The Justice Lab
The Justice Lab is a semester-long program for a cohort of 12-16 students taking 2-4 integrated courses, including an internship, field study, group project, and/or research project. Past programs have focused on criminal justice reform, community health & wellness, immigration and asylum, and human rights and civil rights.
For faculty interested in developing courses as part of this program, please email Professor Frank Anechiarico or levitt@hamilton.edu.
Fall ’26 Justice Labs
Learn from Professors Matt Grace, Herm Lehman, and Jeremy Rutter who will lead 3 linked courses that explore the US healthcare system through a combination of critical coursework and experiential learning opportunities. Students will have the opportunity to explore the tensions, trade-offs, and injustices in the current healthcare system, building the knowledge and perspective to imagine what systemic reform might look like. Experiential learning for this Justice Lab will include Friday “rotations” (embedded opportunities to observe and ask questions at multiple sites) as well as field trips to meet with local officials and to Albany to learn how the process of policy change really works. For rotations, students will visit multiple community partner sites to observe and examine the tensions among different organizations, roles, and people working in healthcare delivery locally.
The Health Lab is a collaborative, semester-long program for a small cohort of 16 first-year students. Partnering with the Levitt Center as part of the Justice Lab, the program integrates rigorous academic study with hands-on experiential learning. By approaching health through the breadth of the liberal arts, you will build a holistic foundation for your future path. You can find more information here.
Students in the program will take a common set of five integrated courses together:
BIO-100: Explorations in Biology: Cell Rebellion – Introduction to biology through the case study of cancer. Investigate how normal cellular processes are distorted during cancer development and how the immune system responds.
CHEM-120: Principles of Chemistry – Explore central theories like thermodynamics and molecular structure; this fulfills the first semester of the General Chemistry requirement for health professions.
HIST-134: Cures from the Earth – A writing-intensive seminar examining how medicines derived from nature become scientific knowledge and sites of social debate; this fulfills a writing or English requirement for health professions.
COLEG-107: Medical Thinking – Explore how medical reasoning and ethical decisions are made by drawing from multiple forms of expertise and evidence.
PE: Foundations of Health and Human Practices – A physical education course focused on developing lifelong habits of wellness through movement, mindfulness, and self-reflection.
Experiential Learning & Field Trips – The Health Lab extends beyond the classroom to provide a real-world context for your studies. You will engage with expert guest speakers and participate in group field trips and an overnight trip during Fall Break (October 14-16th). These experiences will foster ethical decision-making and self-reflection regarding your future life and career goals.
Previous Justice Labs
Professors Jaime Kucinskas, Charlotte Botha, and Vincent Odamtten, in partnership with the Wellin Museum and exhibiting artists
Creative expression, community engagement, and experiential learning are at the heart of the pedagogy for this Justice Lab. Profs. Jaime Kucinskas, Charlotte Botha, and Vincent Odamtten will teach three connected courses in which students will study the relationship between creativity, community, justice and imagining new futures through different disciplines, media and arts. We will be in conversation with exhibiting artists through the Wellin Museum and actively and creatively engaged with others in the art community, musicians, authors and community organizers.
Professors Heidi Ravven, Janina Selzer and Jaime Kucinskas
Profs. Heidi Ravven, Janina Selzer and Jaime Kucinskas will teach three connected courses in which students will study responses to atrocity through community, memory and creativity. Together these courses will chart a continuum from past to future: from the intimate and cultural representations of atrocity, to the collective processes of memorialization, and finally to the imagination of what new forms of community and possibility can emerge. Students will develop tools to critically engage with histories of violence, understand the social and cultural mechanisms of memory and cultivate the creative practices necessary to envision and build better futures. This Lab includes a spring break trip to the Civil Rights sites in the Southern United States.
For this semester’s Justice Lab, Profs. Kwabena Edusei, Aaron Strong, Jeffrey Cross and Catherine Chen will teach four connected courses in which students will study the relationship between justice and the renewable energy transition from both a local and global perspective.
Professor Edusei will teach a course on the ethics of renewable energy, examining and applying ethical frameworks related to energy, global supply chains and the renewable energy transition. Professor Cross will teach an environmental economics course that focuses on household behavior and decision-making around energy choices. Professor Chen’s course examines how to understand decision-making in public policy, with a focus on energy topics. Professor Strong will teach an experiential course focused on engaging communities of practice around the Clinton area in conversations around climate change and energy transition.
There are no prerequisites for any of these four courses. The Justice Lab schedule of these four courses is akin to an ordinary semester’s schedule. This means that student-athletes will be able to get to practice, and students can work out schedules for on-campus jobs.
This Justice Lab will also engage directly in collective field trip experiences studying real world energy decision making in New York State. This will include working with regulators in Albany, meeting with activist groups, site visits to renewable energy installations, and developing and interpreting public polling data about energy policy with residents of Central New York. We are also exploring the possibility of an optional international or domestic field trip in November 2025.
Professors Justin Clark, Robert Knight, Chaise LaDousa, and Sharon Rivera taught four connected courses in which students studied 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 posed, students explored the issues through the lens of philosophy, photography, and anthropology.
Professor Knight taught an introductory photography course focused on social justice. Professor Clark’s course on justice and the good life introduced various theories of justice within moral philosophy while focusing on ethical issues related to emerging technologies. Professor LaDousa’s course investigated the impacts of digital technology on social change. Professors Clark, Knight, and LaDousa’s courses were required for all Lab participants. Lab students had the option to take Professor Rivera’s Digital Human Rights Investigation course as a fourth course.
The Lab was rooted in multiple experiential learning opportunities, including regular trips to Utica for both the photography and anthropology courses. Students who opted into the Digital Human Rights Investigations course learned and applied digital investigative techniques to the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children by Russia and took a trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with practitioners. Fridays were set aside for field study and trips.
For the Fall 2024 semester’s Justice Lab, Professors Frank Anechiarico, Marianne Janack, Jeff McArn, and Judge Ralph Eannace (ret) taught four connected courses in which students studied the root causes of youth gun violence in the local area, researched best practices for addressing this violence, and investigated 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, joined them.
The Lab was rooted in multiple experiential learning opportunities, including periodic observations in local area courts and visits to relevant community organizations. Professor Janack’s course considered 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 also participated in an overnight trip to learn about comparative gun violence prevention.
For the Spring 2024 Justice Lab, Profs. Jaime Kucinskas, Jeff McArn, Heather Sullivan, and Joel Winkleman taught four connected courses on community building and social change. The Lab was rooted in two experiential learning opportunities. Professor Kucinskas co-taught her course with the Rev. Sharon Baugh of Hope Chapel AME Zion Church, where students helped develop poverty alleviation programming in Rev. Baugh’s neighborhood in Utica and across congregations in the city. The Lab also included a popular education methodology component in Prof. Winkleman’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 funded by the Levitt Center.
Prof. Sullivan taught a course on the politics of equality in which students thought systematically about the kinds of inequalities they worked to address in Utica, as well as pathways for change. And in Prof. McArn’s course on social justice at Hamilton College, students had 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 were 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 asked how we could guarantee personal dignity and the ability of all people to live free from persecution, discrimination, and bias.
In Fall 2023, 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 (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.
Affiliated Programs and Projects
Jurisprudence, Law and Justice Studies
Jurisprudence, law and justice studies is a minor with coursework that provides students with a foundation for understanding how the theory, practice and meaning of law stimulates civic engagement.
American Prison Writing Archive
The American Prison Writing Archive (APWA) is a place where imprisoned people and prison staff can write about and document their experience. It is a site where all who live or work inside can bear witness to what is working and what is not inside American prisons, thus grounding public debate about the American prison crisis in lived experience. In 2017, Professor Doran Larson was awarded $262,000 by the National Endowment of the Humanities for APWA. The three-year grant will enable the APWA to double the size of the archive and increase its search capacities.
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