Group photo of BPI Summer Residency participants in 2022

OSUN Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison

Launched in 1999, the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) is among the most widely recognized college-in-prison programs in the United States, enrolling over 300 incarcerated students full-time in programs in seven prisons in New York State that culminate in degrees from Bard College. In 2009, BPI established the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison with support from the Open Society Institute to facilitate the establishment of new college-in-prison program-building across the US, calling for those programs to be of the highest academic integrity, ambition, and rigor. Open Society University Network partnered with BPI to bolster existing programs across the US and to expand programming across the globe.

US map with highlighted Washington, Missouri, Indiana, Vermont, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusets and New York

College-in-Prison Programs Across the US

Fifteen formal university partners in the Consortium across ten states represent a diverse range of institutions of higher education including land grant, public and private schools, small colleges and large universities, teaching-focused institutions and research institutions, Catholic and secular institutions, colleges with large and small endowments, and colleges granting associate and bachelor’s degrees. All partners make a fundamental commitment to radical inclusivity, academic excellence, and liberal arts learning that aims to transform individual lives by putting academics first.

With an OSUN grant in 2022, BPI has been able to provide capacity-building grants to partners across the Consortium, supporting programs in building computer labs and other needed investments in technology and hardware, launching STEM curricula, scripting database and research infrastructure, building out reentry support systems, and deepening communications and fundraising capacity for long term sustainability.

As an institution-building effort, the Consortium has offered strategic support, technical assistance, and critical guidance to colleges and universities as they develop and sustain ambitious college programs based on their own credits and degrees, and local context. BPI has assisted with negotiations between programs and the larger university, advanced relations with corrections institutions, provided initial seed funding, and helped design pilot models.

The world map with links between Annandale on Hudon and Vienna, Buenos Aires

A Global Community of Practice

In 2022, with the support of OSUN, and in partnership with Incarceration Nations Network, BPI again expanded its programmatic support, this time internationally. In January 2022, BPI announced a call for proposals for capacity-building grants specifically for programs outside of the United States. The response far surpassed initial expectations, with two dozen universities submitting proposals for funding. In spring 2022 BPI issued 11 grants to new and existing programs and built a growing community-of-practice with educators from Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, Jamaica, Trinidad, Australia, Italy, Mexico, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and beyond.