“A classical liberal arts education, which Bard College and the Bard Prison Initiative provides, is saying we are liberated from being shackled by the “out there” and when we look within you see a whole realm of existence and life. Where you live, how… Read More
Author:
Amanda Woloshyn
Actively Engaged
Darren Mack is a justice advocate and prominent member of the #CLOSErikers campaign. He enrolled with BPI in 2006 after learning about a distant relative that had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death at the age of 14 by an all-white jury. This experience… Read More
A ‘Second Chance’ After 27 Years in Prison: How Criminal Justice Helped an Ex-Inmate Graduate
Goucher College partnered with BPI to create the Goucher Prison Education Partnership (GPEP) in 2011. Now a national leader in the field, GPEP currently enrolls about 100 incarcerated Goucher students across two prison facilities in Maryland. This article, reproduced below, first appeared in the… Read More
Washington University graduates its first class of students in prison
Faculty at Washington University in St. Louis worked together with BPI to design and launch the Washington University Prison Education Project (PEP), which joined the Consortium in 2014. In 2019, PEP students celebrated the program's first graduation with the ten students earning Associates degrees… Read More
How maximum security inmates took on Cambridge in a debate about nuclear weapons — and won
The three students from the University of Cambridge, wearing black suits and clutching sheaves of papers, stepped onto the wooden auditorium stage under the warm yellow lights. As members of a storied debate team, they had competed the world over but never in a… Read More
A Consequential Myth
BPI alumnus Jule Hall ('11) authored an essay on the realities of race in America. The full article reproduced below first appeared in Philanthropy New York. Hall is a program officer in the Unit for Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice at the Ford Foundation. A… Read More
The Future of Higher Education: Then and Now
A Bard at Brooklyn Public Library open house event Sat, Apr 27 2019 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm Central Library, Trustees' Room 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn NY 11238 As part of the Rethinking Education Lecture Series and celebrating the third cycle of admissions of the Bard College… Read More
BPI’s 18th Commencement
On Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, BPI conferred its 500th diploma and bestowed civil rights leader Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with an honorary degree. Read More
Trapped Bodies, Freed Minds
The Freedom Education Project of Puget Sound (FEPPS) joined the Consortium in 2014 and received several years of seed funding from BPI. FEPPS provides a rigorous college program to incarcerated women in Washington and creates pathways to higher education after women are released from… Read More
‘Could I Make It In College?’: His Journey to a Bachelor’s Degree Started Behind Bars
Goucher College partnered with BPI to create the Goucher Prison Education Partnership (GPEP) in 2011. Now a national leader in the field, GPEP currently enrolls about 100 incarcerated Goucher students across two prison facilities in Maryland. Founded in 1972, the Villanova Graterford Program at SCI… Read More