CAPA to host conference on the role and future of liberal arts in prison education

Bennington College’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA) will host its annual Incarceration in America conference from April 26 – 27 on Freeing the Mind and Building a Future: The Role and Future of the Liberal Arts in Prison Education.

All events are free, open to the public, and will take place in the CAPA Symposium on Bennington’s campus. Registration for the event is recommended.

What would it be like if every prison had a Liberal Arts College program? What would it be like if every Liberal Arts College had a prison education program? The Spring 2019 convening of Bennington College’s Incarceration in America initiative aims to further the conversation on the current and future relationship between Liberal Arts Colleges and higher education in prison programs.

Panels will consist of small and focused groups of leaders from liberal arts colleges, as well as those who teach in prisons, administrators, and alumni of these programs. Discussions will include everything from foundational educational and political principles to a practical agenda that includes research, advocacy, and institution-building.

The conference begins on Friday, April 26 at 7:00 PM with “Fateful Crossroads: The Future of College and Prison,” a keynote address given by Daniel Karpowitz. For eighteen years, Karpowitz served as a classroom teacher, policy analyst, and national director for the Bard Prison Initiative and the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison. He has held fellowships at the University of Chicago Law School, Fulbright Foundation, and the Open Society Institute, and is leading a National Endowment for the Humanities faculty seminar. He is now a senior advisor to the Governor of Minnesota, focused on the structural intersection of criminal justice and education. Karpowitz is the author of College in Prison: Reading in an Age of Mass Incarceration (Rutgers, 2017).