Professor Jennifer Lackey of the Department of Philosophy named a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow

Jennifer Lackey, the Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy was named a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.

The award will help support Lackey’s next book project, ‘Criminal Testimonial Injustice,’ which examines how testimonies are extracted and then used in the criminal legal system.

“I am deeply honored to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship to support my next book project, ‘Criminal Testimonial Injustice,’ where I examine how testimony is often extracted from individuals in the U.S. criminal legal system through processes that are coercive, manipulative or deceptive, and is then unreasonably taken to represent the testifiers’ truest selves,” said Professor Jennifer Lackey said. “I am especially grateful to my students in the Northwestern Prison Education Program, whose own stories of extracted testimony through false confessions, eyewitness misidentifications and coercive plea deals helped me see how undermining agency through widely used interrogation tactics inflicts a unique and pernicious form of injustice on testifiers.”

This year, the Foundation awarded 184 artists, writers, scholars, and scientists from across the United States and Canada. Selected from a pool of nearly 3,000 applicants, the fellows were appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise.

Visit Professor Jennifer Lackey’s website.

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