Upper School Intersession 2025

There could not be a better time to study our criminal justice system. We are experiencing a time of significant change (much of it long in coming frankly). Each of you, as community members, can be a part of making those changes positive ones and I hope this seminar will help to inspire you to do just that. So... on to a few basic pieces of information about the seminar:

1. What are we going to be talking about?
The session will cover two primary areas: crime and criminal justice and our criminal justice system. We will be discussing things like: "why does crime exist?" and “is crime getting worse” and "why is there such a disconnect between communities and their police" and "do we really need police” and “do district attorneys and defense attorneys hate each other as much as they seem to on TV?" and, if time allows, "what on earth is going on with our prisons in the United States!? Why do we lock more people up than any other country?"...

Are you intrigued? Good!

We will be talking about current events and I recommend that you start plugging into news feeds from a variety of sources and perspectives. If you take the time to check out the news what we discuss will mean a whole lot more to you.

2. Will Professor Raffaelli just be a talking head?
I sure hope not! Bring on those questions and we will dig into them… I welcome and appreciate student participation and hope you save me (and yourself) from me just prattling on the whole time by myself. The criminal justice system is interesting (really!) and I look forward to hearing from you. I also hope that this class will result in more than a few of you looking further into a career in criminal justice. It is one of the places in this world that gives you an opportunity to make a difference in your community and society. Corny as it sounds there really is no better satisfaction than finding ways to help other people.

Political cartoons have been part of public debates around the world for more than 250 years. Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist David Horsey will take students on a visual journey through the history of political cartoons and then talk about his own career; how he creates cartoons, the presidents he has lampooned, the readers he has angered, the wild scenes he has observed -- all illustrated with copious examples of his award-winning cartoons.

Sarah Shourd is a lifelong social justice activist, somatic practitioner and a leader in the movement to create safer communities through Reimagining Justice outside prisons and jails. She is an award-winning investigative journalist, acclaimed Pulitzer-presented playwright, author, producer and filmmaker. In 2009, Sarah was living in Syria when she was captured near the unmarked Iran-Iraq border and imprisoned by the Iranian government incommunicado in solitary confinement for 410 days. Learn how this horrific experience became a springboard for Sarah’s work for healing, justice and collective liberation for the last 15 years, delving into the deeper implications of mass incarceration and the widespread use of solitary confinement in prisons across our country. How can we think outside of the harsh and brutal paradigm of punishment and control? How can we heal our communities and ourselves? See http://www.sarahshourd.com for more information.

I will talk about why there is often a shift which states are "swing states" over time, as well as how politicians choose certain topics & themes to focus on in their campaigns based on what is politically viable. Example questions include: How did Barack Obama carry several states that are now considered strongly Republican? Aside from purely just changes in public opinion, why do political parties shift their political stances over time? This session will be taught in a non-partisan fashion and is intended to teach students about the salience of political issues and how campaigning works from a calculated standpoint.

In this interactive session, participants will discuss some of the legal and policy issues underlying free speech and privacy rights, and the potential conflicts between the two with the rise of new technologies like the Internet.  Real-life cases brought by the ACLU will be used to illustrate how public interest litigation cases are developed to create and change laws, and the potential clashes that can occur between competing civil rights and policy goals.