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
BPI Blog
Tag: Liberal Arts
Summer Residency 2020
Today we closed out our second annual BPI summer residency. This year's gathering was all virtual with members of BPI's Consortium For the Liberal Arts in Prison joining BPI staff on Zoom for two rich weeks packed with workshops on the nuts and bolts… Read More
Alumni Chronicles: Ato Williams ’12
As we close out our academic and fiscal year, we are sharing short films of Bard Prison Initiative Public Health Fellows, each of whom have come to the fore as voices of experience and leadership in public health across New York City. Ato Williams ‘12,… Read More
Microcollege Student Opinion: A Movement Toward Transformation
This reflection by Aru Apaza '22 is part of the Community Voices op-ed series for the BPI Public Health Journal. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, BPI alumni, staff, and faculty and Bard Microcollege students will be posting reflections about their work, studies, and response to… Read More
Field Notes on Pandemic Teaching
This reflection by Delia Mellis '86 Director of Program and Faculty Development originally appeared in Places Journal has been reproduced below and can found in its entirety here. A Bard Prison Initiative student studying at the computer lab at Coxsackie Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in… Read More
Easter Message from Cardinal Dolan
“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
BETTER ANGELS PODCAST Max Kenner: how prison education gives hope
BPI's Executive Director Max Kenner sat down with Sarah Brown on the Better Angels Podcast, originally posted on Their World and reproduced below. “I think you’re exactly right that mass incarceration is a symptom, if not the most prominent system of structural racism in the… Read More
PBS chronicles 12 [incarcerated students] who value education in ‘College Behind Bars’
BPI alumni Jule Hall and Salih Israil, who are featured in College Behind Bars, spoke with Patrice Gaines along with the film’s director, Lynn Novick. This article, reproduced below, first appeared in NBC News. The film fills the screen with stories about human transformation as… Read More
The Right to Learn Behind Bars: Encouraging College in Prison Reduces Recidivism and Helps Society
BPI alumnus Dyjuan Tatro ’18, government affairs officer for the Bard Prison Initiative, recently penned an op-ed on the value of investing public funds in college in prison. This article, reproduced below, first appeared in the New York Daily News. Read the full article below: The… Read More
Access to higher ed for incarcerated students is essential to criminal justice reform
As College Behind Bars puts a spotlight on the issue of college in prison, 25 years after the removal of Pell Grants for people in prison, BPI Alumnus Darren Mack '13 shares his thoughts on higher education’s role in criminal justice reform and the… Read More