How a Course on Restorative Justice Shaped Two Students’ Paths at Duke
Seniors on the cusp of graduation often have advice for other Duke students. Get to know your professors. Study abroad. Explore Durham — it’s a great place to spend a few years.
But this take-away from Will Lieber T’25 is unique: Take classes with as many non-Duke students as possible.
While he was half-joking, there’s a kernel of truth to it.
“We come to college to encounter diverse perspectives, but in some ways, college is not diverse,” Lieber said. “We’re very homogenous in terms of age, and the life experience that comes with age.”
“It can honestly limit class discussions,” Jenna Smith T’25 agreed. “Even though we all come from different backgrounds, there is this common centralizing force that really informs our experiences and perspectives.”
For Lieber and Smith, a class taught by Kenan Institute for Ethics Associate Director Ada Gregory, “Just Work: Restorative Justice Models and Applications,” was a notable exception — one that ended up shaping their paths at Duke in unexpected but perhaps unsurprising ways.
That’s because restorative justice challenges what people think they know — or have unconsciously internalized — about the way the criminal justice system works.
Typically, when a perpetrator is convicted of a crime, the state determines their punishment. Punishments vary according to the type and severity of the crime, as determined by the state. This legal process is largely abstracted from the harm caused by the crime; that is, its impact on individual victims and communities.
In contrast, restorative justice is an alternative, voluntary process that’s centered on those harmed by the crime. Through facilitated dialogues, or “circles,” it provides a structure for victims, perpetrators, and communities to decide collectively how to address the harm and try to repair it. Therefore, solutions vary according to the community and its needs.
“The questions that you get to ask in restorative justice are ones that will carry through to how you engage in your personal life, in your professional life, and how you engage in conflict in any capacity.”
— Jenna Smith T’25
When Lieber and Smith took Gregory’s course on restorative justice in spring 2023, it solidified interests in criminal justice and incarceration that they’d been developing for years.
Jenna Smith came to Duke as a Robertson Scholar with an ambitious “30-year-plan”: she was “dead-set on becoming a federal judge.” Along the way, she said, she realized that she would be in college only a short time, and “you don’t want to wake up in 20 to 30 years and realize that you hadn’t thought about any other options.”
She explored other disciplines, including international comparative studies, in which she eventually majored, focusing on Latin America. Her interest in journalism took her to Chicago, where she spent a summer interning at the Tribune. But she just kept coming back to criminal justice.
“That’s what I wanted to report on,” she said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to folks about. That’s just what I cared most about.”
During his first year of college at Illinois Wesleyan University, Will Lieber worked night shifts as an ER tech in a hospital in central Illinois. His encounters with incarcerated people coming in for emergency care caused him to reflect on how easily anyone could end up in the same situation.
“Dropping out of school, or dating the wrong person…lots of things can increase one’s potential opportunities to collide with the justice system,” he said.
Lieber had chosen to attend a local university because he “wasn’t really bought into the idea that the price tag of expensive elite higher education was worth it.” But then, “I didn’t feel like I was being pushed as much as I should have been.”
He decided he wanted to meet people who matched the energy he was bringing to his studies and transferred to Duke during his sophomore year. A pre-health student, he was initially interested in exploring how learning disabilities affect health outcomes. But over time, his focus gravitated towards the justice system, and he eventually built a Program II major focusing on Health and Incarceration.
“I think it can only be described as a process where I was doing things that I found meaningful over a long period of time,” he said.
When Lieber and Smith talk about Gregory’s restorative justice course, it’s clear that it wasn’t only the content that affected them, but also the way she taught the course.
For one thing, the class was far more diverse than usual. It included several volunteers from the local organization Restorative Justice Durham, whom Smith jokingly called “real adults.”
“Getting to engage in those conversations not just with our peers in the classroom but our community members in Durham was part of why I found the class so engaging,” Smith said. “It was the catalyst for me trying to engage more with opportunities outside of Duke for the rest of my time here.”
Both Smith and Lieber praised the way that Ada Gregory, a former police officer, led the course discussion. Much of it was structured in restorative justice “circles” — facilitated dialogues in which everyone has the chance to speak, and listening to understand, rather than debate, is a shared value.
People still disagreed with each other, of course. But Gregory used restorative justice practices to explore rather than shut down disagreements.
“She actively encouraged dissent,” Lieber said. “It seemed like she was really curious when people disagreed.”
“Ada set a really strong example from the beginning,” said Smith. “She presented herself and her experiences as inherently flawed and inherently human. She talked about ‘These are the ways that restorative justice has worked in my life. This is the way that justice and accountability has worked in my life, and these are the ways in which it’s failed.’
“Really, the class wouldn’t have been the same with anybody else teaching it,” she added.
While restorative justice touches on complex and difficult topics, including shame, forgiveness, and accountability, the course topic is, at its core, a philosophical one.
“The central question is, ‘What is it that we owe each other?’” Lieber said. “And it’s really difficult to figure that out. And that’s a very personal and unique question. That’s why restorative justice is so powerful — because it is personalizable and a unique form of adjudicating justice.”
Both students found that restorative justice practices were applicable to many contexts, including personal relationships.
“It is so transferable to how you think about your own emotions and your relationships with other people,” Lieber said. “It’s definitely influenced how I’ve conducted discussions with my friends and family when we’re in conflict.’”
“The questions that you get to ask in restorative justice are ones that will carry through to how you engage in your personal life, in your professional life, and how you engage in conflict in any capacity,” said Smith.
For Smith, these questions also led to her senior thesis in international comparative studies, which explores how the JEP (Jurisdíccion Especial para la Paz, or Special Jurisdiction for Peace) in Colombia is using restorative justice practices to address crimes and atrocities committed during past conflicts.
“This class influenced the framework through which I analyze the world around me,” Smith said. “It was honestly like a life-defining thing for me, or really life-influencing. I was really interested in criminal legal reform prior to this, but I don’t think I had a particular praxis through which I was doing a lot of it.”
“This class certainly informed the trajectory of my path at Duke,” Lieber agreed, noting that he built his Program II major in Health and Incarceration after taking it.
Through courses, volunteering, and advocacy, both students continued to engage with the criminal justice system during the rest of their time at the university.
After Lieber participated in Re-Imagining Medicine, a program of The Purpose Project at Duke, ReMed director Warren Kinghorn connected him to a physician at Butner, a local federal correctional complex, where he started volunteering.
“I got so much out of that program,” Lieber said. “That was also a kind of trajectory-setting experience.”
Later, Lieber and Smith took a course at Butner that brings together Duke students and incarcerated students, “Life Stories.” Faculty working with Duke Divinity School’s Certificate in Prison Studies program have offered the course for over ten years. (Lieber said “Life Stories” and Restorative Justice were his two favorite courses at Duke — hence his tongue-in-cheek advice to take courses “with as few Duke students as possible.”)
Lieber and Smith became more involved in the local community, volunteering at organizations like Restorative Justice Durham and StepUp Durham, which offers re-entry programs for formerly incarcerated people.
They also took on leadership roles in the Duke Justice Project, a student-run organization. While serving as its co-president, Smith spearheaded its Advocacy Week, which brought a replica of a solitary confinement cell to the well-trafficked Bryan Center Plaza, among other educational initiatives.
“We had a full cell display on the plaza that people could step inside and see what that is like, and see the dehumanization involved,” she said.
Finally, along with Viktoria Wulff-Andersen, another Duke Justice Project leader, Lieber and Smith co-taught a house course focusing on re-entry programs in Durham, bringing in local guest speakers with whom they’d developed relationships through their volunteer work.
Through the house course, they were proud that they were able to reach students who might not have otherwise engaged with the criminal legal sphere.
“We really wanted to emphasize that, regardless of what space you are in, this should be in your mind,” Smith said. “This is something that impacts you as well.”
“You come to college to meet people who are different from you. And people in prison have so much to share that will fundamentally alter how students think about the world and how they think about the justice system.”
— Will Lieber T’25
While Lieber and Smith will graduate before Duke’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences begins offering its newly approved Carceral Studies Certificate, they wrote a letter of support for it. The certificate program will be housed in the Kenan Institute for Ethics’ Prison Engagement Initiative.
“I cannot emphasize enough how important I think that education is,” Lieber said. “I really firmly believe that Duke students need proximity to prisons, and they learn so much from being inside them and being around the people in them. You come to college to meet people who are different from you. And people in prison have so much to share that will fundamentally alter how students think about the world and how they think about the justice system. I’m proud of what Kenan is doing on that front.”
As he finishes his senior year at Duke, Lieber says he plans to work for a year before applying for medical school, hopefully as a teacher in the juvenile justice system.
A 2025 Rhodes Scholar, Smith is heading to Oxford University in the fall, where she plans to complete the master of public policy program at the Blavatnik School of Government, followed by an M.Sc. in Criminology and Criminal Justice. She says she is still interested in attending law school in the future.
Do these seniors have any more advice for other students, particularly those interested in restorative justice?
“Don’t limit the scope of your engagement because of what you think fits on a resume, or what you think fits with your career,” Smith said. “Engage in opportunities that encourage you to think differently and challenge your understanding of the world around you and the institutions in which you operate. That could be restorative justice, or another course of action — but don’t hesitate to jump on those opportunities.”
