Rodney Spivey-Jones: Author, Public Speaker, Social Justice Advocate, and Consultant

Rodney graduated from Bard College through the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) in 2017, earning a degree in Social Studies. His story is featured throughout Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s award-winning documentary, College Behind Bars. He was a founding member of the BPI Debate Union, which gained international attention for beating Harvard in 2015.

His senior project, “Messianic Black Bodies,” which is a featured storyline in the documentary, was edited to include current events and published as “Black Disfigurement and the American Hieroglyphics of Race” in the A-line Journal. He has also published an article titled “College Programs in Prison Show the Value of Educating Every American” in The Appeal.

Rodney served as a Morehouse College Visiting Scholar and worked with the Andrew Young Center to enhance Morehouse’s Higher Education in Prison (HEP) Programming. He serves on the Board of Advisors for Ameelio, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to strengthening community ties with incarcerated individuals and expanding access to educational opportunities.

He is a public speaker and travels across the country to participate in panel discussions and to advocate for democratizing access to higher learning.

He is a member of a research team that is currently studying the civic and social effects of college-in-prison programs.

He tutors at the BPI Microcollege in Harlem (Just Community Leadership) and is a writing consultant. Rodney is currently writing his first book and plans to apply to law school in the near future.