Opening Keynote: David Hooker (University of Notre Dame) (Facilitated by Jeremy Rinker)
“Can (Restorative) Justice transform historical harms or dismantle present day systematic (syndemic) oppressions?”
There is an ongoing and long standing debate as to the capacity of restorative justice either philosophically or as a practical matter to effectively address issues of historical harms and present structural racism. There are those who seek to affirm and attest to ways in which restorative justice can indeed address structural racism. Others argue that transformative and some say transitional justice is what is needed to address the inadequacies of restorative justice. I will use the case of widespread torture of Black and brown bodied people at the hands of the Chicago Police Department in the 1970’s, 80’s, and early 90’s, the subsequent passage of a reparations ordinance in 2015 and the current approach to redress being pursued by the Chicago Torture Justice Center to explore these questions.
Dr. David Hooker is an associate professor of the practice of conflict transformation and peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, at the University of Notre Dame. Hooker has worked with communities, governments, and international NGOs and civil society organizations on post-conflict community building, environmental justice, and other issues of public policy and social justice. He has managed multi-party conflicts, conducted workshops, and consulted across the U.S. and around the world. Hooker also is a lawyer who has represented the State of Georgia as an assistant attorney general. He has taught graduate courses in negotiation, mediation, conflict resolution, conflict analysis, trauma healing, and conflict transformation at Eastern Mennonite University.
From 2010-2015, Hooker was a senior fellow for community engagement strategies at the University of Georgia’s J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development. He is president and principal consultant of CounterStories Consulting, LLC, where his work focuses on narrative alignment for civic, community, and faith leaders. Hooker is a graduate of Morehouse College (B.S./B.S.) in Atlanta, Georgia; the University of Massachusetts Amherst (M.P.H. & M.P.A.); Emory University’s School of Law (J.D.); and Emory University’s Candler School of Theology (M.Div.). He earned his Ph.D. from Tilburg University in the Netherlands.
