Dr. Alexes Harris remembers well when as a high school junior she lost a classmate to senseless violence. He’d been briefly detained by police for allegedly selling drugs. A few days later he was discovered shot to death. Investigators suspect his supplier was responsible for the murder.
“He was a good kid; he went to good schools. He’d just gotten caught up,” recalls Harris, an associate professor at the University of Washington, or UW. “The media automatically labeled him a gang member because he was a Black boy, wearing khakis with a bullet wound to the head.”
The incident had such a profound impact on Harris that she vowed to become a public defender to help keep children like her friend out of the criminal justice system. An undergraduate course at UW a few years later, however, convinced her that the field of sociology was the best fit for her to make her mark and a difference.
“Ten years, almost to the day, I was teaching that very same course — social problems — at my alma mater,” gushes Harris, a Seattle native. “My passion is giving a voice to the voiceless, those who don’t have the resources to speak out.”
