Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author and ordained Presbyterian minister. Hedges has taught college credit courses for several years to students in the B.A. program in New Jersey prisons through Princeton University and Rutgers University. 

He has written 12 books, including the New York Times best-seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco. His other books include "America: The Farewell Tour" (2018), "Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt" (2015), “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” (2008) and the best-selling “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2008). His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and has sold over 400,000 copies. He writes a weekly column for the website Truthdig in Los Angeles, run by Robert Scheer, and hosts a show, On Contact, on RT America.

Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries during his work for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Hedges was part of a New York Times team of reporters awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. 

Hedges holds  B.A. in English Literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity from Harvard University.  He also studied classics at Harvard, including ancient Greek and Latin.  Hedges was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry.  He has taught at Princeton University, Columbia University, New York University and the University of Toronto.  In addition to English, Latin and ancient Greek, he speaks Arabic, Spanish and French.
 

Amy Diamond-Rodriguez is a Senior Counselor for the Educational Opportunity Fund Program at Rutgers University - New Brunswick. Prior to her current position, she served as an Academic Counselor for the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons (NJ-STEP) college prison program at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women and Mountainview Youth Correctional facility. She was incarcerated under the New Jersey Department of Corrections from October 2006 to April 2009. While still incarcerated, Amy enrolled through a community programs halfway house in the Essex County College Next Step program. Upon release, she applied and was admitted to Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey through the Mountainview Communities (RU-MVC) program. She is a graduate of Rutgers University, where she completed her Joint Bachelor of Arts in Women's and Gender Studies, and Information Technology & Informatics with a minor in Social Justice. Most recently, she completed a Master of Arts in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University - Newark and is the proud recipient of the Dee Garrison Award for Peace and Justice.

Her most recent research contributions focus on mandatory minimum sentencing policies and the effects of criminal records on formerly incarcerated individuals seeking housing from public housing agencies. She hopes to continue to be a voice for formerly incarcerated individuals and further explore the many endless possibilities of successful reentry through education.

Emily Allen-Hornblower is an associate professor of Classics, and has served as the Undergraduate Director of Classics since 2010. She is a recipient of The Rutgers Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Service for her teaching in NJ prisons (2016), and of the Presidential Fellowship for Teaching Excellence honors award for outstanding teaching and scholarly work (2015). Her areas of interest include: storytelling; religion and gender; ancient cultural history; ancient Greek and Roman epic; Greek drama (tragedy and comedy); and social justice. Her book and articles center on ancient (and modern) conceptions and portrayals of the human: the human condition and suffering; interpersonal relations; and factors of connection (and disconnection) between individuals and groups. She loves teaching and advising, and taking her students beyond the classroom (for instance to theater and museum outings), and to bring to light (and to life!) crucial aspects of the material covered in class by way of hands-on contact with material culture and a more experiential approach to studying and learning.

She is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, and received her Ph.D in Classics from Harvard University, along with a joint doctoral degree from the Sorbonne in Paris (where she received a BA in both Classics and English). 

Boris Franklin, the author of The Poetic Side of a Man’s Mind, served 11 years in prison from 2004 to 2015. He is currently a junior at Rutgers University pursuing a bachelors degree in psychology with a minor in sociology. He sits on the board of the New Jersey Prison Reentry Program as well as The Mountain View Community Student Advisory Board. He is a visiting fellow at the Global Center for Advance studies, a nonprofit educational and research institution located in Brooklyn, New York.

Boris is also the Senior Advisor of the Mentors at Newark’s Eastside High school’s TDA’s Parole to College program. He is a lead writer of the play “Caged,” which was written inside of East Jersey State Prison by 28 inmates. This thought-provoking play originated in an Urban History class taught inside the maximum security prison by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author Chris Hedges. 

Since Boris’s release in spring 2015, Boris and Chris have gone on an unprecedented journey which led to the play “Caged” being scheduled to perform in the Passage Theater in Trenton, New Jersey in spring 2018. The play has attracted the attention of social justice advocates such as Michelle Alexandra and Alice Walker. This journey has also led to a documentary which follows Boris and Chris from the gates of Northern State Prison to the prestigious Harvard Club in New York, where along the way the two, pupil and professor, form a lifetime friendship. 

While serving his time in East Jersey State Prison, Boris was the assistant director of the New Direction Program, a program which focuses on addiction and HIV/Aids awareness. His duties included facilitating groups and training new facilitators. In December 2012, Boris enrolled in the New Jersey Step Program, a higher education program that works in partnership with the Department of Corrections and State Parole Board. Upon his release, he attended Middlesex County College before being admitted into the Mountain View Community (the final step in the NJ Step Program) at Rutgers New Brunswick. 

Since he began his education at Rutgers, Boris has advocated for prison reform and social justice. He has spoken publicly at many events in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania during the 2016 Democracy Rise Convention. Boris has done speaking engagements at several academic institutions including the Queensboro Community College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, College of New York,  Rutgers Newark, Rutgers New Brunswick, Kutztown University, and Princeton University on issues ranging from education to mass incarceration. 

Chris is Executive Director of the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons (NJ-STEP) administrative team, coordinating services for students attending college in New Jersey prisons and connecting them to college in community. He is a graduate of both Rutgers College and Rutgers Graduate School of Education where he earned a Master's Degree in Educational Administration. Prior to developing the transitional supports for formerly incarcerated students at Rutgers University (now known and the Rutgers Mountainview Communities),  Chris was the Director of the federally funded TRIO Student Support Services program for Rutgers New Brunswick. There he managed all aspects of academic and personal support services for low-income, first-generation college students. He has served at Rutgers since 1999 in a wide variety of other roles as well, including: tech support; network administrator; student adviser; residence counselor; and a course instructor for various programs and departments.