James Forman Jr., is a Professor at Yale Law School. He is a leading critic of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on people of color in the United States. His Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, looks at the war on crime in the 1970s and the Black mayors, judges, and police chiefs who took office during a period of rising crime, their tough-on-crime measures, and the effect of these policies on poor Black neighborhoods. Before joining the faculty at Yale, Forman clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner and was a public defender in Washington, D.C. His work as a public defender led him to start the Maya Angelou Public Charter School, an alternative school for youth offenders and school dropouts. He is the son of Civil Rights activist James Forman and grandson of author, activist and University Forum guest Jessica Mitford.