Bard College Pres. on Private Schools for the Common Good

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Let me ask you about a program that you initiated, the Bard Prison Initiative, which — you can tell me about it, but clearly, you’re taking your classes into prisons, and you seem to have had a pretty remarkable effect on recidivism and just general educating a prison population that in America I don’t think rehabilitation is the main aim of prison.

LEON BOTSTEIN, PRESIDENT, BARD COLLEGE: No. America is totally hypocritical. It calls itself a Christian nation and doesn’t recognize either forgiveness, redemption or reconciliation, all Christian virtues, and so it’s ironic. We have a terrible incarceration system, but we did pioneer in bringing our education into prisons, and the results are now after more than a decade, 15 years of experience, is tragic in a way, that these prisoners are best prepared and most ambitious and idealistic students. The deprivation of their freedom of movement taught them that the real freedom is the freedom of the mind and the freedom of the spirit, the thing that the jailer can’t take with keys. And so, what we’ve learned is that by giving them a sense of pride in their own ability to reason, this is a very rigorous liberal arts education, and they write a senior thesis for the B.A. level and they do the same program we require of non-incarcerated students, and our experience has shown the power of education, the power of the study of mathematics, philosophy, economics, the arts. These are not degrees in practical — so-called practical professions. They don’t become pharmacists. But they do then really — even if they are not released, many of them get their degrees while they are still serving their sentence, that we can transform people, their ambitions and their behavior, which is why the recidivism is so low. We could do this. Now, the prisoners are our best advertisement as well. You know, any people will go to university with the kind of flippant attitude, but they have learned the hard way how powerful and important education is. And so, that has given us a great deal of hope.