Freshman reading focuses on diversity, racial equality

Out of 121 institutions surveyed by Inside Higher Ed, the top pick was Bryan Stevenson’s memoir, Just Mercy: A Story of Redemption and Justice, with 10 institutions electing to use the book as its common reading. Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and a law professor at New York University, writes about his experiences trying to help — and sometimes failing — to overturn death and prison sentences for criminals Stevenson believes to be wrongly convicted. The majority of those criminals are black men.