The board of trustees of the City University of New York has named Karol V. Mason as the next president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The college enrolls nearly 13,000 undergraduate students and more than 1,750 graduate students, according to the latest data supplied to the U.S. Department of Education. African Americans are 17 percent of the undergraduate student body.
When she takes office on August 1, Mason will be the first woman and the first person of color to serve as president of the college. She served as an assistant attorney general during the Obama administration and was the director of the Office of Justice Programs.
In accepting the post, Mason said, “John Jay has been a progressive leader in improving law enforcement and addressing the toughest issues in our criminal and juvenile justice systems, while also educating the next generation of law enforcement and other criminal justice professionals. Serving as the college’s president will afford a unique opportunity for me to combine my passion to improve access to higher education, generally, and particularly for communities often marginalized, with my desire to continue to improve our criminal and juvenile justice systems so that they reflect our highest ideals.”
Before joining the Department of Justice in 2009, Mason practiced law at the Atlanta law firm of Alston & Bird, where she concentrated on public and project finance. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan School of Law.
