Community, Conflict, and Change: CAS Course Shines New Light on Boston’s Past
It’s a narrative that Bostonians cherish, reinforced by centuries of reformers and academics and decades of Kennedys—but it’s also a narrative worthy of a fresh look, according to Andrew Robichaud, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of history. Robichaud’s CAS course, History of Boston: Community and Conflict, seeks to reconcile the celebrated aspects of the city’s history—Puritans, pilgrims, and all—and the parts that are forgotten.
Greater Boston Housing Earns “Failing Grade” in Annual Report Card
Released on Wednesday, the 2022 Greater Boston Housing Report Card—the Boston Foundation’s annual accounting of the state of housing in Boston and the area surrounding the city—shows that the region “would receive a failing grade” along almost every metric for measuring housing accessibility, equity, and availability, said M. Lee Pelton, Boston Foundation president and CEO, during a report launch event. (Pelton is also a member of the BU Board of Trustees.)
For New Initiative on Cities Leader, Urban Geography Is People
“Urban geography” may sound like it’s all about streets and parks and tall buildings. But for Loretta Lees, the new faculty director of Boston University’s Initiative on Cities (IoC), it means gentrification and homelessness, climate change and commuting, the way the built environment and the politics that shape it affect the lives of residents.
“A Lasting Legacy of Excellence”: Reflections on President Brown’s Impact on BU Research
To see President Robert A. Brown’s impact on research at Boston University, you just need to take a walk through its campuses. A series of striking buildings, all built within the past two decades, are the physical representation of the University’s emergence as a world-class research institution during Brown’s tenure: the Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering, the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, and—most recently—the eye-catching Center for Computing & Data Sciences.
POV: US Child Welfare System Is Falling Short Because of Persistent Child Poverty
Although US government spending on the child welfare system totaled $33 billion in 2018, the most recent year for which an estimate is available, it’s still failing to meet all children’s needs because of overwhelming demand. We have conducted extensive research, including policy analysis, program evaluations, and interviews with child welfare staff, parents, and youths. It has left us alarmed that a series of federal measures aiming to solve the system’s deep problems has failed to do so.
MetroBridge GRS Course Aims to Help Reshape Community Policing in Lynn
Lynn, Mass., made headlines in summer 2020 when Thomas McGee, then the city’s mayor, allocated $25,000 to the community organization Lynn Racial Justice Coalition (LRJC) to study creating an alternative to policing. The study, commissioned following nationwide protests in response to police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, was to explore the logistics of establishing an unarmed crisis response team to address emergency situations—such as individuals experiencing mental health crises—that police officers aren’t trained to address.
Majority of US Mayors Worried about the Racial Wealth Gap in Their Cities
A strong majority of US mayors (67 percent) say they are worried about the racial wealth gap in their communities, with elected leaders in cities with larger populations and higher costs of living significantly more concerned about the issue.
Those mayors who identify the racial wealth gap as a problem for their cities are close to unanimous in their support for programs designed to benefit small business ownership and homeownership for people of color. But when asked about specific programs targeting these problems, most said they would not back them in their own communities.
Sociologist Jessica Simes’ New Book Explores the Toll of Mass Incarceration and Its Racial Disparities
Her discovery launched Simes, now a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of sociology, on an eight-year investigation into the shifting geography of mass incarceration—specifically in Massachusetts, but with the pattern being repeated across the country—and the consequences for neighborhoods and communities. Her findings—a data-driven story of American punishment and place mostly untold by scholars and researchers—are presented in her recent book, Punishing Places: The Geography of Mass Imprisonment (University of California Press, October 2021).
POV: Militarization of Policing Risks Turning US Cities into Battlespaces
During President Trump’s now-infamous walk to St. John’s Church for a photo op earlier this month, he was escorted by the Secretary of Defense and a four-star general in battle fatigues. National Guard troops and unmarked federal agents used tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets to clear the president’s path of otherwise peaceful protestors. Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s recent calls for government actors to “dominate the battlespace” played out right in Lafayette Square, a grassy plaza adjacent to the White House in front of an Episcopal church. The message seemed clear: the full force of the US military stood in support of President Trump’s authoritarian pageantry.
Why Some Politicians Shun Promotions
Put off by gridlock and partisan knife fights in upper reaches of politics—both in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals—city executives appear to be happy homebodies. “The bulk of mayors in our survey certainly said, ‘We’re cool being mayor,’” says Katherine Levine Einstein, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of political science, who conducted the research with Maxwell Palmer, also a CAS assistant professor of political science, and David Glick, a CAS associate professor of political science, with help from Robert Pressel (CAS’16, GRS’16).