Higher Ed Inside

A manifesto in the form of a tumblr: elite univrsity education belongs in maximum security prisons. By a member of the faculty in two prison liberal arts programs. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-33972878-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[wesleyanphoto]

Through baked goods and pie sales, Wesleyan raised $900 for the Amazing Grace Food Pantry in Middletown during the International Bake Sale in Usdan Nov. 14. 

[higheredinside-blog]

Wesleyan knows how to do big through small action.

[mxmuse]

What is the Digital Humanities and how are they relevant to the Mixtape Museum project?

The Digital Humanities is the introduction of digital tools and techniques to traditional humanities scholarship. One of our major initiatives includes developing a database to manage, analyze and...

[higheredinside-blog]

Inside a BPI class at Woodbourne Correctional Facility.

[higheredinside-blog]

Even when individuals are fortunate enough to receive job training and other kinds of education inside prison, many find their acquired skills do not lead to viable labor market opportunities in the community. Incarcerated individuals may have received training on outdated equipment or in industries that no longer exist in the communities to which they are returning. An increasing number of federal and state laws either bar or restrict people with criminal records from holding particular occupations in fields such as finance, insurance, healthcare, childcare, transportation and aviation. Ironically, these restrictions exist in the same industries for which prisoners often receive vocational training, in occupations like barbering and plumbing.

"Venturing Beyond the Gates: Facilitating Successful Reentry with Entrepreneurship" (Lindhal 2007) http://bit.ly/N98qQz

[higheredinside-blog]

A few of BPI's heavy hitters, captured by Julienne Schaer.

[higheredinside-blog]

"Freeing the Mind": MIT Professor Craig Wilder discusses BPI in the MIT "Spectrum"

For the past three years, MIT’s Craig Wilder has been working with inmates at medium- and maximum-security prisons in upstate New York through the privately funded Bard Prison Initiative. And the “street-smart, funny, sarcastic men,” he says, are extraordinary students.

“One thing I love is that the guys show up to class really prepared and enjoy wrestling with you intellectually. The lectures I give are as intense as any lecture I give at MIT.”

Inmates are earning associate and bachelor degrees through New York’s elite Bard College, whose liberal arts curriculum is being taught inside five New York prisons. Two hundred men and women participate in this program, where only one in 10 is accepted on the basis of essays, test scores, transcripts, and GEDs, if they didn’t finish high school.

Prisoners study English literature, sociology, philosophy, or theology. Maybe they’ll read a book by W.E.B. DuBois or perhaps a biography of Albert Einstein. The day inmates began discussing Modern European Christian Philosophy, Wilder says, laughing, “I’m thinking, ‘Where is this coming from?’ But it was coming from the classes they were taking, and the books they were reading.

Read more: http://bit.ly/OJdhZ2

[higheredinside-blog]

BPI Professor Jeff Jurgens on Miller v. Alabama

In March BPI professor Jeff Jurgens drew our attention to the Supreme Court's agreement to hear Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, that is to rule on the constitutionality of life without parole sentences issued to juveniles. In his short piece for the Hannah Arent Center website, Jurgens notes the case highlights "important questions not only about the purpose of criminal prosecution and incarceration, but also about our conceptions of personhood and the legal, moral, and other boundaries we construct between youth and adulthood." 

Read the Court's decision, delivered by Justice Kagan, with these questions in mind. 

[higheredinside-blog]

Bard Prison Initiative appears as a featured case study in Social Problems, an introductory sociology textbook.

[higheredinside-blog]

A $1 million investment in incarceration will prevent about 350 crimes, while that same investment in education will prevent more than 600 crimes. Correctional education is almost twice as cost effective as incarceration.

"Correctional Education as a Crime Control Program" (Bazos and Hausman, 2004) http://bit.ly/N99NOX

[higheredinside-blog]

Professor Miguel Munoz-Laboy teaches the same class to these inmates at Woodbourne Correctional Facility that he teaches to grad students at Columbia University School of Public Health. Yes, he acknowledges there is a difference. The students at Woodbourne are better.

Paul Solman , PBS NewsHour, "From Ball and Chain to Cap and Gown: Getting a BA Behind Bars": http://to.pbs.org/MoQ5uC

[bardfreepress-blog]

By Joey Sims

Manuel Borras likes to make his characters suffer.

“That’s life,” he says. “It’s hard. You gotta move on, no matter how hard the situation – you gotta make the best of it. These characters may be looked down upon by society…but there is something good about them.”

It’s a philosophy that is rooted in his own life story.

Read More

[higheredinside-blog]

Max Kenner, Jed Tucker, and Daniel Karpowitz of the Bard Prison Initiative put me back in prison -- to teach that is -- and they and the students created a whole new chapter in my understanding of the limitations and possibilities of prison education.

Ernest Drucker thanks BPI staff and students in his book Plague of Prisons: the Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America (The New Press, 2011) 

[higheredinside-blog]

Carlos Rosario, BPI '12 photographed in the garden he worked to create at Woodbourne Correctional Facility. The photo is by Stefan Falke for the 2010 German Daily Zeit article "Lernen ist die Rettung"

[higheredinside-blog]

[higheredinside-blog]

Prison-spending maps highlight the fact that money spent on million-dollar blocks winds up in another part of the state—far from the scene of the crime. In New York State, about 60 percent of prisoners come from New York City, but virtually every prison is located upstate, in rural towns and villages, places like Attica, Dannemora, and Malone. As Todd Clear, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, puts it: "People who live on Park Avenue give a lot of money to people who live in Auburn, New York, in order to watch people who live in Brooklyn for a couple of years—and send them back damaged."

"Million-Dollar Blocks" Gonnerman 2004, Village Voice: http://bit.ly/Msrnzj

[higheredinside-blog]

Manuel Borras (Bard/BPI '12) presents work in progress at Culture Project

From the program description of Borras's new play: "Nino DeSimone and Cantel Daniels are long time friends. For twenty-years Cantel has worked for Nino’s construction business and now he wants Nino to hire his nephew Shan as an assistant-book keeper. Nino does only to find that Shan has a criminal record." Read more: http://bit.ly/MstoM1

[lilygraces]

[higheredinside-blog]

The PBS NewsHour segment on BPI drew quite a few comments from viewers. Paul Solman presents a selection of the responses, to which he replies, on the Making Sen$e page. One critical commenter asks to remain anonymous.