Max Kenner is the executive director and Tow Chair for Education and Democracy at the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), which he founded as an undergraduate in 1999. A pioneer among college-in-prison programs, BPI enrolls over three hundred incarcerated students full-time in academic programs culminating in degrees from Bard College; Bard is also home to the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison, which cultivates leaders and institutions in its field, nationally and internationally.
Countries around the world have disparate experiences with education in prison. For decades, the United States has been locked in a pattern of exceptionally...