June 1, 2023
View or download a transcript of this episode
In this episode, Wendy speaks with lawyer, activist, and restorative justice expert sujatha baliga. sujatha’s work reimagines our current legal and justice system in the United States, and emphasizes the full humanity of both those who experience harm and those who cause it. This conversation covers many topics, including:
- growing up with sexual abuse, and the impacts it had;
- meeting with the Dalai Lama, and his transformational advice;
- the power of lovingkindness;
- her choice to be a public defender;
- responsibility & causes and conditions;
- holding two competing ideas simultaneously;
- problems with the traditional legal system;
- the paradigm shift of restorative justice;
- integrating contemplative practice into the process of restorative justice;
- the role of the self in the experience of harm;
- how we need to shift our language around labeling people;
- reflections on forgiveness and justice;
- and next steps for the movement.
sujatha baliga’s work is characterized by an equal dedication to people who’ve experienced and caused harm and violence. A former victim advocate and public defender, sujatha is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conferences about her decades of restorative justice work. She also speaks publicly and inside prisons about her own experiences as a survivor of child sexual abuse and her path to forgiveness. Her personal and research interests include the forgiveness of seemingly unforgivable acts, survivor-led movements, restorative justice’s potential impact on racial disparities in our legal systems, and Buddhist approaches to conflict transformation. In 2019, sujatha was named a MacArthur Fellow, and she’s also a member of the Gyuto Foundation in Richmond, CA, where she leads weekly meditations.
Resources
- Podcast: The Transformative Power of Restorative Justice, The Grey Area, 2020
- Essay: A different path for confronting sexual assault, Vox, 2018
- Lecture: Have You Been Angry Long Enough?: Faith, Forgiveness & Restorative Justice, Harvard Divinity School, 2017