Jesse Chanin

Jesse Chanin is on the Sociology track of the interdisciplinary City, Culture, and Community PhD program at Tulane University. Her dissertation focuses on the connection between middle-class labor unions and social justice struggles, particularly among African-Americans in the South, using the United Teachers of New Orleans as a case study. She is also examining how the conversion of New Orleans into an all-charter district post-Hurricane Katrina affected teachers’ lives and the lessons this charterization process offers for urban districts nationwide.

Jesse received a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Barnard College where she earned departmental honors for her thesis “Memories of Protest: Remembering and Misremembering the Columbia Strike of 1968.” She went on to earn her Master’s in Teaching from Fordham University and worked for five years in the New York City public school system as a classroom teacher.

In addition to her dissertation work, Jesse coordinates the annual Nola to Angola solidarity bike ride, which funds free transportation for families to visit their incarcerated loved ones, and works with Ubuntu Village, a local non-profit that organizes parents and families of incarcerated youth. She founded and facilitates Ubuntu’s participatory action research project.

Awards

National Academy of Education, Spencer Dissertation Fellowship 2019-2020

Publications

Jabbar, H., Chanin, J., Haynes, J., and Slaughter, S. (2019). Teacher Power and the Politics of Union Organizing in the Charter Sector. Educational Policy, 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904819881776

Chanin, J. (2018). The effect of symbolic racism on environmental concern and environmental action. Environmental Sociology, 1-13.