Teaching in Prison: Pursuing Academic Freedom Behind Bars

The following panel explores the role of academic freedom in prison classrooms. We explore a range of perspectives when it comes to teaching incarcerated people, including those who have taught justice-based topics including Gandhian thought and Catholic Worker tradition. Central questions to this discussion include exploring how and why educators are teaching in prison. Specifically, we ask such questions as: What are you doing in spaces of incarceration? How are you teaching/researching in these spaces? Who are you teaching? After understanding the context, we will also explore the collaborative nature of this kind of teaching and how this work interacts with academic freedom broadly. Finally, this panel seeks to uncover the interventions this kind of work can make in the study of religion -- anthropologically, historically, sociologically, and in terms of impact on policy.