Benjamin Justice

Benjamin Justice is Distinguished Professor of Education at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and an associate member of the History Department at Rutgers—New Brunswick. He holds a courtesy appointment as Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School. He also serves series editor of New Directions in History of Education, at Rutgers University Press. Dr. Justice is past president of the History of Education Society, and a former member of the Standing Committee on American History for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Currently Dr. Justice examines the ways in which the US criminal justice system educates. This work builds innovative connections between legitimacy theory and curriculum theory, positing that criminal justice is, itself, a form of civic education. Dr. Justice spend the 2023-24 academic year as a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, writing a book on how experiences with police, courts, and pre-trial detention offer formal and hidden curricula that shape civic identity.

Over his career, Dr. Justice has produced scholarship that is wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, appearing in journals in education, history, law, social science, and philosophy, as well as in mainstream periodicals, radio, and tv. His book, The War That Wasn’t: Religious Conflict and Compromise in the Common Schools of New York State, 1865-1900, provides a social history of the micropolitics of religion in public schools. In Have a Little Faith: Religion, Democracy, and the American Public School (coauthored with Colin MacLeod), he looks at tensions between public education and democratic ideals from historical and contemporary perspectives. He is also editor of The Founding Fathers, Education, and the Great Contest, which examines educational ideas in the early American Republic, and the methods by which historians uncover them.

Dr. Justice is the winner of numerous honors and awards, such as the AESA Critics Choice Book Award, the Outstanding Scholarly Publication on Justice in Education Award from the AERA Philosophical Studies in Education SIG, the AERA Outstanding Reviewer Award, A National Academy of Education/Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellowship, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation’s Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, the NY State Archives/NY Department of Education/State University of New York Researcher of the Year, and awards in service, teaching, and research from Rutgers University and the Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Justice holds a B.A. (history) from Yale, and M.A. (history) and Ph.D. (Education) from Stanford University.

Publications:

• Benjamin Justice, Essay Review: “Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America, by Robert N. Gross. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. American Journal of Education. (February 2019): 289-293.

• Benjamin Justice, “Toward a Jurismythos of Thomas Jefferson: The Supreme Court’s Use and Abuse of America’s Most Controversial Founder” in Brian Dotts and Andrew Holowchak (eds.) The Elusive Thomas Jefferson: Essays on the Man Behind the Myths. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishers, 2017): 46-68.

• Benjamin Justice and Colin Macleod, Have a Little Faith: Religion, Democracy, and the American Public School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). 220 pages. 2016.

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• Featured Guest "The Future of Urban Education" on State of Affairs with Steve Adubato. New York and New Jersey Public Television, March (multiple dates) 2018. http://www.pbs.org/video/social-reforms-can-ignite-change-failing-school-districts-vp/

• Boston Public Radio (WGBH), "82-Year-Old Law Requires Mass. Taxpayers to Fund Private School Transportation," Interview with Bianca Toness, aired Sept. 4, 2018.

• Featured Guest, "Should religions be a part of America's public school system?" Joy Cardin Show. Wisconsin Public Radio, Monday, Feb 20. http://www.wpr.org/shows/should-religions-be-part- americas-public-education-system

Previous Organizations: 

• Stanford University 

• Board of Directors, History of Education Society

• Editorial Board, Theory and Research in Education

Accomplishments:

• Big Ten Academic Alliance Academic Leadership Fellow, Rutgers University

• Council for the Support and Advancement of Education (CASE) Circle of Excellence Gold Award – Winner for Rutgers: a 250th Anniversary Portrait (contributing author)

• Finalist for How the Criminal Justice System Educates Citizens, Spencer Mid-career Grant