Architecture readings and a 300-word comment

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Institutional transformation requires a major social dislocation, or even a series of dislocations, “before the anger that underlies protests builds to a high pitch and before that anger can find expression in collective defiance.”1 Following an insurgency, as protesters attempt to fend off institutional efforts to reestablish normative conditions, the power imbal- ance between them and the institution almost certainly assures a return to the status quo. Yet, in that brief moment between the coming and going of collective defiance, concessions can be and are won. This book tells the story of an institutional transformation that occurred at an elite school located adjacent to the nation’s premier black neighborhood in an urban mecca of civil rights and black power activism. It asks you to trace an evolutionary arc that begins with an unsettling effort to eliminate the exercise of authoritarian power on campus and in the community, and ends with an equally unsettling return to the status quo.

This turbulent encounter with the forces of social change takes you to New York City to Columbia University’s School of Architecture; it occurs between 1965 and 1976, mirroring the emergence and denoue- ment of the black power movement. You will begin your journey as deadly race rebellions boil over nationwide, sparking frantic efforts to remedy the crisis; your journey will surge ahead during a university- wide student rebellion on Columbia’s campus in 1968; it will drift into obscu- rity by 1976 as America loses its passion for upending inequality. Your journey will follow the ethnic minority affirmative action recruits who walked through a door of opportunity in between the coming and going

Introduction

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 7 . E m p i r e S t a t e E d i t i o n s .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

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2 Introduction

of insurgency. Reading their oral histories, you will learn about the expe- riences and legacy of the mostly low- and lower- middle- income recruits who received the gift of an Ivy League education. In reading the untold story of the recruits, you will also learn about a surprisingly little- known era in America’s educational, architectural, and urban history when sub- stantial transformations occurred in city- making pedagogy and practice. Some of these transformations have lasted unto this day, as you will see, but you will become one of very few people who knows their origin.

Your journey will also follow two university units that steered the School of Architecture toward an emancipatory approach to education early along its evolutionary arc. One was the Division of Planning, a unit within the school whose legendary chair, Professor Charles Abrams, had worked as an antidiscrimination lawyer; the other was the university- wide Urban Center, established with Ford Foundation monies to carry out “new work by Columbia in the field of urban and minority affairs.”2 Buoyed by the era’s civil rights and black power activism, these two units used Ford’s deep pockets to open the ivory tower to a cadre of ethnic minority recruits, involving them and their revolutionary white peers in learning to improve Harlem’s slum conditions. As you might imagine, their separate but overlapping pursuit of a community- based social jus- tice agenda put these units on a fatal collision course with the university’s assured return to the status quo.

This particular story of institutional transformation can tell you some- thing about contemporary struggles for racial and economic equality— struggles within the university and within the distressed communities in which many urban universities are located. Back then, in the post–World War II era, multiple disruptions occurred in the social fabric. They were due to civil rights and black power activism, urban renewal, deindustri- alization, and the Vietnam War, among other extraordinary conditions; layered one on top of the other, ultimately these disruptions led to mass student defiance of the status quo at Columbia and elsewhere. No doubt, you will agree that such extraordinary conditions are infrequent,3 as are opportunities for winning the kind of concessions they create—how- ever briefly. You know that similar disruptions are occurring today as a result of income inequality, homelessness, chronic unemployment, mass incarceration, and a host of other social ills. For example, earning a col- lege degree, the presumed ladder into America’s middle class, has be- come increasingly unattainable as tuition and textbook costs rise, while high- paid administrative and low- paid contingent faculty positions pro- liferate and custodial workers make do with poverty- level wages. And

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Introduction 3

despite the stunning election and reelection of the nation’s first African American president, perhaps you will agree that “a racial caste system [is] alive and well,”4 made even more insidious by the prevailing thrust toward color- blindness.

These and other injustices are occurring against a backdrop of extreme distrust of politicians “just standing around with their arms folded”5 in the face of outrageous state- sanctioned violence against people of color, especially black people. These disruptions in “the threads that have been holding the system together”6 since the 1970s may well be paving the way for a huge outbreak of collective defiance, as the raucous racial up- risings that have been occurring across the country suggest. In embattled cities from coast to coast—in Ferguson, Baltimore, Salt Lake City, Mil- waukee, Minneapolis, Baton Rouge, and New York, among many other cities—reaction to police killings of black men “did not so much draw outrage for the deaths alone, but for the systemic problems that have so many black people feeling hopeless.”7 When the outrage finally explodes, perhaps this book’s first- person portrayal of how a transformative process got reversed in one particular university and school can help extend the period of experimentation and reform that a mass defiance of the status quo generates. Perhaps it can help reopen the door of opportunity to ethnic minority students, who are still in strikingly short supply in elite professions like architecture and planning.

The remaining pages of this chapter prepare you to trace the full sweep of the School of Architecture’s evolutionary arc; they outline in miniature the entire story, summarize the methodology, and introduce the ethnic minority recruits who provided the oral histories that narrate the book. The chapter ends by providing you with an overview of the book. Now for the whole story so you will know where you are going.

The Arc of Insurgency

Columbia’s arc of insurgency began in 1965 as civil rights and black power activism turned violent during the Watts race rebellion and gained steam during the “long hot summer” of 1967 when a racial Armaged- don seemed certain.8 In response to surging urban tensions, the Ford Foundation provided the university with a $10 million line of credit to address problems in Harlem,9 and the Division of Planning mobilized to take action. A critical milestone along this evolutionary arc was a university- wide student rebellion in April 1968 that included Avery Hall, where the School of Architecture was housed. The rebellion ended in a

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4 Introduction

violent bust by the police, igniting among the insurgents in Avery a fierce commitment to social justice; the raw display of power fueled their deter- mination to make a wholesale change in the school’s approach to educa- tion and to the surrounding ghetto community. The group commenced a three- year, ever- changing experiment in democratic governance and education that about half the faculty fervently supported, and the other half overtly or covertly sought to upend. Overseeing the resultant exper- imental operation was the enigmatic Dean Kenneth A. Smith; loved by some, despised by others, he was the school’s only official administrator despite the faculty’s adoption of interim rules, which—in total violation of university statutes—gave students and teaching staff roles in school governance.

Insurgents in the Division of Planning, who assumed leadership of the transformation, decisively situated learning in the surrounding commu- nity. In particular, their curriculum engaged students in offering tech- nical assistance in the Puerto Rican communities of East Harlem and Morningside Heights through the East Harlem Planning Studio and later the Community Development and Planning Studio. As a comple- ment to these community- based studios, the division’s Urban Action and Experimentation Program (UAEP) undertook community- focused brick- and- mortar projects, which created an ideal client base for stu- dents. In a win- win, the Urban Center used its Ford monies to support the supervision of students’ service work, thus keeping down the cost of UAEP projects while providing a superior learning experience.

Insurgents also co- designed and implemented a new approach to student- centered learning, called the platform system, in which self- selected groups organized to study particular problems. Occurring pri- marily in the Division of Architecture, some platform system problems were community- based, but many related to problems typically stud- ied in architecture school, like adaptive reuse. Alongside for- credit community- based studios were paid internships, many provided by the Architects Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH) or the Real Great Society in East Harlem (RGS/Uptown). Architecture and planning stu- dents offered technical assistance through these internships, blurring the line between education, service, and employment—a line further blurred by the fact that community organization staff sometimes had teaching as- signments in the school.

Believing that the urban crisis could best be solved by indigenous city- making professionals who would have the cultural competence to facilitate the redevelopment of ethnic minority communities, the School

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Introduction 5

of Architecture, especially the Division of Planning, set out upon an au- dacious effort, financed through the Ford- funded Urban Center, to en- roll black and Puerto Rican students. The recruitment effort was one of the most successful university- wide and arguably the boldest among the country’s architecture and planning schools. It reflected national efforts among city- making professionals to tackle both the urban crisis and the lack of indigenous professionals who could address the crisis. The effort was initiated right after the rebellion through the cleverness of the school’s few existing ethnic minority faculty and students and their revo- lutionary white peers. It gathered speed when the Urban Center funded an assistant to the dean for minority affairs, who tenaciously pursued his charge to catalyze an ethnic minority presence in the school. As the re- cruitment progressed, the membership of the Black and Puerto Rican Student- Faculty- Administrators Organization (BPRSFAO) grew, and so did its influence; BPRFSAO members became widely respected for their academic performance as well as for their devotion to student recruitment and mentoring, faculty and staff hires, and curricular reform.

The arc of insurgency at the School of Architecture began to peter out when a sequence of bad things happened in the Division of Plan- ning. First was the weakening of an already too small teaching staff that occurred when the charismatic Charles Abrams took a leave of absence and then died, his replacement was denied tenure, and a third chairman was promoted without strong university support. Second was the univer- sity’s torpedoing of the Urban Center, its linking of the center to the di- vision’s “potentially explosive” social justice mission, and its capturing of center funds for a new, sanitized urban studies agenda, which effectively defunded ethnic minority recruitment and community- based teaching. Third was central administration’s anointing of a division chairman from the Law School, rumored to have had a run- in with a black community, who was to help the division articulate its role within the university’s new urban studies agenda.

Then the School of Architecture was dealt a crushing blow when its centerpiece, the professional program in architecture, received only con- ditional accreditation, primarily due to the university’s longtime disin- vestment in the school and a byzantine administrative structure that com- ingled the university’s top- down statutes with the school’s democratic interim rules. Intensifying its assaults upon the Division of Planning, the university assigned an external administrator, who had been key in de- veloping the Urban Center torpedo strategy, to oversee all the school’s daily operations (which he referred to as the “agonies in Avery”). With

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6 Introduction

the Division of Planning weakened by internal interference, the Division of Architecture facing external censure, and the entire school under sur- veillance, the arc of insurgency was on a sure course toward extinction, especially since student interest in participatory democracy was fading as were the ethnic minority recruits. In the wake of the accreditation report, Smith resigned and university administrators put on hold plans for reno- vating the school’s aging facilities.

Jolted into action, faculty members conceded their contested interim rules, replacing them with ones that maintained the spirit of democratic participation but within the constraints of the university hierarchy. Faculty members’ adoption of these new rules officially terminated the school’s experimental operation almost exactly three years after it began. Within two years, a democratic search process—the first in the school’s history— yielded a new dean, James Stewart Polshek, who took the helm with strong university support for fixing the school’s serious malfunctions. After achieving full accreditation for the architecture program, he hastily implemented sweeping changes, converting architecture’s undergraduate program into a graduate program, firing and hiring faculty, eliminating the Division of Planning’s two applied research centers, and renovating the school’s facilities. The rapidity of these changes—captured in a new name, Graduate School of Architecture and Planning (GSAP)—naturally caused some consternation on the part of students, faculty, and even cen- tral administration. Overall, however, positives outweighed negatives as the school returned to normalized operations.

Still, two residual and interconnected problems remained that would drag on for several years: one related to the school’s rapidly vanishing co- hort of ethnic minority recruits, the other related to the Division of Plan- ning’s ever more unpopular social justice mission. As recruitment efforts lagged, the BPRSFAO and the assistant to the dean for minority affairs went on the offensive, registering complaints with school and university administrators, and once even engaging the services of a politically con- nected Harlem attorney. Even though some of the complaints proved baseless, Polshek (with the guidance of an assistant dean who was trained as a social worker) proved particularly adept at negotiating BPRSFAO’s demands to the satisfaction of all involved, their vanishing numbers bring- ing finality to the conflict. The problem with the Division of Planning was not so easily resolved.

A complaint from the assistant to the dean for minority affairs un- fortunately shone a spotlight on the PhD in Urban Planning program, his complaint sparking a review by a Graduate School for Arts and Sci-

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Introduction 7

ences (GSAS) committee that oversaw the program. The review began collegially enough but turned vicious when the primary senior faculty member in the PhD program resigned. GSAS halted admissions and ap- pointed a different committee that insisted upon reorienting the program from an applied social justice perspective to an abstract theoretical one. Characterizing the division’s social justice mission as a threat to the uni- versity’s search for truth, the committee rejected its choice for a new se- nior faculty member, condemning her as a political advocate rather than a researcher. Outraged, Polshek accused GSAS of stifling GSAP’s develop- ment through a perverted use of university statutes. He demanded—and received—an apology from central administration, but in the long run the Division of Planning had to bend to the will of GSAS on all counts in order to reopen its doctoral program, now unfunded and with few stu- dents wanting to enroll.

Meantime, the broader sociopolitical context changed as backlash against reforms wrought by civil rights legislation grew. Fearful of vio- lent civil rights activism and their own downward mobility, middle- class whites bought into President Richard M. Nixon’s law- and- order agenda, which replaced social programs with mass incarceration. At the same time, conservative politicians, particularly two congressmen from Ar- kansas, discredited groups like RGS/Uptown while tightening the purse strings of the Ford Foundation, an unabashed supporter of civil rights activism. Federal disinvestment in public housing was assuredly the last milestone along the school’s evolutionary arc. When combined with an energy crisis and related fiscal crisis, a cycle of urban disinvestment began that dashed the hopes of the newly minted ethnic minority alumni for utilizing their skills to improve the living environments of poor ethnic minority communities. As they exited school to find the doors to their careers all but closed, an accrediting team returned to review the new graduate program in architecture, finding its mostly white, well- to- do students overly invested in heroic architecture but passive on social issues.

Thus did the arc of insurgency—graphically illustrated by the rapid increase and decline of cohort members entering and graduating from the school (see Figure 1)—vanish into obscurity, but its outcomes have persisted unto this day. As you will see, its legacy lived on in the achieve- ments of the ethnic minority alumni and in the educational innovations in community- engaged learning, both of which have contributed to ad- vances in city- making practice and education. These successes notwith- standing, the militancy that catalyzed Columbia’s insurrection has reap- peared on the national and global horizon in reaction to the race- based

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8 Introduction

injustices of corporate capitalism. These perilous times call upon students and faculty to engage anew in the impassioned dialogue that sparked transformation at the School of Architecture beginning in the summer of 1968.

The Methodology

The initial investigation—collecting oral histories from the affirmative action recruits—began in 2007 prior to a symposium for the school’s alumni. My research assistant10 utilized a two- part protocol: the first part collecting biographical histories, the second part delving into career histories and thoughts about improving cultural diversity in architecture and planning.11 Working from audiotaped recordings, she produced the verbatim transcripts utilized in this book,12 spending a full sixteen months to complete her work instead of the planned two months. The time period extended primarily due to the busy lives of the interviewees, who

Figure 1. This chart of the rapid increase and decline of cohort members entering and graduating from the school between 1962 and 1976 offers a graphic illustration of the arc of insurgency.

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Introduction 9

were working overtime as the Great Recession reduced their staff and increased their search for clients.

A parallel review of primary and secondary archival materials provided a context for the oral histories. Also begun in 2007, its point of depar- ture was the school’s centennial publication titled The Making of an Archi- tect, 1881–1981: Columbia University in the City of New York.13 In 2008, a weeklong review of the minutes of the Faculty of Architecture (dating back to 1931) and of the transcripts of interviews done for the centennial publication enlarged this evolving picture of the institutional context. Then in 2013, a monthlong visit to the archives uncovered documents that had been confidential at the time of the centennial research and led to a complete reframing of the book. These documents revealed the Di- vision of Planning’s pivotal role in the insurgency—a program not men- tioned in The Making of an Architect, which deals solely with the Division of Architecture14—and the Urban Center’s role in funding the division’s work. They also provided new insights into the school’s evolving gover- nance system and the university administration’s paternalistic relationship with the school.15

This book triangulates published sources and archival data with the oral histories of the ethnic minority recruits to convey to you, as accu- rately as possible, the events occurring during the School of Architec- ture’s evolutionary years, acknowledging the author’s tenuous position as both documentarian and member of the cohort that narrates the story. Also acknowledged is that cohort members had varied experiences de- pending upon their enrollment in particular degree programs. Most (fif- teen of the twenty- four cohort members) were in the professional degree program in architecture,16 the longest and most externally regulated of the school’s programs and the one with the strongest Eurocentric roots. Of the remaining nine members, seven (including one doctoral student) were earning degrees in urban planning, the most community- engaged, justice- oriented program, with two people earning degrees in special- ized programs that were largely unaffected by the community- engaged, student- centered experiments (see Figure 2). Despite these differences in the programs—and despite the dynamic evolution that was in prog- ress within the school—cohort members’ oral histories demonstrate a remarkable consistency, as you will see.

The Oral History Cohort

You will read the oral histories of twenty- four of the architecture and planning alumni, this author included, who attended the school just

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10 Introduction

before and after the student rebellion. The list began with just eight or nine names but expanded to forty- six persons (including forty- one who had graduated) during a gathering of ethnic minority alumni at the 2007 Alumni Day symposium of what is now called the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Eliminating alumni who were deceased, incapacitated, or had no contact information left a potential pool of twenty- nine; just five persons in the pool declined, which created an oral history cohort of twenty- four persons. The co- hort’s enrollment years overlaid onto a historical timeline of events that shaped their student experiences defined the period of investigation as 1965 to 1976, though one cohort member did not graduate until 1978 (see Figure 3).

Several years after completing the oral histories, the 2013 search

Figure 2. This chart of the degrees earned by cohort members and by all ethnic minority recruits indicates that more architecture than urban planning recruits graduated in both groups due to the much larger size of the architecture program.

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Introduction 11

through archival records revealed the names of another thirteen persons, of whom eight had graduated. You see, in a student body that ranged from about 300 to 350, the School of Architecture had a groundbreaking total of at least fifty- nine ethnic minority students in attendance during its evolutionary arc, including forty- nine who graduated. However, the oral histories you will read are from the original group of twenty- four.17

This group, including ten women and forty- nine men, formed the only significant group of historically marginalized students to attend GSAPP unto this day. You should find their educational and professional achievements impressive; they earned a total of fifty- six degrees from Co- lumbia, including thirty- one master’s degrees and three doctoral degrees. After graduating from Columbia, eight earned a total of eleven advanced degrees from other institutions; at least twenty- one are licensed architects in the United States, with four being fellows in the American Institute of Architects (AIA);18 at least two are licensed planners, at least one is a licensed interior designer, at least two have foreign certification, at least two are distinguished fine artists, and at least one is a college president.19

The school’s recruitment of ethnic minority students was so success- ful that, up until 2007, Columbia University had graduated more African Americans who became licensed architects than all but the historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs)—a total of fifty- seven persons, or 4 percent of all the licensed black architects in the United States and

Figure 3. This chart of graduation dates indicates that ethnic minority graduations peaked in 1973, reflecting the exceptional recruitment efforts occurring in 1969 and 1970; graduations declined to pre- experiment levels after 1976, reflecting the curtailment of those efforts as the resolve to achieve educational equity waned nationally and within the school.

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12 Introduction

6 percent of all those educated at over 117 majority schools combined.20 As of 2006, 35 percent of Columbia’s black licensed architects were en- rolled during the short period under investigation, a remarkable statistic since, until then, the School of Architecture (founded in 1881) had pro- duced just five black architects—Hilyard R. Robinson (Columbia 1924), John Louis Wilson (Columbia 1928), Beverly L. Greene (Columbia 1945), Norma Merrick Sklarek (Columbia 1950), and Jeh V. Johnson (Columbia 1958)—three of whom achieved fellowship status in AIA.21

As you will see, members of the oral history cohort have thrived in all sectors of the workplace, achieving distinction as firm principals, admin- istrators, planners, academics, and fine artists. They used their Ivy League education to overcome discrimination and fiscal crisis, ultimately carving out singular careers and winning the respect of fellow city- making pro- fessionals. And practically all continued to seek an improved quality of life in disadvantaged ethnic minority communities.

The Book

Your journey begins with a chapter on the national and local dislocations that occurred post–World War II up until 1965 as Negroes migrated from the South to midwestern and northern cities that were soon ravaged by urban renewal, suburbanization, and deindustrialization. You read about a simultaneous movement to achieve educational equity that featured black students who advanced a community- engaged notion of higher educa- tion. You read the stories of the oral history cohort members that relate their experiences during this period. You see how the movement gave black students access to the Ivy League, including at Columbia, where aggressive urban renewal in Harlem charged race relations. Finally, you read about the School of Architecture’s decades- long marginalization by university administrators, who selected a parade of weak leaders and kept faculty salaries among the lowest in the university.

You continue your journey in Chapter 2 by reading about mounting racial tensions in the nation’s metropolises during a period bracketed by the 1965 Watts rebellion and the 1967 Newark, Detroit, and Harlem rebellions. You read about responses by professional organizations in ar- chitecture and planning—responses so conservative that a radical group called Planners for Equal Opportunity formed, drawing the FBI’s at- tention. You learn about mounting racial tensions in New York City as angry residents descended upon Mayor John Lindsay to protest housing conditions, and you are introduced to two community groups (ARCH

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Introduction 13

and RGS/Uptown) that responded to these conditions. You also learn about mounting conflicts between Columbia and its neighbors, the Ford Foundation’s paradoxical response to the conflict, and cohort members’ reactions. Finally, you learn about the School of Architecture, its admin- istration, and its response to the conflict.

In Chapter 3, you focus upon the explosions of 1968 when violence was omnipresent both nationally and in New York City. You read about the spectacles of the Vietnam War, the King assassination, and the ghetto war, these spectacles almost perfectly matched by a freewheeling counter- culture. You also learn about the anger that finally built into insurgency at Columbia, catalyzed by the university’s construction of a gymnasium in a Harlem park, the Vietnam War draft, and the university’s support of the war. You learn that, after the insurgency exploded full force, insurgents gained control of five university buildings, including Avery Hall, which housed the School of Architecture. Finally, you learn that a violent police bust cleared all the buildings on the eighth day after the first occupation, but also set in motion a more determined insurgency.

In Chapter 4, you read about a counterforce of incredible creativity that the display of brute police force ignited, including faculty support at the School of Architecture for a university- wide boycott. You learn about the faculty’s adoption of the “May 17th Resolution,” which con- tained illegal interim rules that set in motion the school’s experimental operation. You also learn that, during the following summer, student- led groups began meeting to hammer out a completely transformed curric- ulum that established new modes of learning and a new relationship to the surrounding community. Finally, you learn about the all- out search for ethnic minority students that began with just three ethnic minority students and faculty and then snowballed as news of the effort spread.

In Chapter 5, you experience the steepest part of the school’s arc of insurgency, occurring when an unparalleled crop of ethnic minority re- cruits walked through Avery’s oak doors. You see that the recruits have fearlessly transgressed institutional norms so that what is outside in the community has come inside into the school, and vice versa. You also see that they have gained access to Avery’s inner sanctum, the design studio, where revolutionary students have disrupted the off- putting traditions of studio instruction. You read how a growing body of recruits helped open up the studios to the community through for- credit courses and paid in- ternships sponsored by the Division of Planning. Finally, you read about the projects the recruits completed, which were wide- ranging and fre- quently practical in nature.

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14 Introduction

In Chapter 6, you learn about the recruits’ brief sojourn at the apex of the arc of insurgency as the school sprinted ahead of national affirma- tive action efforts. Then you read about the descent that ensued as wide- spread conservatism unraveled the school’s experimental operation. You read about battles between the school and university that attracted an external administrator’s scrutiny as the planning division took the lead in the downward trajectory. You see how the university stripped the Urban Center of its funds, eliminating the planning division’s major source of support for its recruits and their community- based work. You see how the descent sped up when the architecture program received a conditional accreditation, prompting Dean Smith’s resignation and the external ad- ministrator’s threat of receivership should a replacement not be found im- mediately. You see how BPRFSAO and the assistant dean for minority af- fairs went on the offensive when ethnic minority enrollment plummeted. Finally, you learn that the faculty adopted new rules in May 1971, ending the school’s experimental operation.

In Chapter 7, you learn that, when James Stewart Polshek became dean in July 1972, he undertook a slew of changes, some of which had devastating consequences for the recruits. You learn that, in addition to securing full accreditation and funds for Avery’s expansion, Polshek elimi- nated architecture’s undergraduate degree and planning’s community en- gagement programs. You learn that BPRFSAO fought declining recruit- ment efforts, with Polshek’s evenhandedness calming the battle and the recruits’ plummeting numbers bringing finality to it. You also learn that university administrators eliminated the division of planning’s social jus- tice mission and rejected its choice for a well- known senior faculty mem- ber as a nationwide fiscal crisis devastated poor communities. Finally, you see that as the devastation spread, the school turned toward educating af- fluent students who were concerned more with heroic architecture than with social reform.

In the final chapter, you see how a fiscal crisis overshadowed the be- ginning careers of the ethnic minority alumni. You learn how conserva- tive policies eliminated the work many had planned to do, isolating them as lone individuals within an all- white world. You learn how, during their early career years, they navigated the difficult transition to work from school, passing in unusually high numbers the Architecture Regis- tration Exam. You learn how, during their middle years, they continued progressing primarily by overachieving and by benefiting from affirmative action and emerging city- making trends. You see that the alumni came into their own amid a booming economy, securing significant professional

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Introduction 15

recognition while maintaining their grounding in social justice. Finally, you read a call for faculty and students to follow the School of Architec- ture’s insurgents, and you receive closing instructions for transforming today’s institutions of repression in a manner that can thwart a return to the status quo.

You conclude your journey with an epilogue that issues a first- person call to action—to you and to transgressive faculty at today’s institutions of higher education—a call to join me in becoming “intellectual free- dom fighters”22 as the extremely perilous social disruptions of a new in- surgency come into view.

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