Why does the United States incarcerate more people than any other country in the world? How is the prison system rooted in anti-Black racism? And what does justice actually look like, and who gets to decide?

These are not easy questions. They are also not optional ones. They sit at the heart of The American Carceral State, an advanced cross-departmental English and history course taught by Upper School History and American Studies Teacher Ed Herzman. Drawing on the tools of the historian, the literary critic, and the investigative journalist, Herzman challenges his students to examine how mass incarceration came to define American society, and who it has most devastated.

The course is anchored in essential texts: Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, Angela Davis's Are Prisons Obsolete?, and Elizabeth Hinton's From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime. But in the Spring semester of 2026, the learning went far beyond the page. A remarkable series of guest speakers, lawyers, advocates, filmmakers, and public servants, brought the course's central questions to life in the most direct way possible.

Voices from the Front Lines

Deirdre Von Dormum, Partner at Sher Tremonte and former Attorney-in-Charge of the Federal Defenders of the Eastern District of New York, and a proud BC parent, brought two decades of federal public defense experience to the classroom. Over her career, she has represented hundreds of people charged with federal crimes and supervised the representation of thousands more, always with the conviction that every client deserves to be treated with fairness and grace.

Fellow BC parent Melissa Broudo, Legal Director of Decriminalizing Sex Work and co-founder of the Sharmus Outlaw Advocacy and Rights (SOAR) Institute, shared her expertise at the intersection of criminal justice and human rights. A leader in the sex-worker-rights and harm-reduction movements since the late 1990s, Broudo's work centers the voices and safety of those the legal system too often ignores.

Greg Berman, parent of a BC alum and Senior Fellow at the Center for Justice Innovation and a member of A More Just NYC, the committee working to close Rikers Island, brought a policy perspective shaped by nearly two decades leading one of the country's most influential criminal justice reform organizations. He is also the author of four books on criminal justice innovation.

Students also heard from Rosie Major, a death penalty lawyer, Justice 360 fellow, and Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell University, whose work defending those on death row brought the human stakes of the course's central questions into sharp and sobering relief. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams joined the class to speak about policy, activism, and the ongoing work of building a more just city.

The Power of Documentary

Two filmmakers helped students see how storytelling can itself be a form of advocacy. Sarah Burns, director and co-producer of The Central Park Five, spoke with students about how race and fear shaped one of the most devastating miscarriages of justice in modern American history, the wrongful conviction of five Black and Latino teenagers from Harlem for a crime they did not commit.

"This case is a lens through which we can understand the ongoing fault-line of race in America," Burns reflected. "These young men were convicted long before the trial, by a city blinded by fear and, equally, freighted by race."

Most recently, the class welcomed JoeBill Muñoz, Emmy-winner, and director of The Strike, an Emmy nominated feature documentary about California prisoners' landmark protests against solitary confinement. Named to DOC NYC's "40 Under 40" list of emerging filmmakers, Muñoz's film premiered at Hot Docs in 2024, broadcast nationally on PBS's Independent Lens, and has since screened more than 100 times in classrooms and communities across North America. Students watched The Strike before his visit and arrived with the kind of thoughtful, probing questions the course is designed to produce.

More Than a Class

What makes The American Carceral State distinctive is both its ambition and its execution. Under Herzman's guidance, the course asks students to do something genuinely difficult: to sit with complexity, to follow the evidence wherever it leads, and to emerge not just as more skilled readers and thinkers, but as more informed and effective advocates for justice. This semester's speakers, each working at the front lines of that mission, made that goal feel not just possible, but urgent.

Berkeley Carroll extends its deepest thanks to all who gave their time, expertise, and conviction to engage with our students this semester.