Universities and Democracy with Vineeta Singh, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Donna Murch, and Davarian Baldwin

In late February, Andy Hines and Dennis Hogan organized a symposium at Haverford College called, "Universities and Democracy: The Politics of Higher Education Today." It brought together researchers, organizers, elected officials, and many others in the Philadelphia region to discuss the local and national transformation of the political economy of higher education.

Published on the same day as the AAUP's national day of action for higher education, we bring you four of the talks from that symposium by Vineeta Singh, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Donna Murch, and Davarian Baldwin.

We plan to broadcast more of the talks from this event in the future.

Speaker Bios

Vineeta Singh is assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her writing on critical and abolitionist university studies can be found in Public Books and Critical Ethnic Studies.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He is the author of the books Elite Capture and Reconsidering Reparations.

Donna Murch is associate professor of history at Rutgers University, where she is chapter president of the New Brunswick chapter of Rutgers AAUP-AFT. Her newest book is Assata Taught me: State Violence: Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives and she is the author of the award-winning Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California.

Davarian Baldwin is the Paul E. Rather Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Research Lab at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the award-winning author of several books, most recently, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. 

The symposium was sponsored by the ⁠John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities⁠, the ⁠Haverford College Distinguished Visitors Program⁠, and the ⁠Aydelotte Foundation at Swarthmore College⁠.