Benjamin Justice

Benjamin Justice is Distinguished Professor of Education at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and an associate member of the History Department at Rutgers—New Brunswick. He holds a courtesy appointment as Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School. He also serves series editor of New Directions in History of Education, at Rutgers University Press. Dr. Justice is past president of the History of Education Society, and a former member of the Standing Committee on American History for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Currently Dr. Justice examines the ways in which the US criminal justice system educates. This work builds innovative connections between legitimacy theory and curriculum theory, positing that criminal justice is, itself, a form of civic education. Dr. Justice spent the 2023-24 academic year as a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, writing a book on how experiences with police, courts, and pre-trial detention offer formal and hidden curricula that shape civic identity. Over his career, Dr. Justice has produced scholarship that is wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, appearing in journals in education, history, law, social science, and philosophy, as well as in mainstream periodicals, radio, and tv. His book, The War That Wasn’t: Religious Conflict and Compromise in the Common Schools of New York State, 1865-1900, provides a social history of the micropolitics of religion in public schools. In Have a Little Faith: Religion, Democracy, and the American Public School (coauthored with Colin MacLeod), he looks at tensions between public education and democratic ideals from historical and contemporary perspectives. He is also editor of The Founding Fathers, Education, and the Great Contest, which examines educational ideas in the early American Republic, and the methods by which historians uncover them.

Dr. Justice is the winner of numerous honors and awards, such as the AESA Critics Choice Book Award, the Outstanding Scholarly Publication on Justice in Education Award from the AERA Philosophical Studies in Education SIG, the AERA Outstanding Reviewer Award, A National Academy of Education/Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellowship, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation’s Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, the NY State Archives/NY Department of Education/State University of New York Researcher of the Year, and awards in service, teaching, and research from Rutgers University and the Graduate School of Education. Dr. Justice holds a B.A. (history) from Yale, and M.A. (history) and Ph.D. (Education) from Stanford University.

• Expertise & Research Interest

  History of Education (USA)

  Criminal Justice

  Civic Education

  Race

  Religion

  Curriculum

  Philosophy of Education

  Law

• Recent & Selected Publications

  Books

  Benjamin Justice and Colin Macleod, Have a Little Faith: Religion, Democracy, and the American Public School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016)

  Benjamin Justice (ed), The Founding Fathers, Education, and the Great Contest: The American Philosophical Society Essay Prize of 1797. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013)

  Benjamin Justice, The War That Wasn’t: Religious Conflict and Compromise in the Common Schools of New York State, 1865-1900 (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005)

  Book Chapters

  Benjamin Justice, “Toward a Jurismythos of Thomas Jefferson: The Supreme Court’s Use and Abuse of America’s Most Controversial Founder” in Brian Dotts and Andrew Holowchak (eds.) The Elusive Thomas Jefferson: Essays on the Man Behind the Myths. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishers, 2017): 46-68.

  Articles

  Benjamin Justice, Essay Review: “Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America, by Robert N. Gross. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. American Journal of Education. (February 2019): 289-293.

  Benjamin Justice, ” Schools, Prisons, and Pipelines: Facing, fixing, and reconceiving the toxic relationship between public education and criminal justice,” Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries 55:10 (June, 2018): 1169-1176.

  Benjamin Justice, “Curriculum Theory and the Welfare State,” Espacio, Tiempo, y Educación 4:2 (2017). http://www.espaciotiempoyeducacion.com/ojs/index.php/ete

  Benjamin Justice and Colin MacLeod, “Civility, Democratic Education, and Public Reason, “TheHumanist.com, May 1, 2017. (Edited excerpt from Have a Little Faith)

  Benjamin Justice and Colin MacLeod, “Does Religion Have a Place in Public Schools?” The Atlantic, Feb. 9, 2017 https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/02/ does-religion-have-a-place-in-public-schools/516189/ (Edited excerpt from Have a Little Faith)

  Benjamin Justice, “Settler Colony on the Hudson: What history and theory tell us about the education crisis in East Ramapo, New York,” Theory and Research in Education 14:2 (2016), pp. 168-192.

  Benjamin Justice and Jason Stanley, “Teaching in the Time of Trump,” Social Education 80:1(2016): 36-41.

• Honors, Distinctions, & Awards

  Leadership
  2021-2022 President, History of Education Society
  2011-2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) US History Standing Committee
  2018-19 Big Ten Academic Alliance Academic Leadership Program (ALP) Fellow 

  Scholarship (external)
  2025 Outstanding Scholarly Publication on Justice in Education Award from the Philosophical Studies in Education SIG, American Education Research Association
  2023-24 Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar
  2016 Council for the Support and Advancement of Education (CASE) Circle of Excellence 
  Gold Award Winner for Rutgers: a 250th Anniversary Portrait (contributing author).
  2014 Critics Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association
  2008 Outstanding Reviewer for Educational Researcher (ER), American Education Research Association
  2006 Finalist, Outstanding Book Award, by the History of Education Society
  2005-06 National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow
  2005 Researcher of the Year: Annual Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of the Archives of New York State, State Education Department/SUNY
  2000–01 Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Foundation 
  2000 Larry J. Hackman Research Fellow, New York State Archives 

  Scholarship (internal)
  2024 Distinguished Lecturer Award, Rutgers Graduate School of Education Alumni Association
  2008 Rutgers University Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence, awarded to “The University’s most distinguished young faculty members.”
  1990 Winston Townsend Prize for excellence in English composition, English Department, Yale University 

  Teaching
  2025 Honorable Mention, Excellence in Online Teaching Award, Rutgers University 
  2006 Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award, Rutgers Graduate School of Education Alumni Association 

  Service
  2010 Outstanding Faculty Service Award, Rutgers Graduate School of Education 

• Files

  Download Benjamin Justice’s CV