#  The Tanner Seminar | James Forman Jr. in conversation with Cornell William Brooks 

 



    ![Pencils crossed in an "X" against a yellow background](/sites/g/files/omnuum4936/files/styles/hwp_5_4__480x385/public/2026-03/Tanner_Web_1920x1080_Final.jpg?itok=Z3xS2lTv) 

 



 

####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **April 17, 2026** 

 12:00PM - 01:00PM EDT 

 



 

### The Tanner Lectures with James Forman Jr.

#### Speaker: James Forman Jr., Yale University

#### Interlocutor: Cornell William Brooks, Harvard Kennedy School

#### *This seminar is open to Harvard ID-holders only. Registration is required.*

### About the Speakers

[James Forman Jr.](https://law.yale.edu/james-forman-jr) is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law. He attended public schools in Detroit and New York City before graduating from the Atlanta Public Schools. After attending Brown University and Yale Law School, he joined the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., where for six years he represented both juveniles and adults charged with crimes.

During his time as a public defender, Professor Forman became frustrated with the lack of education and job training opportunities for his clients. In 1997, along with David Domenici, he started the Maya Angelou School, an alternative school for school dropouts and youth who had been arrested. In the decades since its founding, Maya Angelou School has expanded to run multiple schools inside D.C.’s youth and adult prisons—its success was chronicled in the 2023 short documentary film “[Welcome to School](https://www.seeforever.org/documentary/).” The Maya Angelou leadership team dreams of a world in which no person is behind bars; in the meantime, they believe that everyone — including those incarcerated — deserve a high-quality education.

Professor Forman’s scholarship focuses on schools, police, and prisons. He is particularly interested in the race and class dimensions of those institutions. Professor Forman’s first book, [*Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America*](https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jamesformanjr.com%2F&data=05%7C01%7Calden.ferro%40yale.edu%7C0daf886b03bf4cd41eed08db41d129ae%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638176138814900890%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=zQyvsNeRkXf4UsjtYLiSgXKt1aq3lzy8jHMjG%2B6Vyrg%3D&reserved=0), was on many top 10 lists, including *The New York Times*’ 10 Best Books of 2017, and was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. His second book, *Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change*, was published in 2024 by Farrar Straus & Giroux. Co-edited by Forman, Premal Dharia and Mario Hawilo, the anthology focuses on how to undo the damage and depredations of the carceral state.

[Cornell William Brooks](https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/cornell-william-brooks) is Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations and Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Director of The William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the School’s Center for Public Leadership, and Visiting Professor of the Practice of Prophetic Religion and Public Leadership at Harvard Divinity School. He is the former president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights attorney, and an ordained minister.

### About the Tanner Lectures

In collaboration with the Office of the President of Harvard University, the Mahindra Humanities Center hosts annual Tanner Lectures on Human Values. The purpose of the Tanner Lectures is the advancement of scholarly and scientific learning in the field of human values. That purpose embraces the entire range of moral, artistic, intellectual, and spiritual values, both individual and social – the full register of values pertinent to the human condition, interest, behavior, and aspiration.

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is a nonprofit corporation administered at the University of Utah. They are funded by an endowment and other gifts received by the University of Utah from Obert Clark Tanner and Grace Adams Tanner. More information: [www.tannerlectures.utah.edu](http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/).



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Tanner Lectures ](/event-series/tanner-lectures)
- [ Public ](/event-type/public)
 
 

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