Prestigious ‘Justice Award’ for Mt. Airy professor

Posted 1/23/15

Mt. Airy resident Miguel Glatzer, Ph.D., an assistant professor of political science at La Salle University, was recently given the Brother Scubilion Rousseau Justice Award for “working to create a …

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Prestigious ‘Justice Award’ for Mt. Airy professor

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Mt. Airy resident Miguel Glatzer, Ph.D., an assistant professor of political science at La Salle University, was recently given the Brother Scubilion Rousseau Justice Award for “working to create a more just world.” Mt. Airy resident Miguel Glatzer, Ph.D., an assistant professor of political science at La Salle University, was recently given the Brother Scubilion Rousseau Justice Award for “working to create a more just world.”[/caption]

by Jon Caroulis

La Salle University recently presented its Brother Scubilion Rousseau Justice Award to Miguel Glatzer, Ph.D., an assistant professor of political science. The honor is given to a faculty or staff member working to create a more just world.

“I am very happy to be teaching at an institution that is concerned with social justice,” said Glatzner, who joined the La Salle faculty in 2010 and lives in Mt. Airy. “In particular, I am very impressed by the many students and faculty committed to thinking about social justice and taking action to make the world a more equitable place. I am therefore particularly honored to receive the award from La Salle.”

Glatzer said much of his research and teaching deals with welfare states and poverty, and these concerns are reflected in several of his courses. This semester, with history professor Lisa Jarvinen, he co-taught a travel/study course on immigration, the U.S.-Mexico border region and the border wall. “The class spent a week in El Paso (Texas),” he said, “stayed in a church and met with undocumented immigrants, lawyers, doctors, and government officials.”

Last semester, Glatzer team-taught a course, “Incarceration Nation: The Politics of Justice in America,” in the Inside-Outside program, which brings college students together with incarcerated men or women to study as peers in an academic course held behind prison walls.

Megan Rankel, a La Salle student who serves on the university’s Project on Justice committee and was in Glatzer’s Inside-Outside class, presented the award to Glatzer.

“When I reached out for stories of Dr. Glatzer, everyone I spoke with only had the nicest things to say and were thrilled to hear he was being recognized and honored for his work,” she said.

“I had the honor of having him for the Inside-Out program. I had never met him, but from the interview I gathered I would be learning from one of the most humble and kind men I’ve ever known,” said Rankel, a junior majoring in psychology and art history.

“His dedication to his students is incomparable. I have never known a teacher to go out of his way as much as Dr. Glatzer does to help and make sure that his students are handling their course loads well, but even more than that, if their lives are going well.

“In just four short years, he has had an impact on dozens of students and improved the education of all of them. We are incredibly lucky to have him. It is my honor to present the 2014 Rousseau Justice Award to Miguel Glatzer.”

The Brother Scubilion Rousseau Justice Award was created to honor La Salle faculty or staff who understand their roles in creating a more just world. Remembered as the “catechist of the slaves,” Brother Scubilion Rousseau dedicated the last 34 years of his life to educating the enslaved natives of the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. In his later years, he assisted the local pastor in visiting the sick, winning over sinners, encouraging vocations and even performing what seemed to be miraculous cures.

La Salle University was established in 1863 through the legacy of St. John Baptist de La Salle and the Christian Brothers teaching order, which St. La Salle founded in 1680. La Salle is ranked by U.S. News & World Report among the top 30 schools in the North Region.

Ed. Note: Dr. Glatzer received his B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago and completed his Ph.D. from Harvard University's Department of Government in 2009. He is the author and editor, with Dietrich Rueschemeyer, of “Globalization and the Future of the Welfare State”(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh) and, with Angelo Cardoso, Fatima Monteiro, and Jose Tavares of Portugal, “Strategic Options in a European Context” (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003).

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