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.
