Attorney and author Bryan Stevenson's book "Just Mercy" is the common reading assignment for all first-year Elon students this academic year.
As an attorney advocating for death-row prisoners and juvenile offenders facing extensive prison time, Bryan Stevenson says he’s remained hopeful and empowered, despite the brokenness he sees in the world, and in himself. That’s what’s kept him working for justice, working to change the narrative on race and poverty, and kept him doing things that make him uncomfortable.
Stevenson delivered that message to hundreds of Elon students on Thursday during his visit to the university as part of the Common Reading program, through which all incoming students read the same book and then explore the book’s themes through courses during their first year at Elon. Stevenson’s 2014 book, “Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption,” uses his work to exonerate a death row inmate in 1993 as a central storyline to explore problems with the American criminal justice system and the country’s approach to race and incarceration.
“You can change things, you can make things better. You can create more justice in the world,” Stevenson said before a crowd of more than 1,500 gathered in Alumni Gym for the Common Reading lecture. “And we actually need you to change the world.”
A Delaware native who now lives in Montgomery, Ala., Stevenson is a graduate of Harvard Law School whose career has been dedicated to public interest law with a focus on helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. He’s the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, and teaches law at the New York University School of Law. Stevenson has received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Prize, the National Medal of Liberty from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Olaf Palme Prize for his work for international human rights, among a host of other honors.
Jeffrey Coker, associate professor of biology and director of the Core Curriculum, of which the Common Reading program is a part, said the goal in choosing Stevenson’s book, as with other common reading selections, is to find a work that “can involve and captivate every person on campus” with its themes and message.
”I think the themes of this book are so universal – themes of civil rights, redemption, justice, freedom, crime and punishment, diversity, and communication skills,” Coker said. “A good common reading program involves getting deeper and deeper as we explore these themes, and having a great conversation from any disciplinary point of view as the year goes on.”
During a question-and-answer session earlier in the day in the Great Hall of the Global Commons and during his hour-long lecture at Alumni Gym, Stevenson spoke broadly about what it takes to have an impact on injustice in the world. He delved more specifically into issues surrounding mass incarceration in this country and the injustice of the death penalty and the prosecution of juvenile offenders as adults.
During his time at Elon as well as in “Just Mercy,” Stevenson drew from his experiences in courtrooms and death row holding cells around the country to speak out against a criminal justice system he views as broken and unjust, and the prevalent tendency to label people by their wrongdoings rather than their humanity.
“Incarceration and punishment have pushed all of us to have that instinct where we reduce someone to their worst act,” Stevenson said during his discussion with students. “All of us make mistakes. All of us do things that we don’t want to be defined by. If we are denied the opportunity to recover from our worst acts, I think we become a much less just society.”
The current criminal justice system has not been able to show that it can administer the death penalty without error or bias, Stevenson said, prompting the question, “do we deserve to kill?”
“I don’t think we should actually try to impose a punishment that requires perfection when we don’t have a perfect system,” Stevenson said, responding to a question from a first-year student.
In his lecture, Stevenson laid out five guidelines to follow in working to create change — creating an identity you can adhere to, getting proximate with the problems you are working to solve, changing the narrative that sustains long-term problems, staying hopeful and being willing to do uncomfortable things.
Fear and anger have long been part of the narrative that has created injustice in the criminal justice system and spurred a trend toward even greater incarceration rates, Stevenson said.
“When you make decisions rooted in fear and anger, when you make policies based on fear and anger, you will tolerate injustice and inequality,” Stevenson said during his lecture. “Fear and anger are the essential ingredients of oppression and abuse of power and tyranny. If we want to deal with these problems, we have to change the narrative.”