Past Events

Watch the REJI-sponsored talk by Doran Larson, "Inside Knowledge: Incarcerated People on the Failures of American Prison" (May 3, 2024)

Featuring Doran Larson, author and Edward North Professor of Literature at Hamilton College; Jose DiLenola, Clemency Campaign Director at Release Aging People in Prison Campaign; Alison Peterman, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rochester and Director of the Bachelor's Degree Prorgam at Attica. Co-sponsored by Decarcerate Rochester.

Watch the REJI-sponsored panel discussion, "Intersectionality of Poverty in Rochester" (April 12, 2024)

Sponsored by the Decarceral Student Organizing Coalition, Doulgass Leadership House, Pan-African Students Association, Students for a Democratic Society, UR Black Student Union, Decarcerate Rochester, Free The People Rochester, Worker Justice Center of New York, Spirit of Mandela Coalition, Roc ACTS, Citizen Action of New York Chapter, and the Rochester Education Justice Initiative.

Watch the REJI-sponsored talk by Justin Murphy, "Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger: School Segregation in Rochester" (March 28, 2022)

Sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor; Department of Political Science; Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation; and Rochester Education Justice Initiative. With supplementary support from Catholic Studies; Center for Community Engagement; Department of History; Department of Philosophy; Department of Religion and Classics; Susan B. Anthony Center; Susan B. Anthony Institute; Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies

Watch the REJI-sponsored panel discussion, "Toward a World Without Prisons" (January 17, 2022)

Featuring speakers from Center for Community Alternatives, Elders and Allies, Enough is Enough, Free the People ROC, Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, People's Liberation Program, Release Aging People in Prison, and VOCAL-NY.

Watch REJI's panel discussion, "Attica 50 Years Later: Memory, History, Legacy" (September 10, 2021)

Featuring Precious Bedell, REJI assistant director of community outreach; Jalil Muntaqim, local author and activist; and Donald Sturgis, survivor of the Attica Rebellion

"The Social Life of Guns"

Interdisciplinary Research Symposium. Cosponsored with the Humanities Center. (March 29–30, 2018)

"The Prison in Twelve Landscapes"

Film screening and Q&A with director Brett Story at the Dryden Theatre, George Eastman Museum. (April 28, 2017)

"Imagining Freedom"

Keynote address at Interfaith Banquet by abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba. Cosponsored with the Interfaith Chapel, the Paul J. Burgett Intercultural Center, the Students' Association for Interfaith Cooperation, the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, the Refugee Student Alliance, and the Asian American Alliance. (April 1, 2017)

"The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict"

Talk by Caleb Smith, professor of English at Yale University and editor of Austin Reed’s The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict (Random House, 2016). Smith discussed the memoir of an African-American Rochesterian who spent much of the antebellum period incarcerated, first at New York City’s House of Refuge and then at Auburn Prison. (February 7, 2017)