Tufts University paused its year-long prison reentry program and is auditing all prison education offerings after a former participant was charged in a May shooting in Cambridge, Mass., roughly 20 minutes from campus, the university has said.
University leaders called for the audit to ensure that current and formerly incarcerated participants are supported in their education, and that the program meets university standards to “safeguard the well-being of all students, faculty and staff,” according to an email from a university spokesperson.
The Tufts University Prison Initiative of Tisch College (TUPIT), established in 2016, is one of dozens of similar programs across the country that allow incarcerated people to take classes in prison, oftentimes alongside nonincarcerated students. This type of program originated more than 100 years ago, but has seen some growth since 2023, when an almost 30-year ban on Pell grants for incarcerated people was lifted.
Advocates of prison education programs point to longstanding research that shows that education leads to reduced rates of recidivism by improving people’s self-image and helping them get better jobs upon release.
“It changes mindsets,” said Lee Perlman, cofounder of The Educational Justice Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I’ve experienced my students in prison as falling in love with thinking and understanding and analyzing. They get to see themselves in a very different light.”
The alleged shooter had participated in Tufts’ Education and Reentry Network, known as MyTERN, which is designed to help formerly incarcerated students reintegrate into life on the outside.
“Reentry is just really, really, really hard,” Perlman said. “I know guys who get out of prison with a college degree and get a good job, but I know others who are loading UPS trucks. You get out of prison with nothing and all the systems for reentry are inadequate. People are just struggling for the basics.”
Before it was paused, the MyTERN program offered laptops, academic support, technology and financial literacy training, and monthly stipends. Participants also received housing and employment support, according to Tufts’ website.
Perlman said the Tufts reentry program was regarded as a national model because it offered credit-bearing classes post-release, helped formerly incarcerated students meet their basic needs and created a community for people with similar experiences. He has seen plenty of others; he co-founded the Massachusetts Prison Education Consortium in 2017 and has been teaching in prisons since the 1980s—including a class on the “philosophy of love” in the Tufts program last spring.
One participant committing a crime doesn’t change its success, Perlman said.
Still, Tufts’ reentry program is closed for the year. Patrick Collins, the university’s executive director of media relations, said in an email, “Our shared goal is to ensure TUPIT receives the administrative support and resources it needs so that current and future participants can continue to benefit from its academic opportunities and coursework, as well as the non-academic supports that contribute to their success, while ensuring that the program operates in alignment with university-wide policies and protocols.”
In an update earlier this month, Tufts provost and senior vice president ad interim, Joe Auner, wrote that findings from the review were forthcoming and that a faculty and staff workgroup convened over the summer would evaluate the recommendations. Collins declined to answer questions from Inside Higher Ed about whether the MyTERN program, which was added to the TUPIT program six years ago, would resume after this academic year.
In the meantime, Collins said, “we understand the need to provide ongoing assistance to program participants reentering school or the workforce, and so we are working to connect them with partners and other sources of support.”
Perlman said “it makes zero sense” to pause the reentry program or audit the entire program based on the offense of one student.
“Prisons are risk averse and so are universities. I’m sure they’re thinking about their reputation and questions like, ‘What if he’d done this on campus?’ But he didn’t shoot people because he got an education,” Perlman said. “The fact that the program couldn’t stop somebody with underlying mental health issues is not an indictment of the program.”
Since classes have resumed at Tufts, students and faculty have protested the decision to pause the MyTERN program, according to reporting by The Tufts Daily, the student-run news outlet.
Sergio Grossi, a professor of criminology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said it remains fundamental to empower incarcerated people through education.
“Education in prison is very complicated,” Grossi said. “There are people inside that have committed harm and also that we know that many of these people also get harmed by the system, then they still continue to do harm.”
