Convicted murderers, attempted murderers, and robbers need look no further than to prestigious Ivy League Columbia University for employment.
Several ex-cons are working right alongside fellow convicted felon, cop-killing, former radical terrorist, now adjunct professor, Kathy Boudin, in a research section of Columbia University School of Social Work, according to a special report from FoxNews.com.
Boudin, who served 22-years for her part in a Weather Underground robbery that killed two cops and a security guard, co-founded the Criminal Justice Initiative to find solutions “for a central social crisis of our time, mass incarceration.”
The CJI “holds events and conducts research as part of ‘an interdisciplinary project built around a model of community collaboration’ that ‘seeks to increase the number of skilled practitioners, policy-makers and researchers who can advance the fields of re-entry and incarceration across all disciplines,’” the investigation found.
The CJI’s Associate Director Cheryl Wilkins served 12-years for robbery and assault in a 1996 gunpoint hijacking.
The Social Intervention Group’s research assistant Denise Blackwell served 10-years after her “attempted second-degree murder conviction for her role in a Brooklyn holdup in which three drug dealers were killed,” FoxNews.com reported.
And one of the CJI’s speakers, Mika’il DeVeaux, served 24-years for second-degree murder.
However, while the school proudly hires these convicted felons, it apparently isn’t proud enough to have the staff’s past lives of crime and incarceration discussed in their school directory bios. Surprisingly, Columbia hasn’t hired these felons to also work in its creative writing department.
According to the report:
Boudin’s school directory bio, for example, makes no mention of her time in prison.
Wilkins’ school biography page makes no mention of her time in jail. Wilkins is also listed as staff associate at Columbia Law School’s Center for Institutional and Social Change, though that bio also neglects any mention of her prison time. According to the bio, Wilkins works with teens who have incarcerated parents and is an adjunct lecturer at Columbia, where she often discusses topics concerning the “need of families and communities affected by mass incarceration.”
[DeVeaux’s] bio simply says DeVeaux “has more than three decades of experience working with men incarcerated in New York State maximum security prisons and many who have been released following periods of confinement.”
Neither Boudin nor her merry band of ex-cons responded to requests for statements, the article said, but the university told FoxNews.com, “There are approximately 1.6 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails and 7 million American children with a parent who is either incarcerated, on parole, or on probation. The Criminal Justice Initiative focuses on how the social work profession can best address the educational and human needs of individuals, children, families and communities affected by incarceration.”
However, Josiah Ryan, from the education advocacy blog “Campus Reform” told FoxNews.com:
I am perplexed by Columbia administrators’ plot to commission notorious villains as mentors to the rising generation of Americans.
Columbia administrators should send a letter to parents informing them that many of the professors who will teach their children are unable to pass a basic criminal background check.
John Hanchar, the brother-in-law of one of the murdered cops in Boudin’s case, was disgusted when he learned from Fox there were other convicted felons teaching with Boudin:
“That’s the worst thing I could have heard,” Hanchar said. “My sister had three children and she raised them into good people and what [Boudin] did was take their father from them.
“It’s terrible that she has murderers working with her at a school,” he continued. “I could see if they had someone speak who committed robbery and served their time, but murderers? It’s not right.”
Read more from FoxNews.com.
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