My name is Christia Mercer, and I'm the founder of Just Ideas.
The full power of our Just Ideas approach to prison education took a while to recognize.
In fall 2014, Geraldine Downey, Director of Columbia's Center for Justice, asked me to be the first senior professor to teach in Columbia's new Justice-in-Education Initiative.
My plan was to take a version of Literature Humanities, the first course in Columbia's Core Curriculum, into Taconic Correctional Facility, a New York State women's prison, spring semester 2015. Not only did I want to challenge the students, I hoped the fierce struggles of women in ancient drama might thrill them. So, for my first course, I taught Aeschylus’ Oresteia, an ancient story about violence, revenge, and sacrifice. The students were riveted. Some of the women in those first courses changed my life, and gave me the chance to change theirs. Our efforts got attention.
Geraldine then asked me to teach in MDC, Brooklyn, where the severity of a maximum-security federal detention center offered new challenges. Desperate to find a way to speak to the men in that harsh environment, I hit on the idea of teaching the Epic of Gilgamesh, a sublimely bizarre story, so old it was written on clay tablets. I hoped its treatment of masculinity, friendship, loss, and discovery might speak to the students. Again, we hit the jackpot: we all loved the course.
That semester in MDC fall 2017 allowed me to grasp the power of our Just Ideas approach. Incarcerated men and women are eager to face intellectual challenges, think hard about the world and themselves in it. They don't want to be pampered; they want to be inspired.
One of the great pleasures of my life has been to inspire and be inspired by the people in my Just Ideas courses. Every year since 2015, roughly ten professors, ten assistants, and 150 students have their lives changed.
Just Ideas takes incarcerated people seriously so that they can take ideas and themselves seriously. Whether you’re a professor, a teaching assistant, or a student, everyone learns. Everyone is transformed.
Christia Mercer
December 2020
New York City