Teresa Miller, Law Professor and Prison Reformer, Is Dead at 59

When Teresa Miller, a prof astatine the University astatine Buffalo School of Law, showed her documentary movie astir the Attica Correctional Facility during a sheet treatment astatine the Glimmerglass opera festival successful 2014, it sparked an idea. Why not, she thought, bring an opera to the prison?

Francesca Zambello, the manager of the festival, successful Cooperstown, N.Y., had the aforesaid conception and joined the effort. Ms. Miller helped transportation situation officials to assistance permission, and a twelvemonth aboriginal Glimmerglass took Verdi’s “Macbeth” to Attica. Opera determination became an annual tradition, with Ms. Miller each twelvemonth sitting among a rapt assemblage of inmates to ticker the production.

“It’s civilization we don’t see,” Donovan Jackson, an Attica inmate, told the quality website syracuse.com successful 2017. “Ours is hostility and violence.”

Bringing the extracurricular satellite down situation walls — and past showing that extracurricular satellite what beingness down bars is similar — was a cardinal portion of the transgression justness enactment done by Ms. Miller, who died astatine 59 connected Aug. 6 astatine a infirmary successful Manhattan.

As a instrumentality prof astatine Buffalo for 19 years — she was aboriginal a apical head for the State University of New York, of which Buffalo is simply a part, focusing connected diverseness issues — she had made it a signifier of having her students measurement extracurricular the schoolroom and into the penal strategy arsenic a mode to humanize incarcerated people.

She reached a larger assemblage with 2 abbreviated documentaries, astir notably the 24-minute “Encountering Attica” (2009), which she produced and besides directed with Tim Gera. The other, “4 Myths About Attica” (2011), which she besides produced and directed, was made for a University astatine Buffalo league she organized connected the 40th day of the situation uprising astatine Attica that near 43 radical dead.

“Encountering Attica” shows the interactions betwixt 3 first-year instrumentality students and 4 men serving beingness sentences, including for murder. Putting students successful speech with inmates, Ms. Miller found, fostered empathy among some groups. (She was besides an advisor to Attica inmates seeking parole.)

Ms. Miller archetypal took students to the situation successful 2007. “Bringing a video camera into a situation is nary tiny feat,” she wrote successful a 2012 paper for the Journal of Legal Education titled “Encountering Attica: Documentary Filmmaking arsenic Pedagogical Tool.” Acclimating students was besides a challenge.

“For the mean instrumentality student,” she wrote, “walking into the authorities correctional installation successful Attica, New York, is simply a shocking modulation into a wholly overseas civilization successful which communal household objects are prized, seemingly innocuous activities are forbidden, technologies the nationalist takes for granted are alien, and the show of a histrion trunk, grass, flowers are distant memories.”

Teresa Ann Miller was calved connected Feb. 20, 1962, astatine Fort Benning, Ga., wherever her father, Billy G. Miller, was stationed. A lieutenant colonel successful the Army, helium was a chopper aviator successful the Vietnam War. Her mother, Henrietta Thomas Dabney, was an head astatine the University of North Carolina and aboriginal astatine Norfolk State University successful Virginia. Ms. Miller grew up successful some states. Through genealogical research, she aboriginal recovered that a comparative is the civilian rights lawyer Fred D. Gray, who had helped support Rosa Parks.

Ms. Miller attended Booker T. Washington High School successful Norfolk, graduated from Duke University successful 1983 with a bachelor’s grade successful science and went connected to Harvard Law School, graduating successful 1986. She past earned a maestro of instrumentality grade from the University of Wisconsin astatine Madison.

Ms. Miller clerked for national Judge William M. Hoeveler of the Southern District of Florida and taught astatine the University of Miami Law School.

She joined the Buffalo instrumentality schoolhouse module successful 1995 and successful 2014 became the archetypal vice provost for equity and inclusion astatine the University astatine Buffalo. She continued to emergence done SUNY’s ranks, becoming the system’s elder vice chancellor for strategical initiatives and main diverseness serviceman successful 2018. In that relation she instituted a programme promoting tenure-track professorships for radical of colour crossed SUNY’s 64 campuses.

In her enactment connected transgression justness she was a subordinate of an American Bar Association task unit connected protecting prisoners’ rights and served connected the boards of the situation betterment groups Prisoner Legal Services of New York and the Correctional Association of New York.

Her girl Seychelle Mikofsky said Ms. Miller died of gallbladder cancer.

Ms. Miller joined Daniel Mikofsky, a quality resources executive, successful 1998. They separated successful 2013. She is besides survived by their 2 different children, Miles and Croix; her partner, Paula DiPerna; her sisters Belinda Matingou, Janelle Jordan and Celinda Kibria; and her brother, Jason Miller.