Published: February 18, 2016
Feb. 25 UT Honors Symposium to Discuss Root of Unrest in Ferguson, Baltimore
On Thursday, Feb. 25, The University of Tampa will welcome Todd Swanstrom, author and Des Lee professor of community collaboration and public policy administration at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, to speak on “The Roots of Unrest in Ferguson: Race and Place.” The event, part of the Honors Program’s symposia series, begins at 4 p.m. in the Trustees’ Room on the ninth floor of the Vaughn Center.
While the media has focused on old-fashioned racism as the cause of the turmoil in Ferguson, MO, Baltimore, New York City and Chicago, during his talk Swanstrom will take a deeper look at the underlying source. Swanstrom argues that the cause is a toxic mix of racial and class inequalities rooted in metropolitan development patterns that are reinforced by local political institutions. We will not correct the inequalities and injustices raised by the protestors, he argues, until we address these place-based inequalities.
Specializing in urban politics and public policy, Swanstrom uses the resources of his endowed professorship to support Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis, a coalition of community-based nonprofits working to build better neighborhoods in the St. Louis region.
His book, The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich and the Challenge of Urban Populism, won the Best Book in Urban Politics award from the Urban Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA), and Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edition (2014), co-authored with Peter Dreier and John Mollenkopf, won the Michael Harrington Award from the New Politics Section of APSA.
For more information, contact the Honors Program at honors@ut.edu or (813) 257-3545.
