Criminal Justice Expert Greg Berman Named Inaugural Guggenheim Distinguished Fellow of Practice

February 17, 2021

(NEW YORK) — Noted criminal justice expert Greg Berman has been named the inaugural Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Distinguished Fellow of Practice. In this role, Mr. Berman, who led the Center for Court Innovation for 18 years, will examine recent increases in violent crime in New York and related trends in other U.S. cities. 

Mr. Berman will conduct and edit a year-long series of interviews with leading criminal justice researchers, policymakers, and advocates. These discussions will form the basis of At the Crossroads: Community Violence in New York City, a multimedia editorial project to be published by HFG.org and partner organizations. 

Through the interviews, Mr. Berman will cultivate insights on community violence to identify areas ripe for research, better connect scholarship to action, and model an approach for civil conversation around challenging topics. 

The first installment is a conversation with Jeffrey A. Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who explores factors behind a near-doubling of the rate of shootings in New York City in 2020.  

“We are launching this fellowship to align more effectively our continuing commitment to rigorous scholarship on violence with policy and practice, participate more energetically in public discourse, and reduce barriers between research and action,” said Foundation president Daniel F. Wilhelm. “I can think of no more highly regarded leader whose career exemplifies a dedication to creating deep substantive knowledge and implementing it in practical ways than Greg Berman.”

“I am honored to be named the first Distinguished Fellow of Practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation,” Mr. Berman said. “The Foundation’s support for superb scholarly research is well-known. I am excited to explore how research and practice can better communicate with and inform one another when it comes to violent crime in New York City.”

Mr. Berman served as senior fellow at the Center for Court Innovation, a leading nonprofit institution that seeks to improve the justice system in America. He was part of the founding team of the organization and its executive director from 2002 to 2020. Mr. Berman writes a regular column on leadership for New York Nonprofit Media and has authored four books. His work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Law and Policy, and numerous other publications. 

The Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Fellow of Practice role recognizes a leading practitioner in one of the many fields that contend with issues of violence—including government, multilateral institutions, civil-society organizations, and journalism—to support a project examining a contemporary violence issue over the course of one year. Projects explore violence from the perspective of a practitioner whose work is informed by research. 

The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation is a leader in creating and disseminating knowledge on the nature, consequences, and reduction of violence in its many forms, including war, crime, and human aggression.

For more information contact: 

Nyeleti Honwana, Program Officer
info@hfg.org | 646.428.0976