Kathy Boudin is a former member of the radical left militant organization Weather Underground who was convicted of felony murder for her role in the Brink's robbery of 1981. The robbery resulted in the killing of two Nyack police officers and one security guard, and serious injury to another security guard. Boudin was released from prison on parole in 2003 and became an adjunct professor at Columbia University.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Boudin became heavily involved with the Weather Underground. In 1981, Boudin and several former members of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army robbed a Brink's armored car at the Nanuet Mall, in Nanuet, New York. Boudin was the driver of the getaway vehicle and also acted as a decoy. The robbery severely wounded guard Joseph Trombino; killed his partner, Peter Paige; killed police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O'Grady; and injured two other police officers.
Boudin eventually pleaded guilty to felony murder and robbery in exchange for a sentence of 20 years to life in prison. While incarcerated, Boudin published articles in the Harvard Educational Review, in Breaking the Rules: Women in Prison and Feminist Therapy by Judy Harden and Marcia Hill, and in Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum-Security Prison. She co-authored The Foster Care Handbook for Incarcerated Parents published by Bedford Hills in 1993. She also co-edited Parenting from inside/out: Voices of mothers in prison, jointly published by correctional institutions and the Osborne Foundation. Boudin also wrote and published poetry while incarcerated, publishing in books and journals including the PEN Center Prize Anthology Doing Time, Concrete Garden, and Aliens at the Border. She won an International PEN prize for her poetry in 1999. Boudin and Roslyn D. Smith contributed the piece "Alive Behind the Labels: Women in Prison" to the 2003 anthology , edited by Robin Morgan. Boudin was granted parole on August 20, 2003, in her third parole hearing. She was released from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on September 17, 2003.
Life after prison
After her release from prison, Boudin accepted a job in the HIV/AIDS Clinic at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, meeting the work provisions of parole that required active job prospects. In May 2004, after her parole, Boudin published in the Fellowship of Reconciliation's publication Fellowship. Subsequently, she received an Ed. D. from Columbia University Teachers College. In addition to her work at St. Luke's-Roosevelt, Boudin has worked as a consultant to the Osborne Association in the development of a Longtermers Responsibility Project taking place in the New York State Correctional Facilities, utilizing a restorative practice approach. She has also consulted for Vermont Corrections and the Women's Prison Association and supervises social workers.
Columbia University
Boudin was named an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work, where she is now the co-director and co-founder of the Center for Justice at Columbia University. Her appointment was controversial due to her guilty plea to a felony murder charge and her past participation in a group which carried out terrorist attacks in the United States. However, an opinion piece in the Columbia Daily Spectator noted that she took responsibility for her crimes and successfully rehabilitated herself. Columbia School of Social Work Associate Dean Marianne Yoshioka, who hired Boudin for the adjunct-professor post in 2008, was quoted as saying that Boudin has been "an excellent teacher who gets incredible evaluations from her students each year." In 2013, she was Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence at New York University School of Law. The School of Law maintains a video of her lecture.
In popular culture
Boudin was a model for the title role in David Mamet's play The Anarchist. She also was a model for Willy Holtzman's Off-Broadway play Something You Did.
