Decarceration Nation

Episode 70: College Behind Bars

Josh interviews Lynn Novick, Sarah Botstein, and Salih Israil about the PBS Documentary Series “College Behind Bars.”

Pictures of Joshua Hoe's interview guests for episode 70 of the Decarceration Nation Podcast: Lynn Novick, Sarah Botstein, and Salih Israel

My Guests:

Lynn Novick: Emmy, Peabody and Alfred I. duPont Columbia Award-winning documentary filmmaker. For 30 years she has been directing and producing landmark documentary films about American culture, history, politics, sports, art, and music for PBS. In collaboration with Ken Burns, she has created more than 80 hours of programming, including The Vietnam War, Baseball, Jazz, Frank Lloyd Wright, The War, and Prohibition. College Behind Bars is Novick’s solo directorial debut

Sarah Botstein: senior producer of College Behind Bars, has for more than two decades been producing some of the most widely-watched and acclaimed documentaries on PBS, in collaboration with the directing tandem of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Her recent work includes the award-winning, epic ten-part series, The Vietnam War. Sarah also produced Prohibition, and The War, a series about the American experience of the Second World War.

Salih Israil: is a formerly incarcerated software engineer who learned to code during his incarceration while earning his BA in Language and Literature with the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI). Upon returning home in 2016, Salih became a Data Analyst with the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund before formerly joining the BPI team in July of 2017. As Advisor to the Directors of BPI, Salih played an instrumental role in the establishment of the no-cost-to-students Bard Microcollege at Brooklyn Public Library.

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