The Center for Justice Research stands for.....?

The Center for Justice Research, a co-Koch and Thurgood Marshall College Fund investment is lead by Dr. Howard Henderson who had zero prior experience managing a research center.  He has hired 3 of his own Administration of Justice faculty- Drs. Onwudiwe, Baker and Drake as Faculty Fellows, a dubious and fluffy distinction we discussed in our post on November 7, 2018. 

While we remain unsure of what exactly does the CJR do (besides Tweets promoting Ph.D. students present Brown Bag luncheons, traveling on Koch Brothers money to conferences and re-publishing spurious research), we are deeply concerned that Dr. Henderson is refusing to allow anyone else to work with him at the CJR.  We are aware of at least one refusal to a qualified SOPA faculty member via email by Dr. Henderson.  His reason for refusal seemed rather discriminatory and hostile.  There was no reasons given as to why he hired only certain SOPA faculty members and not others.  Another SOPA faculty member has expressed interest to conduct research with CJR but is not currently working at CJR. 

An issue of concern brought to light at the SOPA Dean search committee meeting on February 5, 2019 was when at least 2 AJ professors argued that the AJ Department was being driven by the 4 members of the CJR, i.e. the other AJ faculty members do not seem to be able to have their voices and input valued and equitable, which we at Transparency State find deeply troubling as well. 

If fellow faculty want to work to publish their research and be paid for it, all the better for CJR in the spirit of collegiality and better research outcomes.  Why deny fellow colleagues the opportunity to work together?  Perhaps if more faculty work together, the research produced would be of a much more impactful nature and beneficial.  Certainly we would think the Koch Brothers would agree with us.