The 13th Annual Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns, held Oct. 14-15, offered panels and discussions on “The Role of the University in the Era of Mass Incarceration.” Experts and activists from across the country, as well as members of the Wesleyan community, considered practical and philosophical responses to the current situation, placing it in a historical perspective that began with slavery. Additionally, Connecticut’s Prison Education (CPE) program alumni gave individual testimony to the imperative they placed on access to learning within the penal system.

Keynote speaker Michael Romano ’94, who teaches at Stanford Law School, is the co-founder and director of the Stanford Justice Advocacy Project. He also co-authored Proposition 36,  which overturned key sections of California’s “Three Strikes” law that had been enacted in 1994, causing the state’s prison population to balloon with many inmates sentenced to life terms for nonviolent crimes.

“The United States has five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the prison population,” he told those seated in Memorial Chapel Oct. 14.