Nancy Heitzeg, PhD, is professor of sociology and director of the Critical Studies of Race and Ethnicity program. She writes, teaches, and presents widely on issues of race, class, gender, and social factors, particularly the school-to-prison pipeline and prison industrial complex. In 2016, Bloomsbury press published her book The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Education, Discipline, and Racialized Double Standards, part of Praeger Publishings series on Racism in American Institutions. Heitzeg is co-editor of an online series, , which is devoted to encouraging public education and action on issues of mass incarceration.
As Endowed Chair in the Sciences, Heitzeg conducted a three-year project titled Challenging Criminalization: Beyond Policing Punishment. In particular, the series brought prominent anti-racist, criminal justice reform advocates Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) in 2020 and Angela Davis, PhD (Are Prisons Obsolete?), the latter for the Universitys 2021 spring Core Convocation. The programming and speakers in Heitzegs series gained even more relevance in the immediate sense as both the St. Kates and national communities processed and responded to the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.
People get killed by our legal systems every day but there is even more killing done on the front end of the system by the very people who are meant to keep us safe, Heitzeg shared following Prejeans St. Kates visit. Sister Helen highlights the racial dimensions of the death penalty. Every stage of the system exemplifies the injustice in the system.