Search results

This chapter addresses the complex problem of racial, ethnic, and economic segregation in the United States. How can pedagogy address this fundamental problem, by engaging students directly in efforts to dismantle segregationist housing policies? I begin by reviewing the history of public policies that have generated hypersegregation in American cities. I then describe a set of learning activities designed to help graduate students: (1) understand the ways in which we continue to segregate ourselves via public policy, (2) participate in the spheres in which such policy decisions are made, and (3) critically examine the role of our own institution in racialized neighborhood change. The learning activities presented include critical examination of exclusionary zoning policy; participation in public events, including protests, government hearings, and community meetings; and investigation into the complex causes of gentrification in a neighborhood adjacent to our University. Examples from student products are included. This chapter presents a series of novel learning activities designed to help students understand the real connections between public policy, structural racism, and housing opportunity. I present an approach to teaching that empowers students to participate actively in civic life.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Randy Pitman, an eloquent critic of librarians' print bias, has publicly noted a fact that should be obvious: referring to audiovisual materials in terms of what they are not (e.g., “non‐book materials”) automatically affords them second‐class status. Another media activist, Don Roberts, asserts that many selectors of multimedia library materials consider them to be “frivolous, secondary, or just plain negligible in content by comparison with printed materials.” In an article published twelve years ago which offered practical suggestions for overcoming “ingrained and inherent ‘printism,’” he listed alternative media producers and distributors, noted review sources outside the standard library literature, and provided other ideas for countering “the mistaken belief that you are required to leave your high‐fidelity, sensory‐aware self at home, or in your car, or at the concert hall, when you go to work at the library.” Today, he still finds “people who continue to specialize in formats, sentimentalize them, and try to perpetuate this or that medium as the pinnacle of consciousness…sometimes denying others access to formats which might be more appropriate to them in the process.” We are all multimedia beings, Roberts says: There is no way that books alone will enable us to “transform, inspire, and enliven.” Compiled with those thoughts in mind, the following annotated list of media producers and distributors which specialize in social issues—ethnicity, labor, peace, environment, and human rights, to name a few—primarily emphasizes independent and less well‐known media productions. Also worth noting are review sources like Angle—a publication covering work by women filmmakers (P.O. Box 11916, Milwaukee, Wl 53211, 414–963–8951; $20 individual, $30 institutional), Black Film Review (P.O. Box 18665, Washington, DC 20036; $12 individual, $24 institutional), and the lesbian/gay‐oriented Out in Video (Persona Press, Box 14022, San Francisco, CA 94114; $10).