Jermaine Young, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Howard University, where he teaches comparative politics and political theory. His research examines the intersections of law and violence in the Caribbean, particularly in Jamaica, focusing on emergency powers and their justification of state violence. His dissertation and under contract book manuscript traces Jamaica’s complex encounters with emergency powers, from colonial times to the postcolonial state, demonstrating how legal discourses of necessity have normalized state violence against marginalized populations. His scholarship has been published in the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, and Ethnic Studies Review.
Dr. Young’s research also explores the historical continuities of policing in Jamaica, particularly the colonial logics that underpin its militarized structure as part of what he terms martial politics. At Howard, he fosters critical conversations on emergency powers, competing notions of Black identity and political belonging, normative democratic thought, and the afterlives of colonial rule in Caribbean. He is an alumnus of Florida International University (FIU) and the University of the West Indies, Mona campus.
