Historian of Carceral State. @BPIBard Director of National Engagement, Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow Obama FIRC, @bardcollege & @uchicagohistory alum. Views my own.
Joined June 2011
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14 Dec 2022
A huge highlight of my fall was leading this lecture series and getting to hear from such a preeminent group of scholars of the carceral state! Thanks to everyone who joined and made it possible including a guest appearance from @iamdarrenmack!
14 Dec 2022
This week closed out the Making of the Carceral State fall course lecture series at BPI's Bard Microcollege for Just Community Leadership in Harlem. It was an amazing opportunity for students to hear directly from leading historians whose books they were reading in class.
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13 Oct 2024
This is a terrible trend for college-in-prison and for incarcerated readers who spend a lot of time in the footnotes and don’t have internet access.
11 Oct 2024
Finished The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates today and found it generally excellent but this a strange choice- can't help but feel that in a couple years I'll have a book with a defunct url and no bibliography.
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Jessica Neptune retweeted
27 Aug 2024
JOB: The UMBC History Department is seeking a Historian of Vast Early America at either the Advanced Assistant or Associate Professor level. Application due 9/27/24.
apply.interfolio.com/152746
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Jessica Neptune retweeted
4 May 2024
THREAD. Last night, the White House quietly sent out a press release notifying reporters that Biden would be seeking $37 billion for, among other things, 100,000 new cops. This is one of the most dangerous developments imaginable.
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Jessica Neptune retweeted
10 Feb 2024
Too often, when talking about the violence of Reconstruction, we focus on what whites did to Black people.
But what about the white community?
Well on this day, 150 years ago, SC finally addressed a problem that had plagued the state for years.
White on white crime
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17 Jan 2024
Really excited to see this search get underway in the fall. The move towards a permanent BPI faculty & endowed chairs is a major milestone in the field of college in prison but also a really fun opportunity to engage some of the nation’s best college teachers to come teach @ BPI
15 Jan 2024
Today BPI announced the establishment of the Justus Rosenberg Chair for the Study of the Thought and Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
This rotating faculty position will become a central curricular feature of our college. Read the full announcement: myemail.constantcontact.com/…
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17 Jan 2024
… teaching some of the most engaged, hard working, curious and exciting students you’ll ever teach. If you think this 1-2 yr chair is right for you, and you have a significant history of teaching excellence at the college level, reach out and stay tuned. Plz spread the word! 🙏🏼
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18 Dec 2023
The problem is, the idea of merit is inherently flawed far beyond test score bias. Any measure of past performance and attainment is really a measure of past access and therefore a reflection of past privilege and luck that then gets reproduced. 1/2
18 Dec 2023
I've never met a serious person who doesn't just want the top universities to select based purely on merit... I'd be completely happy with it being 100% based on their academic history and attainment and everything else being left out. It's the top of the top, those spots should be for our very brightest.
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18 Dec 2023
The admissions process at @BPIBard, not just in prison but also at the #BardMicrocolleges, disregards all metrics of past performance and only seeks out future potential, capacity, & readiness to put in serious work. Forces a total reconsideration of what we mean by “merit.” 2/2
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28 Nov 2023
If you are in a position to give today, please consider adding @BPIBard to your #GivingTuesday2023 donations. 🙏🏼
28 Nov 2023
Join us today as we celebrate #GIVINGTUESDAY the National Day of Giving - your generosity makes an outsized impact at BPI. Please consider making a gift today. bpi.bard.edu/giving
#ISupportBPI
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Jessica Neptune retweeted
28 Nov 2023
Fall 2024 admissions are now open for the Bard Baccalaureate, BPI's full-scholarship BA program for adults on Bard's main campus. Learn more at bac.bard.edu, or join us for an upcoming info session on Zoom: Sun, Dec 3 at 7:00 pm: forms.gle/35FJUxQmtzWeeynz5 1/4
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Jessica Neptune retweeted
28 Nov 2023
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC! Join us @BKLYNlibrary on Wed 12/6 for a screening of The Murder of Fred Hampton followed by a conversation with Bobby Rush and BPI’s Associate Dean Delia Mellis '86. Register for the event here: bklynlibrary.org/calendar/mu…
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21 Nov 2023
What’s even more frustrating is the idea college in prison needs to prove itself in these ways in the first place.
Yes all these studies are deeply flawed and mostly dumb. But it’s also stupid and frankly racist and classist to think we need more and better studies. 🧵
21 Nov 2023
What is even more frustrating about this case is that the authors say an RCT would be unethical in this context because there's so much other evidence that in-prison college programs reduce recidivism. 🤯
(1) That is not true. All studies on this topic use the same flawed design as this study. We have *no idea* whether in-prison college programming is a good investment.
(2) RCTs are not the only research design that provide causal estimates. Are there eligibility cutoffs? Phased rollouts in implementation? You can use those!
(3) Randomization is often the most fair way to ration access to a program that is too small to serve everyone who wants to get in.
(4) An RCT on this topic is ongoing in PA (by @tahamonster), so thankfully we'll have some useful results soon.
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21 Nov 2023
I totally get wanting to show off one’s own research prowess (ie one’s own higher education—yay!!) but next time ask yourself — before you ever get to research methods— if the very questions you are asking are the right ones. Are these questions you’d be asking of your own ed …
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21 Nov 2023
… or that of your children? If not, they probably aren’t the right questions.
If, on the other hand, we are ready to have a conversation about why criminal justice reform orgs are getting grants to evaluate what we in higher ed are doing, now that’s a question worth asking.
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Jessica Neptune retweeted
18 Nov 2023
Thanks to @BarackObama for sharing the @nytopinion by BPI’s @maxkenner, and for long supporting college-in-prison, creating Second Chance Pell in 2015, and setting the stage for the 2020 bill that finally removed the Pell Grant ban. This issue enjoys rare bipartisan support.
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