Since then, he has spent countless hours in such environments in his role as a teacher of philosophy. He’s had “very, very few experiences” where he felt unsafe in prisons over the years, he says. “But that first time you go in, you do feel unsafe. I think that’s what you should feel. That teaches you something about what it feels like for anybody going into prison.”
As a lecturer in MIT’s Experimental Study Group (ESG) for more than 40 years, Perlman has guided numerous MIT students through their own versions of that passage through prison doors. He first began teaching in prisons in the 1980s, when he got the idea of bringing his ESG students studying nonviolence into the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk to talk with men serving life sentences. The experience was so compelling that Perlman kept going back, and since the early 2000s he has been offering full courses behind bars.
In 2018, Perlman formalized these efforts by cofounding the Educational Justice Institute (TEJI) at MIT with Carole Cafferty, a former corrections professional. Conceived both to provide college-level education with technology access to incarcerated individuals and to foster empathy and offer a window into the criminal justice system for MIT students, TEJI creates opportunities for the two groups to learn side by side.
“There’s hard data that there’s nothing that works like education to cut recidivism, to change the atmosphere within a prison so prisons become less violent places.”
Lee Perlman, PhD ’89
“We believe that there are three fundamental components of education that everybody should have, regardless of their incarceration status: emotional literacy, digital literacy, and financial literacy,” says Cafferty. TEJI offers incarcerated students classes in the humanities, computer science, and business, the credits from which can be applied toward degrees from private universities and community colleges. The emotional literacy component, featuring Perlman’s philosophy courses, is taught in an “inside-out” format, with a mixed group of incarcerated “inside” students and “outside” classmates (from MIT and other universities where TEJI courses are sometimes cross-listed).
“I’ve been really torn throughout my life,” Perlman says, “between this part of me that would like to be a monk and sit in a cave and read books all day long and come out and discuss them with other monks, and this other half of me that wants to do some good in the world, really wants to make a difference.” Behind prison walls, the concepts he relishes discussing—love, authenticity, compassion—have become his tools for doing that good.
TEJI also serves as a convener of people from academia and the criminal justice system. Within MIT, it works with the Sloan School of Management, the Music and Theater Arts Section, the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center, and others on courses and special prison-related projects. And by spearheading broader initiatives like the Massachusetts Prison Education Consortium and the New England Commission on the Future of Higher Education in Prison, TEJI has helped lay the groundwork for significant shifts in how incarcerated people across the region and beyond prepare to rejoin society.
“Lee and I both share the belief that education can and should be a transformative force in the lives of incarcerated people,” Cafferty says. “But we also recognize that the current system doesn’t offer a lot of opportunities for that.” Through TEJI, they’re working to create more.
Perlman didn’t set out to reform prison education. “There’s never been any plan,” he says. “Before I was an academic I was a political organizer, so I have that political organizer brain. I just look for … where’s the opening you can run through?”
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