When Ivory Towers Were Black: A Story About Race in America’s Cities and Universities

Loosely framing this work as a case study on institutional transformation, Sutton, a professor of architecture and urban design at the University of Washington, examines the development and unraveling of an experimental education initiative at Columbia University’s School of Architecture that arose out of the school’s 1968 student rebellions, aimed at recruiting of minority students and transforming the school’s curriculum into “humanistic, justice-oriented” education. Sutton leads the way through the “murky waters of [institutional] transformation” that occurred between 1968 and 1976, following an “evolutionary arc that begins with an unsettling effort to eliminate the exercise of authoritarian power on campus and in the community, and ends with an equally unsettling return to the status quo.” Sutton follows the stories of 24 black and Puerto Rican students, including herself, who attended Columbia during this period. The detailed account of the intra- and interdepartmental quarrels often lapses into tiresome institutional history, and Sutton’s excessive use of the second person hinders the immediacy inherent to her personal experiences and the historical events she lived through. The recollections of the alumni that infuse and inform the text, nevertheless, give the book value as an oral history. (Mar.)