“Climate of Fear,” the latest episode in the “What Makes Us Human?” podcast series, explores the impact of incarcerated parents on their children’s education. The podcast’s fifth season – “What Do We Know about Inequality?” – showcases the newest thinking across academic disciplines about inequality.
“The number of school-aged children in the United States with currently or formerly incarcerated parents sits at record levels. And that means we need to understand how mass incarceration furthers inequality and exclusion across generations,” Anna Haskins, assistant professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences, said in her podcast.
Haskins’ research examines how three of America’s most powerful social institutions – the education system, the family and the criminal justice system – connect and interact in ways that both preserve and mitigate social inequality. Her work focuses on early educational outcomes, intergenerational impacts and disparities by race and ethnicity.
Her current projects explore how schools inhibit or promote institutional engagement among criminal justice-involved families, as well as more complicated intersections between schooling and punishment, such as public attitudes around college-in-prison programs.
The “What Makes Us Human?” podcast is produced by the College of Arts and Sciences in collaboration with the Cornell Broadcast Studios and features audio essays written and recorded by Cornell faculty. New episodes are released each Thursday through the semester, airing on WHCU and WVBR.
