Cheshire inmate graduates with honors
David Haywood, serving a 30-year sentence, is first to win Wise Prize from Wesleyan program
David Haywood will have the proudest day of his life on Sunday: He is graduating from Wesleyan University with a degree in philosophy. He also is the recipient of this year’s Wise Prize, which has been awarded annually since 1859 to an outstanding philosophy student.
But Haywood won’t be in Middletown to receive his diploma. He’s in prison, an inmate at the Cheshire Correctional Institution. He is 21 years into a 30-year sentence for felony murder.
Haywood is one of 16 philosophy graduates this year, and one of three people graduating from Wesleyan Center for Prison Education (CPE). The center started accepting incarcerated students in 2009, in no-degree credit liberal arts courses. Haywood was one of the first. Since 2021, CPE students have been able to get degrees.
Despite his bleak surroundings, Haywood said he has been fascinated by philosophy even before finding out about the Wesleyan program.
“I was always interested in big questions. … I started with religion and then was reading philosophy on my own — Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Rene Descartes,” Haywood said in a phone interview from prison. “Then in class we learned about autonomy, political theory, answers to bigger questions I had.”
Haywood is the first CPE student to write a thesis, the first to graduate with high honors and the first to win the Wise prize.
“I’d never heard of this prize until I won it. I want to learn more about it, who has won it in the past, things like that,” Haywood said. “It is a really great honor.”