Jennifer de Forest

Ed.D. CCE

Jennifer de Forest is an assistant professor of educational history at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education. She studied history and Japanese language at UC San Diego, and was a high school history teacher in California for nine years. Jennifer received a master's from Teachers College, Columbia University, where she was a Klingenstein Fellow in educational leadership. She completed an Ed.D. from Harvard Graduate School of Education in June 2005, where her studies focused on American educational history. She was cochair of the editorial board of the Harvard Educational Review, recipient of a Spencer Research Training Grant, and was awarded a dissertation support fellowship from the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.

Jennifer's dissertation is a historical study of the work of Justine Wise Polier, a children's court judge in New York City from 1935–1972, and founder of the juvenile justice arm of the Children's Defense Fund. Jennifer analyzed Polier's adjudications and her activism to illuminate the history of the struggle for educational equity in New York City and to explicate the emergence of the modern child welfare system. Jennifer has published articles in Women's History Review, Teachers College Record, and the Harvard Educational Review. She also coauthored a chapter on the history of philanthropy and education with Warren Professor Ellen Lagemann, that will appear in a book to mark the 100th anniversary of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.