Current Affairs

One of the greatest challenges of communicating with the outside world about life inside Mount Tamalpais College is conveying how the setting of the prison informs the experience for everyone involved. In many respects, MTC is a traditional liberal arts college, with small class sizes, highly dedicated faculty and staff, and a very close-knit community; yet in other respects, it is radically different. One arena in which the contrast is especially stark is the realm of academic freedom. 

The main difference between the conventional academic world and the one inside is that within the prison, institutional concerns about safety and security (however the prison chooses to define that) trump everything else. Perhaps most importantly, the college is not the ultimate authority or arbiter of conflict or disagreement. The college is always a guest—much as if it operated in a foreign country with its own laws and social norms. This makes the challenge of upholding academic freedom immeasurably more complex. 

Background

MTC provides an Associate of Arts degree in liberal arts and intensive college preparatory programming in math and writing to approximately 300 people a term, three terms per year, at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. The college charges no fees or tuition and receives no funding from the state or federal government; instead it relies entirely on philanthropic support from individuals and institutional foundations. 

MTC instructors all work as volunteer adjunct faculty, and they are assigned anew for each term. The same applies to teaching assistants and tutors. Most volunteers are faculty or graduate students from local Bay Area colleges and universities, and some are industry professionals. Classes are generally taught in pairs or teams. 

While MTC has no permanent faculty, many teach intermittently over time. Some instructors work with us for many years; others just once. While this turnover is in some respects not ideal, it does allow MTC to serve as a valuable training ground for local academics and professionals in trauma-informed, student-centered education, and specifically, in teaching in a prison setting. Many former MTC faculty now teach in other prisons around the country; a number have founded prison education programs in other states.

Interpersonal, Logistical, and Political Challenges

By the very nature and scope of our work, we impose a huge workload burden on San Quentin—through the massive volume of our clearance requests for materials and people; regular special events; and our requests for media access, including photography and video production, as well as news media. (All media requests require special permission and supervision.)

MTC runs classes six days a week with over twenty classes offered per term. This requires that the prison permit annually over three hundred non-state employees—instructors, teaching assistants, guest lecturers, tutors and other visitors—to spend time within the secure perimeter of the prison with minimal supervision.

Our continued presence inside San Quentin also requires that prison leadership—and the many supportive line staff—hold their ground against formidable opposition to our existence among their own colleagues, some of whom consider it inappropriate, or even outrageous, that incarcerated people should have access to free higher education. While some see us as a stabilizing influence within the prison, others see us as increasing the risk of physical violence, manipulation, smuggling, or escape.

MTC would not survive for a week without the tremendous efforts of staff and administrators throughout the prison who help keep the college running, and actively troubleshoot when things go wrong. The entire enterprise would also not be possible if faculty and staff were not willing to persevere within the often frustrating, and sometimes extreme, constraints of the prison environment. 

In the event of logistical difficulties or conflict of any kind between the college and the institution, we, like all outside programs and service providers, have little or no recourse beyond our relationships with prison staff or administrators. At times, political connections are certainly useful, but those can also easily backfire, as their deployment is likely to provoke resentment, and even backlash.

Some of the significant challenges that we have grappled with over the years, and do routinely (constructively and collegially) raise with the institution, relate to concerns like: administrative communications with students; misconduct or obstructionist behavior of prison staff; serious unmet medical or mental health needs of students; the need for adequate classroom space; or logistical issues that prevent students from getting to class, or otherwise impact the basic operations of the college. 

In other words, student access and wellbeing, and our ability to simply get materials and faculty into the prison, are our main existential priorities. Like virtually all prison programs, we are constantly triaging complex political and interpersonal challenges, assessing which battles are most essential, and worth fighting. The work of protecting freedom of any kind in the prison college space always involves simultaneously preserving the “right” of the college itself to exist, and students’ ability to access it. 

Safeguarding Independence

MTC is also deeply committed to preserving the academic integrity and independence of the college. In practice, this means safeguarding curriculum development, course content, and faculty selection from outside interference, and protecting the classroom as a space where faculty and students can discuss topics and express opinions freely. 

People unfamiliar with the culture of corrections often struggle to imagine the extent of discretion wielded by individual prison staff and administrators, or their vastly different rules and priorities. Staff are trained to monitor constantly for anything that could trigger violence, signal deviance, or otherwise create disruption. Most Departmental rules pertaining to allowable print materials (including imagery) are established within the California Code of Regulations, Title 15, § 3006, which pertains to contraband. Staff are not necessarily familiar with either Departmental regulations or the local rules of their own institution, much less with relevant case law; most simply rely on their own judgment, or that of their peers or supervisors. 

Like most prison systems, CDCR’s rules pertaining to allowable materials are vague and inconsistent. Institutions are theoretically permitted to exercise discretion for educational purposes, but many, if not most, do not. CDCR also maintains a list of disallowed publications that is added to year-to-year. The prison is to the First Amendment what outer space is to gravity. 

In years past, textbooks were routinely denied clearance because of their titles or cover illustrations; volunteers, often on the basis of outside activities. For decades, no film with a rating above PG was allowed. The clearance of an Israeli conscientious objector and activist was once rescinded on the grounds of political “extremism.” Jared Diamond’s Germs, Guns and Steel was presumed to be a bioterrorism handbook. A Spanish language teen romance magazine was rejected as prurient; an image of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus was considered obscene. A satirical picture of a U.S. politician in Ku Klux Klan garb was interpreted as white supremacist literature. The writings of Black revolutionaries like Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice were (sometimes) rejected, although copies were all over the prison. It all depended on who was signing the paperwork that day. 

Even if potentially contentious materials were approved for distribution, students were—and sometimes still are—afraid to take them back to their cells or dorms, for fear that their possession might be interpreted as evidence of gang affiliation, sexual deviance, or political extremism—and lead to write-ups, solitary confinement, transfer to a higher security level institution, or denial of parole. Some students still steer clear of research topics that could be interpreted as a nefarious sign.

Today, largely because of the decades we have spent building trust and credibility, and because the culture of the prison has evolved dramatically over time, prison staff rarely scrutinize MTC course materials. Security concerns about equipment and supplies always remain, but by and large, discretion over course content is delegated to us. We are known as zealously committed to the quality of students’ education, and willing to follow the prison’s rules and regulations as a condition of the exceptional access and support that is granted to us. 

Other colleges in prisons around the state and the country are afforded far less privacy and independence. Some prisons seek, for example, to influence or determine curriculum, decide on admissions criteria, monitor classroom discussions, screen instructors for their ideological viewpoints, scrutinize student work, or access students’ academic records. Many prison college programs around the country today routinely deal with these types of intrusions.

Unlearning Privilege

In the prison context, conflicts that we might regard as matters of academic freedom can never be resolved simply by invoking an abstract right, issuing demands, or threatening litigation. Communicating with a correctional institution or individual staff person in an aggressive, demanding, or condescending manner is apt to worsen any situation, or even foreclose the possibility of a positive outcome. 

People who live and work in the free world may struggle to imagine an academic setting that is this vulnerable. The ways in which “safety and security” are understood within the culture of corrections are also often far from intuitive for outsiders. People who are used to being supported, empowered, or even deferred to may struggle to conceive of a professional or legal environment in which their own personal sense of logic, decency, or fairness will not necessarily prevail in a conflict – one in which no higher authority shares their values, cares about them, or “has their back.” 

Even harder to grasp is often the extreme vulnerability of the incarcerated student, or the harm that individuals can do to students or programs through behavior that might feel to them innocuous, noble, heroic, or “justified.” One of the greatest challenges of an in-prison college can be helping teachers understand that their cultural norms or personal desires will need to be subordinated to the safety of their students, and those students’ need for the college to exist. Disregarding institutional rules, or otherwise acting in ways that call into question one’s situational awareness, trustworthiness, or good judgment, can all rapidly undermine the institution’s good will or tolerance for people or programs. 

Legal Precarity 

The challenge of upholding academic freedom in the prison context is also fundamentally shaped by the extreme precarity of the legal and constitutional rights of incarcerated people, and their total lack of control of their own physical environment. Departments of corrections in the U.S. have extraordinary discretion in all aspects of prison operations, including whom they allow into their institutions. If pressed, they need only assert a “legitimate penological interest” or a “threat to the safety and security of the institution” to defend their actions. In a legal, practical, and cultural sense, U.S. prisons are essentially police states. 

By and large, the courts defer to correctional administrators as “the experts” in all things related to corrections, and specifically regarding what constitutes a threat to institutional safety and security. In almost all cases, if the prison does not want someone or something in their institution, they don’t come in. Thus, in countless instances, including in relation to First Amendment matters, one can easily be “right,” but still lose. The result of litigation is often not simply defeat, but bad case law. Prison litigation can function like quicksand.

Even where incarcerated people are found to have a theoretically protected constitutional right—for example, to free expression—the mechanics of exercising that right remain vulnerable to the discretion of the institution. An incarcerated person may have the right to publish whatever they like in a prison newspaper, for example, but the prison has no legal obligation to allow that prison newspaper to exist. A person might have the right to express an unpopular opinion, or even to report wrongdoing, but it is also nearly impossible to protect an incarcerated person from retaliation, including destruction of property, physical harm, or specious write-ups that might cause wrongful discipline, withholding of privileges, or even the denial of parole. Even when courts have found that a given activity, service, or form of property, for example, is protected or required under a constitutional right, it is extraordinarily difficult to enforce compliance. 

Other Prison Rules

CDCR (and prisons in the US generally) also has extensive rules regarding prison staff, volunteer, and visitor conduct. (“Volunteer” is the term commonly used to refer to non-state employee service providers). Most rules pertain to what people can wear, what they can do while inside, how they may interact with incarcerated people, and what they can carry in and out. By and large, these rules are intended to avoid violence, prevent escape, maintain stark interpersonal boundaries between staff and incarcerated people, prevent the introduction of contraband, and control the flow of all forms of communications or other information in and out of the prison. The risk of escape is essentially viewed in its seriousness as on par with the risk of violence.

Regarding educational and other programs offered by external (i.e., non-state) organizations, groups, or individuals, prisons have broad discretion over whom they allow inside. Religious programming is on somewhat stronger footing because the constitutional right of incarcerated people to religious practice has been upheld, but even in that context, prisons can always deny or rescind the access of an individual provider. 

If prison officials deem that an individual has broken a rule, they may bar them from coming inside the prison, and once an individual has been barred from a prison, a service provider, including a college or university, cannot simply overrule the prison’s decision. All work inside San Quentin is at the pleasure of the prison, and can be barred at any time. 

Media Access

First Amendment matters in this realm are largely adjudicated through rules contained in Title 15 regarding news and “non-news media” access to the prisons. All MTC staff and faculty are informed of these rules as part of their training. Like many Departmental rules, these are often interpreted differently by individual staff and administrators, and often inconsistently enforced. For this reason, MTC volunteers are trained to err on the side of caution.

Based on our decades of observation, the imagined purpose of these rules is typically to prevent the publication of content that might cause conflict, harm, or professional or legal liability, such as content containing confidential or sensitive information or images; content that might incite animosity between racial groups, or inspire violence; subject matter that has been obtained through unauthorized research conducted inside the institution; content that might be used to assist in escape; or content that might be deemed exploitative of incarcerated people (or make the State vulnerable to litigation), for example, by using their names, images, creative work, or biographical information without their consent. 

Another important, yet unwritten, function of those media access rules (like those of many state agencies) is to manage the public image of the institution, and by extension, the Department of Corrections—and by extension, the Governor’s Office. Historically, media rules have also functioned to prevent individual incarcerated people from benefiting from their own “notoriety.”

Whatever the case, all media access must be approved in advance by the institution, and anyone who plans to publish content related to even a single prison visit must be under the direct supervision of the prison’s public information officer, or a designee. At San Quentin, gaining such permission is an arduous process, due in part to the huge demand for access that results from the high visibility and widespread public fascination with San Quentin. San Quentin “sells.”

Scores of in-prison educational, cultural, and recovery-related programs are in operation throughout California. Like MTC, many of those programs share information about their work inside, for example through emails and newsletters and on their websites. When programs or program participants disseminate positive information about their own work, for example, in an “uplifting” profile in a newsletter, a blog post, or a conference paper, without having received explicit prior permission, prison officials do not necessarily raise concerns. 

However, published content that has been produced without explicit permission—particularly if viewed as controversial, incendiary, or disparaging of the State—may cause the individual author and/or their affiliated program to be reprimanded, temporarily barred from coming back inside, or simply shut down.

The Future

As Mount Tamalpais College’s mission statement makes clear, we are dedicated to equity, civic engagement, independence of thought, and freedom of expression. After thirty years of operation, we also understand the extraordinary complexities of working toward these vital goals in the prison setting. We have also come to recognize the enormous ethical and strategic importance of relating to those working within corrections as individual human beings who work in an often unimaginably complex, stressful, and demanding field.

Higher education as a field has long been painfully constrained by the reductionist opposition of abstract values and ideals to material or strategic concerns—each often attached to claims of moral superiority. And yet today it seems as if the university itself will not survive if we do not find ways to integrate—intellectually and politically—precisely these ways of imagining, in the service of the public good.

Perhaps the field of prison higher education will emerge as the most unlikely of common grounds, on which educators, advocates, their partners, and their allies learn to collaborate—to grapple together with highly nuanced realities, and develop strategies for doing good, far beyond the rigid identity camps and habits of privilege and formal power that have come to define so much of academic life.

1. See California Code of Regulations, Title 15, §§ 3250–3250.1 and §§ 3260–3261.7; California Code of Regulations, Title 45; California Penal Code, § 5058; CDCR Department Operations Manual (DOM) §§ 13010.1, 6, 10-17; CDCR Media Policies (https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/media-policies/).

Dear friends,

As many of you know, what is now Mount Tamalpais College started in 1996 as an extension site of Patten College. In 2026, we will celebrate—with amazement and gratitude—the thirtieth anniversary of the College.

In its very first semester, the program offered two classes. By spring of 1999, the first semester I came into San Quentin to teach a class, about 100 students were enrolled in ten classes. Most were still writing their assignments with pencil; pens were scarce. Students scrounged together paper from clerical jobs or quarterly packages, and textbooks were donated by publishers or the occasional bookstore. 

Gang culture and the constant threat of violence dominated the lives of students. In the classroom, students generally engaged across racial lines, but on the yard, talking, playing basketball, sharing food, or even shaking hands with someone of a different race, could get a student hurt or killed.

After I began leading the program in 2000, our first major purchase was an industrial strength pencil sharpener. The first time we bought pocket dictionaries for the entire student body was a joyous occasion. Pocket calculators were a miracle. Every object brought into the prison was physically inspected by staff. Maps, considered escape paraphernalia, were categorically prohibited. Books could be banned simply because of their title or cover.

A teacher talking to a student one-on-one out of earshot of prison staff was viewed with deep suspicion; students were routinely placed in solitary or transferred out of the prison based on accusations of “overfamiliarity.” Lockdowns, generally due to violence, were frequent and often lasted for weeks. Violence within or between racial groups typically led to those entire groups being locked down; we routinely arrived to class to find all students of a particular race missing. Getting through a thirteen-week semester could take six months.

While there is no single explanation for all that has changed at San Quentin since then, a few factors played a critical role. Above all, people incarcerated at San Quentin wanted it to change. In many respects, MTC is in fact the manifestation of that desire for change.

From the earliest years, students played a vital role in running the college program—organizing supplies, managing classroom space, personally delivering verbal messages and mountains of paper correspondence—all without internet access, or even a reliable mail system. It was students who recruited, mentored, and inspired each other. They did homework without tables or chairs. They looked out for program staff and faculty, de-escalated interpersonal conflicts, and through their constant studying, stood out starkly in the world of the prison. 

In those days, prison staff who openly supported “rehabilitative programs” were often mocked, ostracized, and even threatened by their colleagues. Without the integrity and commitment of a handful of key allies, the college program would not have survived. Yet many initially skeptical prison staff and administrators witnessed the impact of college on individual students; over time, they watched the social climate of the entire prison start to change. The respect that those students earned from both the rest of the incarcerated community and from prison staff—as a result of their hard work and intellectual growth—eventually formed a powerful protective shield around the College that persists to this day. 

Another one of the College’s superpowers has always been its all-volunteer faculty, whose intellectual brilliance and preternatural patience—in the face of delays, cancellations, scant technology, sweaty classrooms, pouring rain, and Bay Area traffic —have for decades been a powerful motivating force for students, and surely the single most stabilizing force for the College itself. From the earliest years, it was instructors who encouraged their colleagues to come in to teach; who forged the philanthropic origins of the fledgling program; and in myriad other ways catalyzed its growth.

Today, as a privately-funded, independent, accredited institution, Mount Tamalpais College is sustained by this same spirit of resilience, dedication, and belief in human potential upon which it was founded. Our thirtieth anniversary will mark a celebration of both the journey we’ve traveled and the one we now embark upon, as we enter yet another remarkable phase of growth.

We are deeply grateful for all you do to help carry MTC’s vital mission forward, and hope you will be inspired to continue generously supporting this work.

With warm wishes for a happy and healthy holiday season,

Jody Lewen
President

P.S. Please save the date for Together We Climb: MTC’s 30th Anniversary Gala on Saturday, April 18, 2026 at the Conservatory at One Sansome in San Francisco, CA! 

Dear friends, 

Over the last few months, many friends and colleagues have asked about how the current political turmoil in the U.S. is impacting Mount Tamalpais College, or might in the future. These conversations have sparked some reflections that I thought might be useful to share with all of you.

First, to answer the question most concretely: MTC receives no funding from the state or federal government; we are supported entirely by individuals and foundations. As a result, our financial situation is not directly threatened by any of the recent cuts to federally-funded programs and services. 

In addition, because San Quentin is a state, not federal, institution, the prison’s operational budget is not directly impacted by current federal budget cuts. How California might react to other fiscal impacts on the state as a whole, and how this might ultimately impact the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, remains to be seen.

Despite MTC’s insulation from current federal budget cuts, we are clear-eyed about other potential challenges as we move through this uncertain time. One concern is that the individuals and foundations upon whom we rely for philanthropic support may shift their focus to other urgent needs that are now emerging as a result of current political events. The U.S. prison system is a massive humanitarian catastrophe, but chronic crises are easily forgotten when new disasters emerge—as they now do every day. Another potential risk is that fluctuations in the stock market might curtail both individual and foundation giving, whether due to diminished resources or wariness about the future.

For some MTC instructors, many of whom are faculty or graduate students at research universities, the dramatic cuts to federal funding for higher education institutions have already been devastating. The impacts expand daily: positions are being cut; years worth of scientific research is being irreparably disrupted; vulnerable communities and critical problems are being abandoned; some are reconsidering their own career paths. Many people are also deeply concerned about how cuts to the US Department of Education might degrade civil rights protections within education institutions, or undermine the capacity of accrediting agencies to maintain the oversight and accountability of colleges, among other consequences.

Inside San Quentin, as on the outside, some people are tracking current events closely; others much less so. The biggest difference I have long observed between the world inside and outside of prison in times of crisis is how much less shocked people inside are by the cynicism and destructiveness of social and political life. It’s not that they’re not deeply concerned; they’re just not as surprised.

One particularly impacted community at San Quentin, and throughout the prison system, consists of individuals who are not U.S. citizens, are undocumented, or who have loved ones in these situations. The risk of deportation post-release has always weighed heavily on those subject to it, but the sense of now being even more aggressively vilified and targeted—as both immigrants and people with criminal records—compounds that stress profoundly. Adding to the fear and isolation, particularly for non-native speakers of English, is the often frightening challenge of accessing accurate information, navigating the legal system, or finding support services. 

My hope at this moment is that the current state of the U.S. and the world will stand as a stark reminder of the critical importance of liberal arts education for society as a whole. In order for democracy to function, each one of us must be able to access and discern quality information; think critically and independently; communicate effectively; engage constructively with worlds far different from our own; and grapple, as a community, with the kinds of enormously complex and high-stakes questions with which we are increasingly confronted.

Why are millions of people fleeing Latin America? How do conflicts between the executive branch and the judiciary get arbitrated? What is the historical and political context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? What is “disinformation,” and who defines it? What does it mean to combat antisemitism? What are legitimate, or strategic, forms of political protest? 

The impact of MTC as an institution extends far beyond the students it serves and the ways it equips them to be informed and active participants in a healthy democratic society. Many of us who think of ourselves as “educated” live in profoundly homogenous cultural and ideological worlds; many seldom interact substantively with people from different socio-economic backgrounds and we generally consume media that reinforces our existing beliefs. Our conceptions of the political landscape, and the primary narratives through which we interpret events, are typically filtered through crude, culturally manufactured stereotypes about people whom we do not actually know. In an ideal world, educational institutions disrupt precisely such politically and culturally stultifying patterns.

As an academic institution, MTC works to fulfill precisely that promise of education: it does not just disseminate knowledge and formal skills, or teach people to think logically and critically; it also serves as a unique cultural site where people from vastly different worlds teach and learn together, transcend social barriers and stereotypes, and work to achieve the almost impossibly improbable but nevertheless crucial goal of building a high-functioning democratic society.

In this setting, long-neglected brilliance and creativity are cultivated, core assumptions are shattered, people with wildly different viewpoints treat one another with respect, and courageous leaders emerge. It is also a place where people continually reflect upon and model what it means to be loyal to a principle, rather than to a group–and what it looks like to boldly step away from one’s own cultural “tribe” and weather the often serious impact of dissent.

There has never been a more urgent time to cultivate this type of space–a space that  expands access to critical reading, writing, thinking, and debate; to bodies of knowledge like history, law, government, epidemiology, religion, economics, ethics, neuroscience, psychology, politics, and technology – in short, a space that develops the capacity of every single individual to contribute to building a healthier, more humane society, wherever they stand. 

With warm regards,

Jody Lewen
President