max kenner bpi

TCR: College Behind Bars will expose BPI to a larger audience, to viewers who may not have known it existed or realized the full extent of its educational programs. Botstein: [After the Harvard debate] I left with the Harvard kids because we wanted to interview them outside of prison. Giovannie Hernandez, former BPI student: In my experience, education prior to my BPI curriculum had always been something prescriptive. I can identify and think through that. It taught me something about how we think about these issues in the United States. College in prison at the time cost the Pell program about $35 million. People do not care about money in this context; and if they tell you they do, you should know you can’t believe them. It has helped me reacclimate to society. But the Department of Corrections and the New York State government all understand very well that education is an essential component of helping people right through their incarceration in a productive way. The level of their achievement, and the joy with which they go about their learning, demanded to be documented. It’s about not just taking a normal route to achieve something, but using your head. Look at the back of the book; see what interests us; find a footnote that it related to [and] make sure that it was related to what we wanted. I was searching for my phone to say, “They won, they won!” And then I remember talking to Max [Kenner], like what is going to happen? I can walk into a philanthropic foundation and talk all day about how well our students do, [but] nobody believes how well they actually do until they see it for themselves. When it comes to education the expectations and disregard with which we treat young people in the United States is an outrage. Hall: I think it is also related to the fact that we were engaging in liberal arts. The Crime Report’s Julia Pagnamenta recently spoke with Max Kenner, BPI’s founder, Jule Hall and Giovannie Hernandez, two BPI alumni featured in the film, as well as College Behind Bars director Lynn Novick and producer Sarah Botstein about the ways in which the documentary reaches beyond the BPI program to examine the failures and inadequacies of the U.S. educational system and the “moral argument” that has driven opposition to higher education in prisons, and ultimately the merits of a liberal arts education. In 2016 The Chronicle of Philanthropy named him as a 40 Under 40, and he received a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award. The Crime Report: Max, you say in the documentary that BPI students aren’t treated any differently than if they were students on Bard’s main Annandale campus. That is terrific. Moyers was honored as TCR's 2018 "Justice Media Trailblazer." In 2015 he received the Manhattan Institute’s Richard Cornuelle Award for Social Entrepreneurship and in 2014 the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Education. BPI students achieve things in undergraduate classrooms at the same level as any college in the United States. BPI stands together as a community in defense of Black lives and in struggle for racial justice. There are institutions that exploit programs like Pell, either for profit or not-for profit institutions that provide programs that don’t really take into full account the interest or ambitions of their students. We had to test and try things in order to make things work, and I think that is what is so instructive, because that is what education is about. Max started the Bard Prison Initiative while still an undergrad student; it has grown to be, Launched with fifteen students a decade ago, the program has awarded nearly. links here. Did you have any trouble getting the correctional administration to grant you so much access to the facilities? And then we actually had to make sure we didn’t tip the scale too much. We didn’t know what that would be, and it was the most interesting, complicated, profound, serious conversation we had about our film, about Prohibition anywhere. The traits that make Grace Church School special are evident in every classroom or activity: pleasure in learning, seriousness of purpose and genuine affection and respect for others. We sort of said to each other, Wow this would be an amazing film, but we are kind of busy. There are two things I love most when I watch this documentary. After gaining the support of the College and cooperation of the New York State Department of Correctional Services, he shepherded the program into a credit-bearing and, subsequently, degree-grantin. Through the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison, BPI also supports colleges and universities across the country entering this field and is currently active in twelve states. TCR: The political conversation around educational programs in prison has changed since BPI began in 1999. That’s not what happens. (But) the same people who made that argument advocated for a bill which dedicated $10 billion to new prison construction. The Crime Report Max Kenner is founder and executive director of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) which enrolls incarcerated women and men in academic programs that culminate in degrees from Bard College. Sarah Botstein, Producer: One of the worries we had early on, and one of the challenges we faced was that we had never made a verité film together where the drama is unfolding as you are shooting. That is less true now. And then the whole world exploded, so that is just truly an adventure in the process of making the film. You were just basically made to take these things for granted. Please elaborate. Over the last decade, Max has led the expansion of BPI from a pilot program with 15 students to a nationally recognized education initiative enrolling over 250 students within five campuses in correctional facilities throughout New York State. What is the worst thing that can happen? And they would pull the books out for us from the campus. Our urgency came from the idea that I want to absorb and learn as much as I can. Today, inmates who are part of the program have the opportunity to … I’ve had an easier time than someone who might not have gone through BPI, not only because I am [more] employable, but because I can identify certain things like anxiety when it occurs. And I was like, “Wow, wait a minute, this isn’t the German society that I usually hear about.” As I dove further, I saw that Germany made efforts to make itself a multi-cultural society. Grace Church School is a co-educational independent school in downtown Manhattan, New York City providing instruction for over 700 students in Junior Kindergarten through Grade 12. Kenner: Historically, that has been true. Creating educational opportunities in prison nationwide. Under his stewardship, BPI has figured prominently in the media, including but not limited to features on 60 Minutes, PBS News Hour, the New York Times Magazine, and the Washington Post. We couldn’t exist and raise money the way we do if we weren’t proximate to New York City. How we understood it, and sort of guide it in a way that really developed my ability to process, not only ideas, helped me understand myself and my position in the world much more clearly. As the momentum grows for reviving Pell grants for incarcerated individuals, a new four-part PBS documentary executive produced by Ken Burns, College Behind Bars, examines the achievements of the BPI program. As people who could be family members, or neighbors. Like doing college is hard out here, doing college in prison is doubly hard. Over the last decade, Max has led the expansion of BPI from a pilot program with 15 students to a nationally recognized education initiative enrolling over 250 students within five campuses in correctional facilities throughout New York State. It took a lot of effort to persuade our colleagues that the fact that this work is (a) inexpensive and (b) saves enormous amounts of money in the future is actually unpersuasive. Grace alumni are a part of our school community for a lifetime. Novick: As it happens when we started the film [in 2014], this didn’t feel like a front and center issue, and now it’s much more in our national conversation, and that’s really exciting. Academic standards and workload are rigorous, based on an unusual mix of attention to developmental skills and ambitious college study. One of the first things you learn is how much people like to see Harvard lose. That was real, and you can’t talk about it without mentioning that, but also talking about cynicism, how typically in the United States when we talk about increasing educational access or opportunity, particularly when we talk about doing it for free, the thing that people hear in their minds is that we are providing some kind of handout, or that we are lowering standards to provide something for people that they haven’t earned. You don’t have to report to a legislature, or a voter, or anybody else. We didn’t understand that when we started. In my professional life, having a degree…that’s gold out here. [People said] I don’t know whether this is going to help me with when I get out, but it’s so interesting, and I just love engaging with it. So on some level it was the governor’s office and the Department of Corrections, and then in each facility it had to be interpreted and dealt with, and that was a little bit more nuanced. It isn’t about fundraising, though we hope that more people that know about us find our work appealing and maybe support us at one point or another. Just how barbaric, and dishonest, and gratuitous those representations are, and watching this film in the context of that normal is an amazing thing. We went into this classroom to show scenes from our Prohibition film and talk about that story with just your average, ordinary BPI class. Become a BPI supporter today and join a passionate community that believes in the power of education. Will Squeeze on State Budgets Drive More Youth Justice Reforms? They really supported the idea of a film that would show that. We studied in little study groups. Other names being mentioned by Joe Biden allies include Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. BPI currently enrolls almost 275 incarcerated men and women, from six medium- and maximum-security prisons across New York State. I think it’s very important to emphasize that because we—I think I can speak for my classmates—engaged in this material with a genuine interest, and not necessarily because we thought this is going to be what I am going to do when I get out. Growing financial pressures are likely to bring about more changes in youth justice systems across the country, despite election results that left statehouse leaderships largely unchanged, predicts an official with the National Conference of State Legislatures. Hall: The film engaged with this as well. With partnerships in four states, BPI aims to support the development of similar programs in 10 states within the next five years. He is also co-founder of the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison, which supports colleges and universities in establishing college-in-prison projects and is currently active twelve states. That’s not what inspired us to do this. Watch the video of his remarks at the Feb 15, 2018 John Jay College dinner here. Jule, when you were writing your thesis, how did you navigate all your research needs? And the cynicism and disregard with which we treat young people from communities of color, but also across the board. My closest friends now are people I was formally incarcerated with, even out here, because those are the people who can understand me the most, and who I can understand [the most]. The visual landscape is the same. The moral argument carried the day in the 1990s, and it will carry the day today. We anticipate that it will become law in one form or another in the next year or year and a half, and that is a terrific thing for the country. Just like it has an alumni party, just like it has a play. How can we make amends for that? With a Senate Democratic majority likely out of reach, President-elect Joe Biden will have to drum up old friendships across the aisle to push Democratic legislation forward.

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