The Levitt Center invites students to apply to the Spring '25 Justice Lab. The Lab is a semester-long opportunity where students take a set of three to four parallel courses that combine mutually reinforcing academic and experiential learning around the broad theme of justice. All the instructors in the Lab work together to coordinate syllabi and assignments and to provide students in the Lab with an integrated, interdisciplinary understanding of the topic.
For next semester's Justice Lab, Profs. Justin Clark, Robert Knight, Chaise LaDousa, and Sharon Rivera will teach four connected courses in which students will study the relationship between justice and technology from both a local and global perspective. With an emphasis on the ethical use of technology, its potential to promote a more just world and the potential threats that technology may pose, students will study the issues through the lens of philosophy, photography, and anthropology.
Professor Knight will teach an introductory photography course focused on social justice, Professor Clark’s course on justice and the good life will introduce various theories of justice within moral philosophy while focusing on ethical issues related to emerging technologies, and Professor LaDousa's course will investigate the impacts of digital technology on social change. Professors Clark, Knight, and LaDousa’s courses are required for all Lab participants. Lab students may choose to take Professor Rivera’s Digital Human Rights Investigations as an optional fourth course. Rivera’s course examines the ways in which new digital technologies are used to detect and document ongoing international human rights violations.
The Lab will be rooted in multiple experiential learning opportunities including regular trips to Utica for both photography and ethnographic research Students who opt into the Digital Human Rights Investigations course will learn and apply digital investigative techniques to the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children by Russia and will take a trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with practitioners. Fridays will be set aside for field study and trips.
There are no prerequisites for these courses. The Lab schedule is akin to an ordinary semester’s schedule. This means that student-athletes will be able to get to practice, and students can work out schedules for on-campus jobs. You can find the course schedule here
Enrollment in the program is limited. Applications to the Justice Lab are open to all students.
Please fill out the following application form. Upon clicking "Apply Now", you will be prompted to create a free account with Interfolio. If you already have an Interfolio account, you should sign in. If you don't already have an Interfolio account, click on the "Sign up" button (NOT the "sign in through partner institution link). Applications are due October 30th.
