Judith Kafka

Judith Kafka is a professor of urban education, 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 program. Her scholarship employs a historical perspective to examine the social, political, and institutional forces shaping American education, focusing on how education policies can both disrupt and perpetuate social, racial, and economic inequalities. Kafka is the author of The History of “Zero Tolerance” in American Public Schooling, which explores the historical roots of zero-tolerance discipline policies through a case study of the Los Angeles school district from the 1950s to the 1970s. Her current research investigates the structural and spatial dimensions of educational inequality in Brooklyn, New York, including studies on school district boundary lines as barriers to educational equity and the historical context of school desegregation in 19th-century Brooklyn. Kafka earned her PhD in educational policy from the University of California, Berkeley.

updated 2025