Psychology Alum Rafi Freund (C’23) Receives Gates Cambridge Scholarship for Criminal Justice Research
For Rafi Freund (C’23), the two pillars of his professional life — criminal justice research and education — are rooted in the same ethics. When done correctly, he said, both are about concern for others and hope for the future.
“In both cases, you are trying to pursue a positive future not just for yourself, but also for other people,” Freund said.
This fall, he will be enrolling in a Ph.D. program in criminology at the University of Cambridge. Freund is one of 26 scholars from the United States to be selected as part of the 2026 class of Gates Cambridge Scholars. The prestigious scholarship program fully funds postgraduate study and research in any subject at the University of Cambridge.
During his four years there, Freund, who majored in psychology and minored in German and history in the College of Arts & Sciences, plans to research the changing role of judicial discretion at sentencing. It will bring him closer to his ultimate career goal of becoming a professor of criminology.
After graduating from Georgetown in 2023, Freund worked as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Berlin and earned a master’s degree in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Oxford. He is currently serving as program coordinator for the Prison Education Project (PEP) at Washington University in St. Louis.
“I think I have always been interested in justice and using the privilege that I have in service of other people,” Freund said.
Psychology and the Legal System
Born in New York, Freund and his family moved to San Diego when he was around the age of 4. His parents still live there.
Freund did not think he would move more than 2,600 miles across the country to DC for college, but attending a Georgetown Admissions Ambassador Program (GAAP) Weekend for admitted students swayed his decision.
“I feel like among the schools I got into, Georgetown presented the most compelling vision of attending to its students,” he said. “The whole concept of cura personalis really came through to me.”
Rafi Freund (C’23) combined his interests in pyschology and criminal justice research for his honors thesis.
Initially, Freund thought he would major in government on the Hilltop. His main interest in high school, he said, was competing on the mock trial team, and Freund figured law school would be in his future.
But he discovered that it was his psychology courses at Georgetown that he enjoyed the most. The class Psychology and the Legal System with Jennifer Woolard, a professor of psychology and vice dean for faculty affairs in the College, helped him learn how to apply psychology and social sciences to the operations of the legal system, Freund said.
That led him to propose an honors thesis that combined concepts from that class and his Cultural Psychology class with Yulia Chentsova Dutton, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology.
Freund’s thesis compared two different video layouts for videoconferencing during pretrial hearings in the courtroom. He consulted with a judge and faculty members at Georgetown to videotape a simulated courtroom hearing, then used an eyetracker and surveys to examine self-assessed recall, self-assessed understanding, procedural fairness and outcome fairness between the two video layouts.
Woolard called it “one of the most interesting undergraduate thesis projects I have supervised.”
“Rafi has a very active mind,” Chentsova Dutton said. “It is clear that his goal is not just to get a good grade but to understand human complexity better.”
A Passion for Education
Freund also developed his passion for education at Georgetown.
He spent three years as a teaching assistant for the Probability and Statistics course with Oded Meyer, a teaching professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. That experience helped him realize that he loved teaching and standing in front of a classroom. Freund was also involved in the After School Kids Program (ASK) and DC Reads as a tutor for the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching & Service (CSJ).
After graduating from Georgetown in 2023, Freund worked as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Berlin and earned a master’s degree in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Oxford.
“Rafi has all the qualities that make for an excellent TA,” Meyer said. “What distinguished Rafi was his attention to detail and sensitivity to his students’ needs as learners. He always paid close attention to students’ common mistakes and misconceptions while grading the assignments and interacting with students during labs and office hours.”
To Freund, his interests in criminal justice and teaching are not distinct.
“They coalesce in a belief that all people should be able to benefit from a high-quality education,” he said.
At the University of Cambridge, Freund plans to research how sentencing operates and how the role of judicial discretion has changed over time. In his research and work experience, Freund has found that rigid approaches to sentencing can leave people doubting procedural and outcome fairness.
The limits on discretion, he said, are being placed faster than the field is considering the potential consequences of those limits, particularly as many anticipate the integration of artificial intelligence in sentencing decisions.
Freund wants to take a step back and ask: Is there something lost alongside the human judge? What happens when judges are prevented from being able to engage with the people they’re sentencing?
“This is a really urgent thing to think about,” he said.
(Top photo courtesy of Rafi Freund, taken at Washington University in St. Louis)