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

Across America, universities have become big businesses—and our cities their company towns. But there is a cost to those who live in their shadow.

Urban universities play an outsized role in America’s cities. They bring diverse ideas and people together and they generate new innovations. But they also gentrify neighborhoods and exacerbate housing inequality in an effort to enrich their campuses and attract students. They maintain private police forces that target the Black and Latinx neighb...