John Fantuzzo

Dr. John P. Fantuzzo (he/him) is the Administrative Director of Prison Education at Civic House, where he leads efforts to expand access to higher education for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people through the Penn Prison Education and Reentry Initiative (Penn PERI). He brings extensive experience in prison education, having previously served as the founding director of Eastern University’s Prison Education Program at SCI-Chester—the facility’s first degree-granting program and the second-largest in PA. John is currently on the steering committee of the Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education in Prison.

For over 15 years, Dr. Fantuzzo has worked at the intersection of education and criminal justice. His experience spans teaching high school in Southeast Washington, D.C., developing academic programs at Westville Correctional Facility (IN) while a professor at Valparaiso University, and advocating for systemic change with the Children’s Defense Fund’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline Campaign. Dr. Fantuzzo holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Education from Columbia University and an M.A. in Philosophy and Social Policy from American University. His scholarship examines how modern institutions recognize—or fail to recognize—human dignity, focusing on educational opportunity, the purpose of education, and the moral justification for college-in-prison programs. His writing has appeared in journals including Journal of Philosophy of Education, Educational Theory, and Theory and Research in Education.