Janak receives faculty Social Justice Award
The St. Olaf College Faculty Life Committee will present the 2025 Social Justice Award to Assistant Professor of History Jaden Janak at an April 10 ceremony on campus. In accepting his award, Janak will deliver a public lecture titled Cultivating Solidarity: Living Our Values Amid Ongoing Crisis.
The Social Justice Award presentation will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Buntrock Commons Ballrooms. All are welcome to attend, and it will be streamed and archived online.
The annual Social Justice Award recognizes the work of faculty members in bringing needed change to the college and demonstrates St. Olaf’s commitment to developing a more inclusive environment that will better foster a sense of belonging within the campus community.
Janak joined the History Department in the fall of 2023. They specialize in Modern U.S. History, teaching courses such as Civil Rights and Black Power and Gender, Race, and Policing in the U.S.
“My scholarship, in part, examines U.S.–based prison abolitionist organizing over the past several decades, and is inspired by my organizing experiences,” Janak says. “I am also interested in how movements intersect — for example, how the Ferguson Uprising benefited greatly from the Palestinian liberation struggle and vice versa.”
“My students inspire me and give me hope that a better world is possible. I have benefited greatly from my students’ bravery, conviction, and willingness to live their values through action.”
— Assistant Professor of History Jaden Janak
Janak got his start in activism and political organizing in high school. “The murder of Trayvon Martin shook me to my core. I attended my first protest, one of the many ‘hoodie protests’ at the time,” Janak says. “After that, my innate proclivity toward fighting injustice became activated into organizing.”
Throughout high school, Janak got involved in LGBTQ+ organizing at the local, state, and national level. This included starting a network helping to unite the various gay-straight alliances in their hometown.
While attending college in St. Louis, Missouri, in the midst of the Ferguson Uprising, Janak got involved in the burgeoning Movement for Black Lives through police accountability organizing and labor movements, particularly alongside fast-food workers and adjunct workers.
“In the years since, I have gotten heavily involved in inside-outside organizing, where people in the so-called ‘free world’ advocate and organize alongside incarcerated people,” Janak says.
Janak is a member of Fight Toxic Prisons and Black Youth Project100, two organizations that fight the expansion of the prison industrial complex and advocate for Black, queer, feminist liberation.
Janak has been supportive of students, with many participating in research projects that he leads (or co-leads), including the Ole LGBTQ+ Oral History Honest Storytelling Project.
“My students inspire me and give me hope that a better world is possible,” Janak says. “I have benefited greatly from my students’ bravery, conviction, and willingness to live their values through action.”
Janak believes that the most important thing that students need from faculty members is simply public support for their work, both academic and extracurricular.
“Young people, especially my students, are able to adeptly assess the conditions of the world and take actions to build a world rooted in safety and solidarity,” Janak says. “I encourage my students, those who take my classes and those who just hang out in my office or see me at events, by being a listening ear and confirming that their feelings about the world are valid. From there, I get out of the way and encourage them to show us the way forward.”
Janak is looking forward to sharing more about his work during the Social Justice Award presentation, and notes that it’s important for members of the campus community to carefully consider what their values look like in praxis. “What does it mean to be an inclusive community or a globally engaged community in the midst of deeply entrenched fascist sentiment and action? What does this moment require of us, if these are our stated values?” Janak says.
He’s looking forward to using the award to further his academic work. “I am excited to have some additional resources to pour back into the St. Olaf community through activism and social change,” Janak says. “Awards are nice reminders of our impact as educators, scholars, and community members.”