Virginia Festival of the Book is presenting a book discussion on Facebook Live or Zoom this Thursday that may be of interest to Oregon Hill residents.

Davarian L. Baldwin (In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities) discusses how universities have become big business and the costs for those living in their shadows, with Jalane Schmidt, director of the UVA Democracy Initiative’s Memory Project and associate professor of Religious Studies.
In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower takes readers from Hartford to Chicago and from Phoenix to Manhattan, revealing the increasingly parasitic relationship between universities and our cities. Through eye-opening conversations with city leaders, low-wage workers tending to students’ needs, and local activists fighting encroachment, scholar Davarian L. Baldwin makes clear who benefits from unchecked university power—and who is made vulnerable.
A wake-up call to the reality that higher education is no longer the ubiquitous public good it was once thought to be, Baldwin shows there is an alternative vision for urban life, one that necessitates a more equitable relationship between our cities and our universities.
“Insightful, compelling, and timely. This book lays the groundwork for the role of universities in creating equitable and just cities.”―Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Davarian L. Baldwin, author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower, is a leading urbanist, historian, and cultural critic. He serves as the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
Jalane Schmidt is associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, where she is the director of the Democracy Initiative’s Memory Project. She is a scholar-activist in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she teaches public history in different community forums.
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Thanks to New Humanities, our partner for this event. A project of Virginia Humanities, New Humanities is a community-driven media project designed to document and preserve the history of families in one of Charlottesville, Virginia’s historically Black neighborhoods. The project works closely with 10th and Page residents to digitize their physical materials and to record oral histories.
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This program, FREE to attend and open to the public, is part of SHELF LIFE, a series of virtual events presented by the Virginia Festival of the Book, a program of Virginia Humanities. To attend, please register here or simply make plans to watch on Facebook.com/VaBookFest.
This event will offer closed captions and an accompanying live transcript using Zoom’s built-in automatic speech recognition software (ASR). To request live-captioning accommodations, please write vabook@virginia.edu no later than seven days before the event. A video recording from this event will be provided soon after completion and an accurate transcript will be available at a later date, at VaBook.org/watch.