Academic with local roots wins North Carolina’s state’s honor
Dr. Jeffrey Kaplan of North Carolina, who grew up in Paramus, has earned a 2024 North Carolina Governor’s Award for Excellence. It’s the highest honor a North Carolina state employee can receive.
Dr. Kaplan, the son of Harold and the late Deborah Kaplan of Paramus, is an associate professor of philosophy and the director of undergraduate studies for the department of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Deborah Kaplan was a civil engineer who worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. She was at her office, on the 64th floor of the World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001, and she died in the terrorist attack that day,.
The award, in recognition of his educational work in prisons, was presented to Dr. Kaplan at a ceremony in Raleigh on October 15.
Before he went to UNCG, Dr. Kaplan was a volunteer faculty member at Mount Tamalpais College. The school, formerly called the Prison University Project, is the only accredited liberal arts college in the country that teaches all its classes inside a prison. Dr. Kaplan, who went to Solomon Schechter Day, School of Bergen County, graduated from Paramus High School, attended Williams College and Oxford University, earned his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and his M.Phil. from Cambridge University in England. His research is primarily in the philosophy of law and philosophy of language. He also is the founder and director of the UNCG Prison Education Program.
He and his wife, Emily Linden, live in Greensboro with their children, Ralph and Deborah.
Dr. Kaplan posts his lecture videos on YouTube, where they have received more than 24 million views. To find them, go to YouTube and search for
“Jeffrey Kaplan.”
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