The
following are remarks I gave at the annual
meeting of the advisory
board of Restorative Justice International
on December 19, 2025.
It’s
great to be with all of you. I’m a
journalism and media studies
professor at Rutgers University in New
Brunswick, New Jersey. I teach
courses on Media Ethics and Law, and Gender,
Race and Class in the
Media. I’m also a journalist, writer and
commentator. My focus is
on race, politics, human rights, social
justice, criminal justice,
and inequality. I once worked in government,
in the Pennsylvania
legislature, the federal courts, and for
NGOs, including Witness to
Innocence, where I worked with death row
survivors to abolish the
death penalty.
I’m
reporting from Philadelphia in the U.S.,
which is a dangerous,
violent place as we witness the onset of
fascism, the disappearance
of immigrants by ICE agents, and the
imminent death of white
supremacy. One can call it an extinction
burst. But it’s also a
hopeful time, and you can just see the need
for restorative justice.
I
want to highlight some of my work from this
past year:
This
Spring, we held a teach-in at Rutgers with
students and colleagues on
how to survive fascism. I spoke about the
role of the enemy as the
personification of society’s problems, the
role of a
dominant/superior race, the role of
capitalism, the role of
universities in authoritarian regimes, and
how the West is getting a
taste of how colonized people were always
treated, and fascism always
existed for marginalized and racialized
people in America.
One
of my colleagues, History Professor Mark
Bray, fled the country with
his family to Spain after being placed on
TPUSA’s hit list because
of his work on antifascism. He received
death threats and had to
leave America.
This
summer I was in dialogue with the
Reconstructionist Jewish community
of which I’m a member. I participated in a
speaker series called
“Reconstructionists Expanding Our
Conversation on Israel-Palestine,
and was in conversation with two rabbis -
David Basior in Seattle,
Emily Cohen in New York City - on the need
for Jews in North America
to atone for apartheid, occupation and the
Gaza genocide of the
Palestinian people. I also discussed the
need to come to terms with
the historical harm Jews have caused, the
grief, trauma and damage
inflicted upon Palestinians, and the need
for restorative justice and
a free Palestine.
This
Fall, I spoke at the Garden State Scholastic
Press Association, a
conference of high school journalists
throughout New Jersey on
present-day threats to freedom of speech,
press freedom and academic
freedom, and solutions to resisting creeping
authoritarianism and
preserving democracy in America. We
discussed the need to not comply
or obey in advance, to learn history and
challenge efforts to erase
it, the need for solidarity and organizing,
creativity, and the need
for truth tellers, writers and thinkers who
are tied to the
community.
Looking
ahead, I am focusing my research and writing
on the role of the media
in perpetuating human rights violations and
genocide, but also
envisioning a media that shines a light on
atrocities, and brings
healing and accountability.
I’m
reminded of Julius Streicher, publisher of
the Nazi newspaper Der
Stürmer, who was tried at Nuremberg,
convicted and hanged for his
role in enabling the Holocaust because of
the vile articles,
editorials and cartoons depicting Jewish
people as vermin.
U.S.
media enabled the mass internment of
Japanese-Americans and the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In
2020, U.S. media began
to come to terms with their shameful history
of enabling slavery, Jim
Crow and lynchings and maintaining the
racial hierarchy, but never
really moved beyond empty apologies.
During
the Rwanda genocide, consider the role of
broadcasters, radio, TV and
print journalists in perpetrating the
genocide in that nation. And in
Gaza, we must confront the role of Israeli
and Western media, both
traditional and social media, in
dehumanizing the Palestinian people.
Thank
you all for listening, and for the important
work you are doing. It’s
great to talk with you and to be in
community with you all, and it is
a learning experience if nothing else.
