Jill Soffiyah Elijah
Revson Fellow 2001-2002
Clinical Instructor
Harvard Law School
Jill Soffiayh Elijah serves as a clinical instructor with Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute (CJI). Last year she resigned from her position as the Director of the Defender Clinic at the City University of New York School of Law (CUNY) to join CJI. Born in Queens, New York, Prof.. Elijah earned a B.A. from Cornell University and a J.D. from Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan. While at CUNY she also directed the Child Welfare Advocacy Program, which trained law students to work as creative advocates in New York City’s child welfare system. Prior to her position at CUNY, she was a supervising attorney at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem (NDS), where she defended indigent members of the Harlem Community. Before joining NDS, Prof. Elijah was in private practice, specializing in criminal defense and family law. She also worked as a staff attorney for the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society. Over the past eighteen years, she has represented numerous political prisoners and social activists. Currently, at Harvard Law School, Prof. Elijah provides supervision to third year law students in the representation of adult and juvenile clients in the Roxbury and Dorchester District Courts and assists in the further development and expansion of the Criminal Justice Institute. Her current research and scholarship focuses on criminal justice issues, prison labor and the prison industrial complex. For the past twenty years she has researched the U.S. criminal justice and prison systems. During the last fifteen years Prof. Elijah has traveled to Cuba several times where she has conducted extensive research on the country’s legal system, focusing on its approach to criminal justice issues. During her Revson year, Prof. Elijah took courses in the NonProfit Management program and in urban social theory.
(The Revson Fellow’s biography that appears above was last updated in 2001. Revson Fellows may update their biographies on this site by sending email to: revson@columbia.edu)
As I look back, I am aware of just how “formative” my Revson year was for me. Much of my energy and new ideas for a church-based response to poverty, racism, unemployment, and violence came out of the debates and discussions with the Revson Fellows in my class. One of the most neglected human resources in the city is the activists. The Revson Program redresses this critical imbalance, believing that democracy and public policy will be qualitatively improved if activists return to their communities with newly acquired skills, refined insights, and an informal network of new friends.
