Tonight’s guest Davarian L. Baldwin is an internationally recognized scholar, author, and public advocate. He currently serves as the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of Smart Cities Research Lab at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His academic and political commitments have focused on global cities and particularly the diverse and marginalized communities that struggle to maintain sustainable lives in urban locales.

Baldwin is the award-winning author of several books, most recently, In The Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities (2021) and served as the consultant and text author for The World of the Harlem Renaissance: A Jigsaw Puzzle (2022). His commentaries and opinions have been featured in numerous outlets from NBC News, BBC, and PBS to USA Today, the Washington Post, and TIME magazine. Baldwin was a featured guest on the HULU series, The Conversations Project and in 2022 he was named a Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation for his work.

On tonight’s show we talked about the extractive relationship Universities have with the communities they are in. We started by exploring the history of political and economic forces at play that led these institutions to the place of dominance they are in now. Then we explored an interconnected network of movements that are rising up in confrontations with universities to demand they contribute their fair share.

Then we explored what an abolition university looks like and the policy and organizing steps we can take to get there.

Resources

Upenn Talk Mentioned in the Show Davarian L. Baldwin | 2023 Gordon S. Bodek Lecture | Penn Urban Studies

May 1st event at UB

https://umbc.edu/event/humanities-forum-with-davarian-l-baldwin/

In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/davarian-l-baldwin/in-the-shadow-of-the-ivory-tower/9781568588919/

Article from Non-Profit Quarterly

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/educational-purposes-nonprofit-land-as-a-vital-site-of-struggle/

Davarian Baldwin on X

https://twitter.com/DavarianBaldwin