For formerly incarcerated individuals returning to their communities, “clean, safe, and stable” housing is crucial, says Shawn Young ’19, upstate reentry resident for the Bard Prison Initiative. Speaking to his experience as a Bard alumnus through the Bard Prison Initiative, Young told the Good… Read More
BPI Blog
Tag: BPI
Celebrating the Introduction of BPI Reentry in the Albany Region
Last Friday was the introduction of BPI reentry to Albany and the Greater Capital Region. It was also an opportunity for me to share with many of you the vision of Freedom Is A Must. Thank you to those who were able to attend and… Read More
Alumni Opinion: The Importance of TAP Restoration
The restoration of access to New York’s need-based Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) for college-in-prison is monumental. Receiving an education behind bars permanently changed my life in many ways. A year into receiving my associate degree through the Bard Prison Initiative, there was no doubt… Read More
TAP is Back
Dear Friends, Today, after 26 years – at last – New York State has repealed its ban on incarcerated people receiving TAP grants. In our field – since the evisceration of education in prison in the mid-1990s – the fundamental goal has been the restoration… Read More
TAP Fellow Opinion: In Pursuit of Educational Equity & Justice
I have never felt utter despair and failure more than when I began my incarceration. That was the most difficult, seemingly hopeless point of my life—rock bottom, so to speak. I ultimately served a decade in prison. My life took yet another unexpected turn from… Read More
TAP: A Long Time Coming
Incarcerated students' ability to access New York's Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) has been restored in New York State after 26 years of a senseless and destructive ban. This victory is a long time in the making. With BPI's Senior Government Affairs Officer Dyjuan Tatro '18… Read More
BPI in Conversation – 50 Years Later: Attica and Its Legacy
Friday, November 19th at 2:30 Please join the BPI community of alumni, students, and staff for a virtual lecture and conversation about Attica 50 years later with Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and… Read More
BPI in Conversation – 50 Years: The Kerner Commission, Mass Incarceration & College-in-Prison
This lunchtime conversation took place on October 27th at 12pm eastern. Author and advocate Reverend Vivian Nixon; MacArthur Fellow, founder of Freedom Reads, and poet Reginald Dwayne Betts Esq; and BPI founder and executive director Max Kenner joined in a conversation moderated by historian Dr.… Read More
Learning to Code: Alumni Reflect on Their Experience in BPI’s Restart Program
BPI launched Restart in 2018 through the generous support of the National Science Foundation to build bridges between computer science training in prison and computer science entrepreneurialism after prison. Through the Restart program, BPI explored the question: "does informal learning offer an under-utilized pathway for… Read More
BPI Public Health Fellows Symposium 2021
The fifth annual BPI Public Health Fellowship Symposium featured 2021 Public Health Fellows delivering video presentations (below) of their individual projects, each of which spans a diverse array of scholarly, programmatic, and policy-based examples of work in the area of public health, followed by… Read More