In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower

In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower the author takes us a journey from Hartford to Chicago, from Phoenix to Manhattan, using the stories of ever-expanding campuses to illustrate the increasingly parasitic relationship between higher education and our cities. As scholar and author Davarian L. Baldwin illustrates, urban planners have used the model of the university campus as a blueprint for the city as a whole. Through conversations with city leaders, low-wage workers tending to students' needs, and local activists fighting encroachment, Baldwin makes clear who benefits from unchecked university power -- and who is left especially vulnerable.

In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower is a wake-up call to the reality that higher education is no longer the ubiquitous public good it was once thought to be. But as Baldwin shows, there is an alternative vision for campus life and urban life, one that centers a more equitable relationship between our cities and our universities.