@John Jay
to the College Community
Worth Noting
October 31 9:30 AM
CUNY Athletic Conference
Cross-Country
Championships
Van Cortlandt Park, The Bronx
November 4 8:00 AM
NYC-DR Roundtable Breakfast
The Colors of War, with Terry Rosenberg
A traveling slide-show exhibition of 100
digital paintings.
Presented by the CUNY Dispute
Resolution Consortium at John Jay
College and the Association for Conflict
Resolution of Greater New York
Room 610 Haaren Hall
November 9 6:30 PM
Patrick V. Murphy Lecture
Garry McCarthy
Police Director, Newark, NJ
Room 630 Haaren Hall
November Is
CUNY Month!
New NYS Sentencing Commission to Call John Jay Home
New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman
on October 13 announced the creation of the
state’s first Permanent Sentencing Commission,
which will be housed, fittingly, at John Jay
College.
The commission will conduct a comprehensive
and ongoing evaluation of sentencing laws and
practices and recommend reforms to improve the
quality and effectiveness of statewide sentencing
policy. It will be co-chaired by New York County
District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. and Judge
Barry Kamins, the administrative judge of the
State Supreme Court (Criminal Term) in Kings
County.
Martin F. Horn, a Distinguished Lecturer at
John Jay, will serve as the commission’s executive
director, with the expertise and resources of the
Millions of Reasons to Cheer as College
Wins Funding for Diverse Programs
John Jay’s First Year Experience program, the
PRISM program for undergraduate science majors
and the overall forensic science curriculum will be
the beneficiaries of a number of large, multiyear
federal grants recently awarded to the College.
In addition, the College’s Criminal Justice
Research and Evaluation Center will share with
Temple University a $1-million grant from the
U.S. Justice Department to design and implement
an evaluation of the Community-Based Violence
Prevention Demonstration Program (CBVP).
A competitive Title V grant of more than
$637,000 annually for the next five years will
help enhance the First Year Experience and
forensic science curriculum. “Funding for the
FYE will be used to support the development
of a comprehensive seminar program for
incoming freshmen,” said the program’s Director,
Kate Szur. In addition, Szur said, a curriculum
supplement would be created that will include
syllabi, teaching notes and other materials useful
to new faculty members considering teaching
such a seminar.
“We would also like to develop a peer-
mentoring program for freshmen, where First
Year seminar courses would be supported by
upper-class peers who would help with transition
Cuomo & Koch, Together Again
In Campaign Stop at John Jay, Candidate Wins Ex-Mayor’s
Backing for Governor & Unveils Sweeping Ethics Reform Plan
For just the second time in 28
years, a gubernatorial candidate
named Cuomo visited John Jay
College for a major campaign
appearance.
New York State Attorney General
Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic
nominee for Governor, chose
the College as the site of a press
conference on October 5 at which
he unveiled an aggressive ethics
agenda, “Clean Up Albany: Make
It Work.” Cuomo also received the
endorsement of former New York
City Mayor Ed Koch, who hailed him
as a “clear choice for reform.”
“It is time to put a stop
to Albany’s dysfunction and
corruption,” Cuomo told the crowd
gathered in the Gerald W. Lynch
Theater. “If we want to bring
integrity back to the halls of our
During a recent campaign stop at John Jay, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
Capitol, then we must take action. makes a point about his proposal for sweeping ethics reform in Albany, as former New York City
My Clean Up Albany agenda is the Mayor Ed Koch listens. Koch endorsed Cuomo’s bid to become New York’s next Governor.
aggressive approach we need to
take. By cracking down on public corruption,
ending pay-to-play and holding those who abuse
College at his disposal. Horn previously served as
commissioner of New York City’s Department of
Correction and Department of Probation, and as
executive director of the New York State Division
of Parole.
John Jay President Jeremy Travis said the
selection of the College as the commission’s
home, and Horn as its executive director, is an
honor that “recognizes the expertise of John Jay’s
faculty and reaffirms the College’s leadership in
criminal justice matters.”
Creation of a permanent sentencing
commission was recommended by the short-
term Commission on Sentencing Reform in
its 2009 report to Governor David Paterson
titled “The Future of Sentencing in New
York State: Recommendations for Reform.”
and adjustment issues,” Szur said.
The same grant will support the curricular
development of lower-level classes for forensic
science majors, as well as a non-major
introductory course on science and society.
Professor Anthony Carpi, interim Chair of the
Department of Sciences, said the aim is to make
these classes more “research-oriented and inquiry
driven.” The grant will also provide stipends for
upper-level forensic science students engaged in
undergraduate research.
A separate grant of $600,000 from the U.S.
Department of Education’s Minority Science
and Engineering Improvement Program will
support the operation and expansion of John
Jay’s Program for Research Initiatives for Science
Majors (PRISM), which was created in 2006. The
grant will fund student research stipends, travel
to conferences, an annual newsletter and a Web
site.
“I think what this grant will do is expand the
success we’ve been having in moving students
from John Jay on to graduate PhD and MD
programs,” said Carpi, “It’s just fantastic that we
will be able to keep up that momentum.”
The Justice Department grant, awarded by
the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
their office accountable, we will restore New
Yorkers’ confidence in their government.”
Among other provisions, Cuomo’s ethics plan
The new commission will follow through on
actions proposed in that report as well as
examine others, including truth-in-sentencing,
post-incarceration programs for offenders,
alternatives to incarceration, victim participation
in sentencing, and the collection and analysis
of reliable data for use in crafting sentencing
policies.
“There is no one-size-fits-all model for criminal
sentencing,” said Vance. “Four decades after
most of our sentencing laws were passed, it’s
time for New York to focus on being smart on
crime. This will mean longer sentences in some
instances, while in others identifying appropriate
cases for alternatives to incarceration. In all
cases, our goal is to prevent crime, keep our
streets safe, and ensure fairness and justice in our
Prevention, will allow researchers at John Jay and
Temple to assess the $8.6-million CBVP program,
which replicates innovative best practices in
violent-crime control, such as the Boston Gun
Project and Chicago CeaseFire, said Jeffrey A.
Butts, executive director of the Criminal Justice
Research and Evaluation Center.
“These approaches have evolved into
promising strategies for violence reduction with
theoretical underpinnings,” said Butts, “yet the
empirical research assessing the impact of the
initiatives is still developing. Attempts to replicate
the models have not always been successful.”
Four localities or local entities will participate
in the research: the city of Oakland, CA; the
city and county of Denver Safe City Office;
the Columbia Heights Shaw Family Support
Collaborative in Washington, DC, and the City
of New York/Center for Court Innovation. “Each
of the cities will propose a mix of efforts,” Butts
noted. “What we’re evaluating is not individual
efforts within the cities, but each city’s total
campaign. The Justice Dpeartment hopes to do
that in a way that allows other cities to learn
about the most effective methods.”
The research is expected to be published in
2014.
News and Events of Interest
October 27, 2010
would create a voluntary system
of public campaign financing,
strengthen the penalties against
lawmakers who defraud their
constituents or the government,
and strip the pension benefits from
public officials who are convicted
of a felony related to their official
duties.
Koch, still feisty at age 85, hailed
Cuomo as a public official who
has “spent his career standing up
for New Yorkers, taking on the
toughest challenges and making
progress on issues that others
have ignored.” The candidate’s
ethics agenda, Koch said, is
designed to achieve independence,
accountability and transparency and
“transform our government into
one that New Yorkers deserve.”
In 1982, Cuomo’s father, Mario,
who was then seeking his first term
as Governor, made a campaign stop
at John Jay to release a criminal
justice policy statement that included his staunch
opposition to the death penalty.
courts.”
The commission’s vice-chairs are Derek
P. Champagne, the Franklin County District
Attorney and current president of the New York
State District Attorneys Association, and Judge
Patricia Marks, Monroe County Court Judge and
Supervising Judge for the Criminal Courts in the
Seventh Judicial District. The commissioners of
the state Department of Correctional Services
and the state Division of Criminal Justice Services
and the chair of the state Board of Parole will
serve as members ex-officio.
The commission will also include
representatives from throughout the state’s
criminal justice community, including criminal
defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges,
legislators, policymakers, academics, victim
advocates and other stakeholders.
“I am honored to serve in this important
effort,” said Horn. “New York’s sentencing
scheme is a patchwork of provisions added over
time with serious consequences for defendants,
victims, and the community. Chief Judge
Lippman’s creation of a permanent commission is
an opportunity to preserve New York’s success in
making our communities safer and improve the
quality of justice at the same time.”
 CAMPUS SCENES
Tutor
Dynasty
The first week in October is celebrated as National
Tutor Appreciation Week, and John Jay paused to
recognize the roughly 100 tutors who work tirelessly
to help John Jay students master their college-
level studies. Tutors from a number of specialized
“learning labs,” including the Math & Science Resource
Center, the Center for English Language Support, the
Communication Arts Lab, the Foreign Language Lab,
the Writing Center and the SEEK Tutoring Center,
received kudos from top college officials, including
certificates of appreciation presented by Dean of
Undergraduate Studies Anne Lopes. The event, said
MSRC Director Michele Doney, “is a small way of
saying ‘thank you’ for the enormous contributions of
our tutors,” many of whom are versatile enough to be
working in more than one resource center.
(Photo by Navraj Sandhu)
Visitors
Welcome
Scholars the world over know that John Jay
College offers unrivaled opportunity for study and
research, and on October 4 President Jeremy Travis
hosted a welcome reception for the latest cohort
of international visitors to the campus. On hand
were (from left): Ciara McCormack (McCabe Fellow),
President Travis,, Annette Connolly (McCabe Fellow),
Sir Ian Blair (Office for the Advancement of Research),
Andrew Briers (Bramshill Exchange Scholar), Annelies
Vredeveldt (Department of Psychology) and Steven
Ritchie (Fulbright Scholar). Other visiting scholars at
the College this year include those conducting research
in economics, psychology, law and police science, and
in the Lloyd Sealy Library.
A Great Day for Italian-American Pride
Lecture Looks at Contributions of Educational Pioneer Montessori
The accomplishments of pioneering educator
Dr. Maria Montessori were the focus of a lecture
by scholar Leonisa Ardizzone as part of John Jay’s
Italian Heritage and Culture Month on October 7.
President of the Salvadori Center in New
York, Ardizzone has been a public-school
teacher working with high-risk students in
Seattle, New York City and Ithaca, NY. Having
taught at Fordham and Adelphi universities, she
holds a doctorate in International Educational
Development. Her work in peace education,
said President Jeremy Travis during his opening
remarks, gives Ardizzone “a home at John Jay.”
Ardizzone noted that Montessori, who was
born in Chiaravalle, Italy, in 1870, attended
an all-boys school at the age of 13 because
she wanted to learn how to be an engineer.
From there, she went on to medical school. In
1894, Montessori became the first woman in
Italy to earn a medical degree. It was through
her medical work that she became interested
in working with children, said Ardizzone, and
treating special-education children was what
led her to create the teaching philosophy that
underlies the Montessori Method.
“The first thing she did was come up with
this idea, after working with 16 children —
essentially, throw-away children in the streets of
Rome —that they all could learn, they all had the
same abilities, and that helped her come to the
place that children are in fact agents of their own
learning,” said Ardizzone.
In Montessori education, children choose what
they want to study, she explained. They select an
activity, they complete it, work on it, and then
“my favorite thing,” quipped Ardizzone, “they
clean up after themselves.”
Children educated at Montessori schools, she
continued, are able to follow their own curiosity,
explore a variety of materials and often work
alone, learning self-sufficiency.
The tribute to Montessori was co-sponsored
by John Jay Senior Vice President for Finance and
Administration Robert Pignatello and CUNY’s
John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.
@ John Jay is published by the
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John Jay College of Criminal Justice
555 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
www.jjay.cuny.edu
Editor Peter Dodenhoff
Submissions should be faxed or e-mailed to:
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Before her talk on the educational pioneer Dr. Maria Montessori, Leonisa Ardizzone, president of the Salvadori Center, was
joined by (from left) President Jeremy Travis, Dean Anthony J. Tamburri of the John D. Calandra Institute at Queens College,
and Senior Vice President Robert Pignatello.
FACULTY / STAFF NOTES
PRESENTING…
GEORGE ANDREOPOULOS (Political Science)
recently addressed a symposium on human
trafficking held at the Nova Southeastern
University School of Law in Fort Lauderdale,
FL. Andreopoulos’s presentation was on “The
Landscape of Human Trafficking: A Global
Perspective.”
M. VICTORIA PEREZ-RIOS (Political Science)
presented “Sierra Leone: A Hybrid Model to
Follow,” at the American Political Science
Association’s annual conference in Washington,
DC, on September 2–5. In early July, she
presented “‘The Alliance of Civilizations’ as an
Effective Counter-terrorism Tool” at the 10th
Comparative Interdisciplinary Section of the
International Studies Association’s Millennium
Conference, in Venice, Italy. She was also the
discussant on the panel on Conflict, Migration
and Minorities at the conference.
KEITH MARKUS (Psychology) presented a
colloquium titled "Measurement, Causation, and
Test Validity: Theoretical Puzzles and Practical
Problems" to the Doctoral Program in Social
Personality Psychology at the CUNY Graduate
Center on September 15 and the Doctoral
educating for justice
Program in Psychometrics at Fordham University
on September 22.
JOSE LUIS MORÍN (Latin American and Latina/o
Studies) presented a paper on “The Frontiers of
Latino Studies: The Importance of Latino Studies
in the 21st Century” at Montana State University
as part of the events celebrating the inauguration
of MSU’s 12th president on September 9 and 10.
DIANA FRIEDLAND (Sciences) participated
in the 2010 plant-biology conference of the
American Society of Plant Biologists and
Canadian Society of Plant Physiologists in
Montreal, Canada, in August. Her presentation
— “Binding Pokeweed Antiviral Protein to
Tobacco Etch mRNA Constructs: Structural
Recognition and Affinity” — included research
performed by two of her John Jay students,
Alexandra Toney and Jeannine DeGrazia.
BETWEEN THE COVERS
KEITH MARKUS (Psychology) published two
entries in the Encyclopedia of Research Design
(Sage Publications, 2010) with John Jay students
as coauthors. Markus and Kellie Smith published
an entry titled “Content Validity.” Along with
Jia-ying Lin, he published the entry “Construct
Tackling Tough
Questions in
Black & White
Can a black ex-convict with a violent past
reinvent and reintegrate himself in a society that
neither prepared him for his return nor is itself
prepared for it? That question was examined
through a variety of lenses at an October 14
panel discussion of the new book Zebratown by
Professor Greg Donaldson.
The book,
subtitled The
True Story of a
Black Ex-Con
and a White
Single Mother
in Small-Town
America,
explores the
ups and downs
in the life of
Kevin Davis
— “Killer Kev”
— who spent
seven years in
the New York
State prison
system on a gun-possession conviction, after
having beaten a homicide charge in the same
incident.
Co-sponsored by the Center on Race, Crime
and Justice and the Center on Media, Crime and
Justice, the panel brought together the author
along with Professor Delores Jones-Brown and
Stephen Handelman, directors, respectively, of
the two centers; Professor David Brotherton,
Chair of the Department of Sociology, and
Professor Amy Green, Chair of the Department
of Interdisciplinary Studies.
Donaldson, a member of the Department of
Communication and Theatre Arts, described his
subject as a fearsome-looking, heavily muscled
“über-thug” with a frightening résumé and a
carefully codified warrior ethic. Despite this, Davis
is articulate and burning with a desire to make it
in the post-incarceration world.
“This is not a feel-good book,” Donaldson
said of Zebratown, “but while the book may be
depressing, it is authentic.” Donaldson followed
Davis for eight years to write the book and
said that upon reflection: “This has not been a
comfortable experience; I’m afraid people will see
Kevin Davis and decide he’s not worth it.”
Brotherton, Handelman and Green took turns
analyzing Zebratown and its subject matter
from different perspectives that reflected their
areas of scholarly expertise. Brotherton spoke of
the book’s criminological elements, Handelman
explored it as a piece of human-interest
journalism and Green discussed its pedagogical
and theatrical relevance.
Handelman noted that the loftiest role the
media can play is to “help you rethink what you
thought to be true and real.” Donaldson’s book,
he said, serves as “a template for how to write
about criminal justice issues from now on.”
Validity.” In addition, Markus’s article “Structural
Equations and Causal Explanations: Some
Challenges for Causal SEM” appears in the
recent issue of Structural Equation Modeling:
A Multidisciplinary Journal. In it, he discusses
open questions about the nature of causal
explanation as they relate to causal modeling in
the behavioral sciences.
JACOBY CARTER (Philosophy) had his
anthology Philosophic Values and World
Citizenship: Locke to Obama and Beyond
published in September by Lexington Books,
a subsidiary of Rowman and Littlefield. In
addition, his article “Just/New War Theory:
Non-State Actors in Asymmetric Conflicts” has
been published in the journal Philosophy in the
Contemporary World.
PEER REVIEW
JANE KATZ (Health and Physical Education)
competed in the World Masters Swim Champion-
ships in Sweden this summer, medaling in the
200-meter backstroke and 800-meter freestyle.
At the U.S. Master’s Summer Nationals, held
in San Juan, PR, in August, she won the 1500-
meter freestyle as well as sweeping the 50-, 100-
and 200-meter backstroke events.