A biweekly newsletter about the future of postsecondary education in prisons. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

A Q&A with Reiko Hillyer: ‘You represent us’

On the first day of class, professor Reiko Hillyer writes a quote from the French philosopher Michel Foucault on the board: "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?" 

The students in the room have a lot to say about that topic. The class includes undergraduates from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. and incarcerated students — they're meeting inside Columbia River Correctional Institution, a minimum security prison, for a course on the history of crime and punishment in the United States. It's part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, an international organization that facilitates college courses taught inside prisons, with half the seats filled by incarcerated students and half by students from outside. 

Hillyer, a historian at Lewis & Clark, has been teaching inside since 2012, and wrote about the experience in her 2024 book, A Wall Is Just a Wall, published by Duke University Press. A documentary about the class, Classroom 4, directed by her childhood friend Eden Wurmfeld, is now streaming on PBS. I spoke with Hillyer about what the Inside-Out model makes possible, and what her incarcerated students said when they saw the film.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Charlotte West: You open the class with a quote. What does that discussion reveal about what the Inside-Out model makes possible?

Reiko Hillyer: It's the purest demonstration of what it means to bring together subjective lived experience and academic knowledge. Outside students from a liberal arts college are practiced in abstract analytical thinking — how institutions are made, what purpose they serve, for whom. Inside students have the wisdom of their own lives. In that conversation you have both happening at the same time. An inside student might say that prisons in Eastern Oregon used to be mental institutions and army barracks; an outside student might speak about modernity and the need for discipline and control under capitalism. The lived experience verifies the theoretical, and the theoretical gives those with lived experience tools to understand their own lives.

You've said that part of what you're doing in the class is denaturalizing what we take for granted. What do you mean by that?

Prison is one of the most taken-for-granted institutions. We take it for granted just like we take school for granted. But these are all human decisions that emerge out of particular histories, made by people who had the power to make them. The people who are inside prisons naturalize them as much as people on the outside. My job as a historian, regardless of the topic, is to denaturalize what we take for granted. When it comes to prisons, there is very serious harm done by our unquestioned acceptance of carcerality and punishment as the main way of dealing with social transgression. People who are incarcerated have been made invisible, and these are generally public institutions with no transparency at all. When you meet someone who is incarcerated and hold a conversation with them, no matter who, that conversation will probably disarm you and make you wonder: does this person need to be in exile for the rest of their life?

How did you get started with Inside-Out?

My subject area is U.S. history — the built environment, public memory, the American South, and more recently the history of mass incarceration. Around 2010 or 2011, a colleague told me about the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and said the training might really benefit me. It was the best thing I had ever done. The training involved participation and coaching by people who were incarcerated at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania — many of them juvenile lifers. After that, I figured out how to start a class at Lewis & Clark, where I was a visiting instructor. I already had a relationship with Columbia River as a yoga teacher, so I felt comfortable reaching out to the superintendent to propose it. I launched the first class in 2012 not knowing if I'd ever get to do it again. I didn't even have a permanent job at Lewis & Clark, but I thought, if this is something I only get to do once, it's worth it.

How did the documentary come about?

The director, Eden Wurmfeld, has been my best friend since we were 12 years old. She's been a filmmaker for a long time, and I think in the back of her mind she always had a hope that there would be an occasion to capture this somehow. As a historian, especially with the political climate right now, I felt that this needed to be documented, that this needed to be recorded — that people on the outside who may never get to take a class like this need to see the folks on the inside. Getting cameras in was challenging just on a logistical level; every single piece of equipment had to be recorded on an inventory list and checked both going in and going out. But my liaison at the prison was a tremendous advocate for the class, and took a professional risk, I believe, to say yes to the cameras.

What was the reaction when you screened the film inside?

I screened it at Columbia River and twice at Oregon State Penitentiary — once for the lifers group, once for the Asian Pacific Family Club. Some of those people have been serving sentences of 37, 41, 60 years. They were so appreciative — not just of the Inside-Out class, but because the film had played in Aspen and DC and all over the country, to audiences who might not have even gone to see it specifically. What they said, over and over again, was: you're representing us. The guys in the film are all of us. You've made it clear that we're not the monsters people think we are.

What have some of the students who appear in the film gone on to do?

Nick Five Oaks, who features quite prominently, has been out about two years and was able to fly to Aspen for the world premiere and be part of the Q&A panel. And James, who speaks at the end of the film about his inner child being released from its box — after that one class, he was turned on to education, having really not had a great relationship with the formal education system for most of his life. He took every single Inside-Out class that was offered after that, before he got released, and even served as a teaching assistant for me the next time I taught.

How has teaching inside shaped your research?

It made me start asking: ‘has it always been this way?’ I was spending time with people who were incarcerated and feeling their isolation — one person at Oregon State Penitentiary told me the best thing about transferring to Columbia River was that he could see trees for the first time in 20 years. So I started researching a specific prison, the Virginia State Penitentiary, because their archives had just opened. And I started finding executive orders for clemencies, for furloughs — people leaving at Christmas for 10 days and coming back. I found a document releasing people convicted of first-degree murder so they could give a talk at a Masonic lodge, or play chess at a high school tournament. In the late 1960s in Virginia. I was amazed. Something that surprises you is going to be an interesting story.

Related coverage: DePaul class inside Cook County jail brings together incarcerated and campus-based students

Let’s connect

Please connect if you have story ideas or just want to share your experience with prison education programs as a student or educator. You can always reach me at [email protected] or on Bluesky, LinkedIn, or Instagram. To reach me via snail mail, you can write to: Open Campus, 2460 17th Avenue #1015, Santa Cruz, CA 95062.

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