ABSTRACT
I began working on Western Michigan University's college-in-prison project as a graduate student in 2017, forging relationships at and between Western Michigan University (WMU) and the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC). During the pilot phase of WMU's program from 2018 to 2020, we offered semester-long, non-credit classes in philosophy, educational foundations, and sociology at a medium-security State prison. Starting in the 2023–2024 academic year, after years small victories and temporary setbacks, WMU's college-in-prison project—Higher Education for the Justice-Involved—will transition into its next phase: a formal academic program which provides college credit toward credentials in the liberal arts. In building a prison education program, I've come to see that prison-university partnerships are meaningful because they can open a space for harm mitigation. But more than this, they can open a space for humanization. Based on in-depth conversations, I first relate accounts from formerly incarcerated individuals that detail some of their experiences with the humanizing and transformative potential of higher education in prison. Second, I explore some ways in which the prison context might bear on the philosophical foundations of higher education (in prison). Finally, I reflect on how experiences of currently and formerly incarcerated individuals (and my own, teaching and learning inside) inform and complicate the work of building a dialogical, relational, intersectional, and textually rich college-in-prison program.
