In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities

Baldwin (Chicago’s New Negroes), a professor of American studies at Trinity College, delivers a well-informed and highly critical study of higher education’s “increasingly powerful hold” over U.S. cities. When academic institutions reshape downtown areas under the mantle of “urban development,” they rarely do so to the benefit of existing communities, Baldwin contends. He cites evidence that the University of Pennsylvania displaced 600 low-income and African-American families to build a science center in West Philadelphia in the 1960s, and that Yale University’s “multimillion-dollar tax emption” contributes to the budget deficit in New Haven, Conn. Surveying expansions of the University of Chicago into Chicago’s South Side, Columbia University into West Harlem, and Arizona State University into Phoenix, Baldwin documents police shootings and racial profiling in the name of campus security, the replacement of vibrant public spaces with fortress-like institutional designs, and the wrangling of “public money for private profits.” Combining in-depth research, practicable models of reform (e.g. the University of Winnipeg’s sustainable development program), and the lively voices of community organizers and college insiders, Baldwin makes a convincing case. This passionate call to hold universities more accountable resonates. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, the Zoë Pagnamenta Agency. (Mar.)