On a May 13 "All Things Considered" broadcast on National Public Radio and a corresponding article on WHYY, Professor Donald Tibbs reflected on the significance of the MOVE tragedy where Philadelphia police bombed and destroyed the home occupied by members of the MOVE organization 30 years ago in 1985.

Tibbs credits the disaster to a history of blacks being met with force when challenging the white establishment.  "What essentially happens is you see that the police have developed a framework for managing black self- determination. Which is any blackness that challenges the white mainstream way of life," Tibbs said.

Donald Tibbs’ expertise focuses on the overlapping issues of race, law, civil rights and criminal procedure. The author of “From Black Power to Prison Power: The Making of Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union,” (Palgrave MacMillan 2012), his publications include “The Jena Six and Black Punishment: Law and Raw Life in the Domain of Non-Existence,” in the Seattle Journal for Social Justice, “Peeking Behind the Iron Curtain: How Law ‘Works’ Behind Prison Walls,” in the Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal and "Who Killed Oscar Grant?: A Legal Eulogy of the Cultural Logic of Black Hyper-Policing in the Post-Civil Rights Era" in the Southern University Journal of Race, Gender and Poverty.