A short documentary featuring MIT’s prison education program received an Emmy Award from the New England Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences at its virtual award ceremony on June 20. Produced by WGBH, the film bested five other nominees in the Education/Schools category.
Read MoreVivian Nixon was a key voice in the Education Department’s decision in 2015 to reinstate Pell Grants for a limited number of incarcerated students. On Monday, the executive director of the College and Community Fellowship exhorted lawmakers to take what criminal justice reformers view as the next step: lifting the 1994 ban on federal student aid in prisons.
Read MorePrison changed Jose Bou’s life in a way he never expected. While serving a 12-year sentence for drug trafficking, Bou earned a bachelor’s degree from Boston University through a special program for incarcerated students. Since his release seven years ago, Bou has become a community college professor and a mentor to others caught up in the correctional system.
Read MoreA multi-university consortium will look to transform the lives of incarcerated people through education.
The MIT Educational Justice Institute will lead a consortium to support expanding access to postsecondary education to people currently and formerly in prison statewide, fueled by a grant by the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Other member schools include Boston University, Emerson College, Mt. Wachusett Community College, and Tufts University.
Read MoreIn 1987, while teaching a class at MIT on nonviolence, philosophy lecturer Lee Perlman had a novel idea: Why not take the students to a prison, to talk with men who had committed extreme forms of violence?
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