Christia Mercer on teaching in prison

in the Washington Post.

Things have not always been this bad. In the 1980’s, when the prison population sat below 400,000, our  incarcerated citizens were educated through state and federal funding. But the 1990’s brought an abrupt end to government support. When President Clinton signed into law the Crime Bill in 1994, he eliminated incarcerated people’s eligibility for federal Pell grants and sentenced a generation of incarcerated Americans to educational deprivation. Nationwide, over 350 college programs in prisons were shut down that year. Many states jumped on the tough-on-crime bandwagon and slashed state funded prison educational programs. In New York State, for example, no state funds can be used to support secondary-education in prison. Before 1994, there were 70 publicly funded post-secondary prison programs in the state. Now there are none. In many states across the country, college instruction has fallen primarily to volunteers.

Dialogues on Disability

Shelley Tremain is planning what promises to be a really valuable and interesting series of posts over at the Discrimination and Disadvantage Blog. She writes:

Dear All,
Beginning on April 15, join me at the Discrimination and Disadvantage blog on the third Wednesday of every month for “Dialogues on Disability,” an exciting new series of interviews I will conduct with disabled philosophers in a variety of positions and situations vis-à-vis philosophy: students and faculty, untenured and tenured, unaffiliated and affiliated. Read the interviews and learn about the philosophy that these philosophers write and why they write it, how they do philosophy and why they do it, their efforts to improve the climate of philosophy, the forms of institutional and personal prejudice that they confront, the future of philosophy of disability, and so much more! If you would like to nominate someone to be interviewed (including yourself!), please feel free to write me at s[dot]tremain[at]yahoo.ca.

Public Philosophy Op-Ed Awards

The APA awards have been announced! Readers of this blog will be especially interested to hear that fabulous feminist philosopher Kathryn Pogin has won for one of her Huffington Post pieces. They might also like to look at the hideously relevant column by George Yancy on Walking While Black. Heck, actually, they’re all great! Go check them out.