Davarian Baldwin
Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies, Trinity College

Misty Blue, MPH • Citizen of the White Earth Nation & Indigenous Researcher
Jae Yates, Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar

In this roundtable event, Professor Davarian L. Baldwin will discuss his new book, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities (2021), which examines the profound influence that universities, increasingly operating in a corporate mode, hold over almost all aspects of urban life, including policing, labor practices, and housing, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Baldwin calls attention to the ways that this influence has led to the reproduction and deepening of social inequities, especially racial injustices. Prof. Baldwin joins colleagues working on university-community relations in Minnesota to address how we might build more equitable relationships between universities and cities—relationships built not on extraction and exploitation, but on a collective movement toward justice and liberation.

Presented by the Institute for Advanced Study and Minnesota Transform: A Just University for Just Futures, and co-sponsored by the Department of History; Department of American Studies; Design Justice Collective; Heritage Studies and Public History Program; Department of American Indian Studies; Department of African American & African Studies; Department of Chicano & Latino Studies; Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies; and Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Center.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Davarian L. Baldwin is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College (CT). He is the author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities; Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life, and coeditor (with Minkah Makalani) of the essay collection Escape From New York! The New Negro Renaissance beyond Harlem. Baldwin is finishing the book project, Land of Darkness: Chicago and the Making of Race in Modern America (Oxford UP). He is also co-editor of the Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy book series for Temple University Press and serves as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. He is a public facing scholar with deep investments in social justice. Baldwin serves on the executive committee of Scholars for Social Justice and his commentaries have been featured in numerous outlets from NBC News, PBS, and The History Channel to USAToday, the Washington Post and TIME.

Misty Blue is project coordinator for the University of Minnesota’s truth-telling project that is being conducted in partnership with the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC). The Towards Recognition & University-Tribal Healing (TRUTH) project is a response to the resolutions passed by MIAC in the summer of 2020 that call upon the University to fulfill its obligations to the eleven American Indian tribal governments with the state of Minnesota. She is also an evaluation program manager for Grassroots Solutions where she leads muti-year, strategy-level evaluations with national organizations.

Jae Yates graduated from the U of M just before the George Floyd uprising and after doing ad hoc mutual aid with a group of friends, co-founded Community Aid Network MN which provides household supplies and groceries to anyone in the Metro area. They now serve as a Lead Volunteer with CANMN along with 8 core leaders. After engaging in mutual aid during the uprising, Jae wanted to go from just participating in political actions to helping organize mass movement work. They joined Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar to help organize the Taking Back Pride March in 2020 and has been with the group since. They currently spend most of their time doing education and outreach around community control of police, working to get CPAC legislation enshrined in the Minneapolis Charter.

Image: 1969."Rosemary Freeman, Horace Huntley and Warran Tucker, Minneapolis, Minnesota." University of Minnesota Libraries, University Archives., Accessed August 25, 2021. https://umedia.lib.umn.edu/item/p16022coll175:21711