The Education Justice Project of the University of Illinois hosted a symposium to bring together academics and activists from across the country to talk about the relationship between higher education and the U.S. prison system. The sessions was facilitated and presented by scholars who either research the effects of higher education in prison or work with a higher education-in-prison program. Discussions focused on pedagogy, post-release issues, the efficacy of such programs, and the various impacts of race, class and gender in higher education-in-prison programs. Owing to the nature of higher education-in-prison, the discussions and work presented was cross-disciplinary and collaborative. Participants came from several departments on campus, and speakers were invited from all the college-in-prison programs in the United States.

The goal of the symposium was to expand intellectual discussions of higher education in prison to a national scale. There have been few national-level discussions of the theory and practice of higher education in prison. This symposium aimed to address an important need in helping to define challenges and vision of higher education in prison.

Co-Sponsorship

AFL-CIO of Champaign County
Books to Prisoners
College of Business
Community Informatics Initiative
Department of English
Department of History
Department of Landscape Architecture
Graduate College
Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences
Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies
Jewish Studies
Riverstyx Foundation
School for Designing a Society
UI Graduate Employees’ Union
Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory