulaye Diallo in 2007, and Amanda Ingle in 2008 — Wallace, a junior government major, will be partnered with the Center for Court Innova-tion (CCI) for the three-month paid internship.

The scholarship provided by the Greenwich, CT-based Steamboat Foundation allows out-standing students to connect with acknowledged leaders in public, private and nonprofit organiza-tions. John Jay’s Office of Honors, Awards and Special Opportunities identified 315 eligible students — those expected to graduate in 2010 and carrying a current GPA of at least 3.5 — and invited them to apply. Litna McNickle, the office’s

director, said the process of paring down the field was “very rigorous.”

The office held workshops on résumé writing, crafting personal statements, how to dress for success, and more. The goal was to find candi-dates who were self-motivated and possessed first-rate writing skills, among other traits, ac-cording to McNickle.

“It’s a good way to insure that we have vetted very strong, capable students who are going to perform well as Steamboat Scholars,” she said.

Wallace underwent a series of nine interviews, including sessions with John Jay President Jeremy Travis and Adam Mansky, the director of CCI. “I’ve never done anything that draining in my life,” he said. “It’s not for the faint-hearted, and it’s definitely a test of character. But after I was done, it was really a great feeling.”

Wallace has his sights set on attending law school and becoming a federal prosecutor. Shaheen Wallace

stationhouse, Sharpton said the basis of protests he has led is that “you cannot let this kind of behavior go unchecked.”

The civil rights leader called for the creation of a special section within the U.S. Department of Justice to deal specifically with police misconduct. “It is only when you break out of local and county politics that you can get a measure of justice,” he observed.

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educating for justice

PEER REVIEWJOHN MATTESON (English) is one of the judges of the 2009 Dashiell Hammett Prize, awarded annually for literary excellence in crime writing. Matteson also accepted an invitation to give the Class Day address at the Columbia University School of General Studies in May.

PRESENTING…BETSY HEGEMAN (Anthropology) presented “Culture-Bound Syndromes and Diagnosis” to the Grand Rounds of Upstate Medical School Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology in Syracuse, NY, on March 26. She also met with the Psychoanalytic Study Group of Syracuse and presented “MPD and Spirit Possession: the Influence of Culture”.

KIMORA (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) presented a paper on “Methamphetamine Abuse and Treatment in Rural America” at the 2009 annual meeting of the Southern Rural Sociological Association in Atlanta, GA, on January 31-February 3.

KWANDO M. KINSHASA (African American Studies) was invited to Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan from February 16-19 as their 2009 King-Chavez-Parks Visiting Scholar. As the visiting scholar, Kinshasa gave lectures on African American history, criminal justice, global migration policies, sociology and social policy. He also presented a paper titled “History and

One’s Sociological Memory: A Contemporary Interactive Perspective,” in which he revisited and discussed the sociological and economic implications of the 1955-1956 Montgomery, AL, Bus Boycott.

MICHAEL PFEIFER (History) served as commentator on a panel titled “Race, the Courts, and Public Spectacle in Louisiana” at the annual meeting of the Louisiana Historical Association in Monroe, LA, on March 19.

KLAUS VON LAMPE (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) was an invited speaker at the 12th European Police Congress in Berlin on February 11. He spoke on “The European Dimensions of Organized Crime: Some Remarks from a Criminological Perspective.”

M. VICTORIA PÉREZ-RÍOS (Government) presented a paper on the “UDHR and the Millennium Developmental Goals: Making the Three Generations of Rights a Reality” and was the discussant on a panel on Transitional Justice at the International Studies Association annual convention in New York from February 15-18.

JON-CHRISTIAN SUGGS (English, emeritus) gave the keynote lecture, “Imperium in Imperio: Double Consciousness, Double Citizenship and the Promise of the Obama Presidency,” for African-American History Month at Salisbury University in Salisbury, MD, on February 10. In

April he will present a paper on race and “love” in Melville’s Billy Budd at the American Society for Law, Culture, and the Humanities in Boston; in May he will present two chapters of his novel-in-progress, After Jubilee, at the Working Group on Law and Slavery at the Gilder-Lehrman Center at Yale, and in June he will present a paper on Hannah Elias and the murder of “the man who invented New York” at the annual conference on New York State history.

GLORIA PRONI and ELISE CHAMPEIL (Sciences) presented a paper titled “Assessment of Students’ Likeability of the ‘Clicker’ and ‘Wiley Plus’ Technologies in Organic Chemistry” at the CUNY IT Conference on December 5, 2008.

BETWEEN THE COVERSGLORIA PRONI (Sciences) will have her articles “CD-sensitive Zn-porphyrin tweezer host-guest complexes. Part 1: MC/OPLS-2005 computational approach for predicting preferred interporphyrin helicity” and “CD-sensitive Zn-porphyrin tweezer host-guest complexes. Part 2: cis- and trans-3-hydroxy-4-aryl/alkyl-beta-lactams. A case study” published in a forthcoming issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Chirality.

SIMON BAATZ (History) is the author of the foreword to a new edition of Clarence Darrow’s Crime: Its Cause and Treatment, published in the Kaplan Classics of Law series.

Institutional MemoryIn addition to Professors Odabashian and Sapse, the

following people were recognized for long service to the

John Jay community:

35 Years: Roselyn Blassberger, Edward Davenport, Jannette

O. Domingo, Francis McHugh, Arnold Osansky, Meyer J.

Peikes, Patricia Sinatra;

30 Years: Warren F. Benton, William C. Heffernan, Alan

Hoenig, Marlene Kandel, Debra Hairston-Parker, Francis

X. Sheehan, Rodolfo G. Sy, Maria R. Volpe, Linda R. Von

Lumm;

25 Years: José Arcaya, Robert C. Delucia, Mary S. Gibson,

Ernest Gilde, Lesley A. Hansen, Inez Ligon, Sylvia Lopez,

Mayra Nieves, Esther Owens, Alan Winson, Shirley D.

Zimmerman;

20 Years: Frederick R. Brodzinski, Kinya Y. Chandler,

Catherine F. Collins, Saundra Dancy, Yvonne A. Hatchett,

Dennis P. Hood, Ainsworth James, Jane Katz, Jonathan

E. Kranz, Michael A. Liddie, Phillip N. Marsh, Thomas

McGonigle, Eugene O’Donnell, Frank J. Pannizzo, Jill C.

Robbins, Lisa Rodriguez, Denise B. Santiago, Ronald R.

Spadafora, Frank G. Straub, Wendell J. Velez, Beatrice

Young.

Two new faculty members and 24 new staff were given their official welcome to John Jay on March 9 at the Spring 2009 Faculty and Staff Meeting, an event that also served as the occasion for recognizing those who have served the College for 20 or more years, as well as faculty who are newly tenured or promoted.

Joining the faculty were Charles McKenzie, an assistant professor of English who will be focusing his scholarship on John Jay’s new literature and law major, and Jon M. Shane, an assistant professor of police science and a specialist in organizational stressors and police performance.

The newest staff members include nine from Academic Affairs, six from Enrollment Management, three from Finance and Administration, three from Institutional Advancement, two from Student Development and one from the Office of the President.

Fifty members of the John Jay community were recognized for long service to the College. The 2009 honorees were led by two faculty members with 40 years of service: Barbara

Odabashian (English) and Anne-Marie Sapse (Sciences). In addition, the faculty and staff meeting honored newly tenured and promoted faculty, a 29-member contingent led by four new full professors: Luis Barrios (Latin American and Latina/o Studies), Anthony Carpi (Sciences), Bilal Khan (Mathematics and Computer Science) and Karen Terry (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration).

A John Jay Welcome, andThanks for a Job Well Done

Jeremy Pohl, a 2008 graduate of John Jay’s forensic science

program who now works at the New York City police crime

lab, has won the Eastern Analytical Symposium Student

Award for his outstanding research in forensic analytical

chemistry. Pohl has been working with Professor Yi He

of the Department of Sciences (at right in photo) on a

project to develop a novel method for detecting trace

levels of methamphetamine and its metabolite in urine

samples. A patent application has been submitted for the

procedure, which is said to have potential commercial

value. In addition, a manuscript has been submitted to

a peer reviewed journal. The award was presented by

Professor Barbara Kebbekus of the New Jersey Institute of

Technology (left in photo).

The McCabe Fellowship Breakfast held on March 13 turned into a homecoming of sorts, with a former honoree and a former McCabe Fellow among those who traveled from Ireland to attend the annual celebration at John Jay.

The event celebrates the exchange program created in memory of Irish police detective Jerry McCabe, who was killed in the line of duty dur-ing an attempted robbery in June 1996. Each year, two or more members of An Garda Siochá-na, the Irish national police, come to John Jay for an intensive course of study toward a graduate degree.

Former keynote speaker and honoree Niall Burgess, the Irish consul general in New York, at-tended the McCabe breakfast and offered greet-ings in which he observed that the connection between John Jay and the Republic of Ireland is part of the “mighty strength that links our two countries.”

And, in a nod to those at the event who ac-knowledged wearing green only one day a year — on St. Patrick’s Day — Burgess said, “We’re all Irish in God’s eyes.”

Also bringing greetings to McCabe attendees was Detective Superintendent Orla McPartlin of

SIMPLY OUTSTANDING

An Garda, who earned a master’s degree from John Jay as one of the first McCabe scholars, from 1997-1998. She now heads the police service’s international liaison section.

Professor Bettina Murray, a member of the John Jay Foundation board, introduced the morning’s keynote speaker and honoree, Seán Aylward, Secretary General of the Irish Ministry of Justice, as the “steady hand on the tiller that keeps the Ministry of Justice on course.” Aylward noted the violent deaths of two British soldiers and an Irish police constable in the week prior to the McCabe breakfast, and said the murdered peacekeepers had “left behind a community that doesn’t want to return to the days of violence.”

Citing the words of John Jay, Aylward ob-served, “Wise rulers will recognize that the best way to frustrate the efforts of those who would tear us apart through violence is by unity of pur-pose.” He called on police to exercise moral and legal leadership while employing a minimum use of force.

This year’s McCabe scholars are Gardaí John Griffin, a graduate student in public administra-tion, and Emer Clarke, who is pursing a master’s in criminal justice.

McCabe Fellowship Breakfast Means Wearing o’ the Green

OUTRAGEIN DARFURXabier Agirre, senior analyst with

the Office of the Prosecutor of the

International Criminal Court in The

Hague, was the featured speaker

for the International Criminal

Justice Major lecture series on

February 26, where he spoke about

the use of crime mapping and other

data analysis techniques to indict

Sudanese officials for genocide

and other crimes against humanity

in the Darfur region. Agirre is the

author of the forthcoming book

Methodology for the Investigation

of International Crimes (Brill, 2010).

Professor Anne-Marie Sapse and President Travis enjoy a

laugh as she reflected on her 40 years at John Jay.

Criminal InjusticeMarty Tankleff (above left) greets award-winning author and investigative reporter Richard Firstman following the March 17 Book & Author Series presentation on A Criminal Injustice: A True Crime, a False Confession, and the Fight to Free Marty Tankleff, co-authored by Firstman and former NYPD detective Jay Salpeter (right). The book tells the story of Tankleff’s wrongful conviction and 17-year imprisonment for the murders of his parents. He was freed in 2007, largely on the strength of new evidence unearthed by Salpeter.

Distinguished Professor Saul Kassin (rear), an expert in false confessions, moderated the event, telling the audience, “This is a crazy case about how powerful a confession can be when it’s accompanied by no other evidence.” Salpeter, a John Jay alumnus (BA, 1978) who spent seven years working to get Tankleff exonerated and freed, said Tankleff, then just 17 years old, was arrested by the lead detective in the case to protect the actual killer. “Not one thing in this case was properly investigated,” he said. Firstman said everything in Tankleff’s “so-called confession” ended up being disproven.