The sixth cohort of the Public Health Fellowship was the largest thus far. During the sixth annual Public Health Symposium, the Fellows engaged in panel discussions about their projects, each of which spans a diverse array of scholarly, programmatic, and policy-based examples of work… Read More
BPI Blog
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BPI Upstate Reentry Resident Shawn Young ’19 Talks Care, Concern, and Community on Radio Kingston’s Good Work Hour
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 2022 Education Fellowship Symposium
BPI’s fellowships provide an opportunity for alumni and other formerly incarcerated people to deepen their expertise in areas of career advancement. These 10-month-long programs connect formerly incarcerated professionals to careers where their unique combination of education and lived experience makes them vital members of… Read More
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Dear Friends, Today, after 26 years – at last – New York State has repealed its ban on incarcerated people receiving TAP grants.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