Jason Cantone, JD, PhD, is presented with a Presidential Citation for his extraordinary leadership in protecting the rights and the dignity of people who are incarcerated or who have been convicted of a felony and in improving the effectiveness of the APA Council of Representatives.
Throughout his tenure on Council and the Council Effectiveness Work Group, Cantone has used his training in the law and social psychology to improve the inner workings of Council, including demystifying the process of introducing a New Business Item and shepherding it through the byzantine legislative process. This past year, Cantone provided Council with a master class in how to negotiate the legislative process quickly and effectively through his work to remove a question asking applicants for APA membership to reveal whether they had been previously convicted of a felony. Cantone learned of the pain that some of our fellow psychologists were experiencing when they were asked to disclose their felony status when attempting to join what they viewed as their professional home. He jumped into action, learning more about the “ban the box” movement and the research supporting it, and the disproportionate impact of the “box” on members of other marginalized groups. He rapidly authored a new business item calling for the removal of the felony status question from the APA membership application for Council to consider. He listened to the pleas of those affected by this question for a swift resolution of the issue because of the ongoing harm this question in our application materials was causing. The resolution did come quickly, but only because Cantone spent countless hours developing support for the initiative among members of Council and the relevant Boards and Committees, all the while including those who were most affected by this application question in the discussions. He was also instrumental in creating space for those affected by the application question to be heard by Council members before voting on the item. He continues the work to this day, working with SPTAs to eliminate similar questions from their application materials. Through his work on this issue, Cantone personified APA’s commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion and to dismantling structures within our organization that perpetuate systemic racism.
In recognition of his substantive contributions to the inner workings of APA Council and his successful efforts to give voice to a group of our colleagues who had previously been unintentionally, yet unjustly, discouraged from full participation in our organization, it is my pleasure to present Cantone with this presidential citation.