In November, 1981, during the height of the Salvadoran armed conflict, an estimated 1,200 soldiers invaded the rural northern province of Cabañas, El Salvador, to carry out a “cleansing operation.” Survivors of the invasion, however, tell a story of carnage, in which the armed forces directly targeted the unarmed civilian population, including the elderly and

By Pamela Schwartz Week seven and we’ve really settled in. Names and faces are familiar, as are the smiles and greetings we share with our University Beyond Bars classmates. The classroom is very welcoming, permitting us to practically ignore the intimidating walls and barbed wire that surround us. Our space, a non-descript classroom inside the

Jeff Coats was 14 years old when he kidnapped David Grenier and stole his car in Tacoma, Washington. The crime took place against a backdrop of moral panic: two criminologists forecast a wave of juvenile “superpredators” who would create a “teenage bloodbath” across America. 20 years later, Jeff and David reflect on the crime and

By Pamela Schwartz Monroe, Washington, home to the Reptile Zoo and the Evergreen State Fair. A quiet and unassuming town only 40 minutes northeast of Seattle, Monroe is also home to the Monroe Correctional Complex, a five-unit reformatory housing maximum, medium and minimum level prisoners. For the next 10 weeks, I along with 13 of

Sophie Jin, a first year student at the UW School of Law, spent her summer as a legal Intern with EarthRights International (ERI) in Washington, D.C. ERI is noted for its use of innovative legal tactics, including the transnational prosecution of corporate offenders for crimes which conventional approaches typically fail to address. Sophie assisted the

Four undergraduate students received the 2014 Jennifer Caldwell fellowship. They applied as the Grassroots On-site Work (GROW) team, which included Eugene Hsu (Bioengineering), James Kelley (Psychology and Public Health), Brittney Senn (Nursing and Public Health) and Laurie Tran (Biology, Medical Anthropology and Global Health). The GROW team traveled from the University of Washington to India this past summer to work with the

For the past two summers, Amy Reed-Sandoval has been working with the Centro de Esperanza Infantil in Oaxaca, México, developing a Philosophy For Children (P4C) program for 10-18 year old street youth, based in part on the work of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children at the University of Washington. The program encourages critical thinking

2013 Award Recipient Emily Gaverick helped organize and carry out a speaker’s tour to inspire action among US consumers about garment factory safety in South Asia. She brought Bangladeshi garment workers to Washington state – in light of the tragic collapse and fire of factories in Bangladesh – as part of a greater US tour.

2012 Award Recipients Kate Fenimore and Marina Fitzpatrick worked with a Cambodian organization called Women’s Development Association (WDA) . They helped the WDA find and train ‘peer-educators’ who will work to disseminate health information (related to maternal health, water sanitation, and in particular the value of using local clinics) into entirely underserved rural populations. Ursula