Notices
The 🛰️Telegram飞机号/电报 | +26赞比亚电话注册 | 1年以上老号 | 成品号 | API接码登录 | 任何设备可用 community mourns the loss of James Garbarino, PhD, professor emeritus of psychology, who passed away on March 7, 2026.
Garbarino was a member of the Loyola faculty from 2006 to 2020, serving as the Maude C. Clarke Chair in Humanistic Psychology. He also founded the Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola, the first academic center of its kind.
His colleagues will remember him as someone who listened deeply, gave generously of his time and insight, and made others feel that the work they were doing could make a difference.
“Jim reframed the way I think about children, showing me that without rights, well-being is always incomplete,” said Katherine Kaufka Walts, director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children and co-director of Holistic Immigration Hub in Loyola’s School of Law. “He had a gift for translating complex research on trauma into knowledge that people could use, making it accessible to anyone whose decisions affected a child's future. Jim never stopped advocating for children the world was too often willing to overlook.”
“Jim’s work reflected his deep theoretical commitment, born from his doctoral studies with Urie Bronfenbrenner, to understanding children within the ecologies that sustain or fail them,” said Catherine Haden, professor of developmental psychology. “That commitment drove his decades of work in courtrooms, classrooms, and communities. We are all better scholars, and better advocates for children, youth, and families, for having known Jim Garbarino.”
His research focused on the social ecology of child and adolescent development, with a long-standing interest in violence-related issues, including war, child maltreatment, childhood aggression, and juvenile delinquency. He applied this expertise for more than 30 years as a psychological expert witness in murder trials, including resentencing hearings for juvenile offenders. He also conducted UNICEF missions to assess the impact of the Gulf War on children in Kuwait and Iraq, and served as a consultant for programs supporting Vietnamese, Bosnian, and Croatian children.
To find Garbarino’s full obituary and donation information, visit this page.
Please keep his family, friends, and all of the lives he touched in your thoughts and prayers.