Judith Kafka

Judith Kafka is a Professor of educational policy and the history of education in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College, City University of New York, where she also serves as the Faculty Director for the Bachelor of Science in Public Affairs. Dr. Kafka’s scholarship uses a historical lens to examine the social, political, and institutional forces that shape American schooling, with a focus on the ways education policies can serve to both interrupt and reinforce social, racial, and economic inequalities. Dr. Kafka is the author of The History of ‘Zero Tolerance’ in American Public Schooling (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Her current projects explore historical and current structural and spatial dimensions of educational inequality in Brooklyn, New York. Specifically, she has published work on New York City school district boundary lines as both physical and institutional barriers to educational equality; school desegregation in 19th century Brooklyn in the context of early gentrification; and the potential promise and pitfalls of using school choice policies to desegregate schools today.