1. Gerald Grant’s talk will compare two cities - his hometown
of Syracuse, New York, and Raleigh, North Carolina - in order
to examine the causes and consequences of the nation’s
ongoing educational inequities. He explores the central
question of why education reform keeps failing, tracing the
answer back to public policy decisions such as redlining
and blockbusting in the wake of World War II and the
1972 Supreme Court decision in Milliken v. Bradley which
hardened the lines of school segregation by preventing
the state of Michigan from merging Detroit’s public schools
with those in surrounding suburbs. Inshining a light on
some of the nation’s deepest educational challenges the
discussion also points toward the potential for school
reform that remains today.
Gerald Grant
Gerald Grant was born in Syracuse, New
York, and graduated from Syracuse Central
High School.
He joined The Washington Post in 1961
and was promoted to its national staff in
1964. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard
University in 1967 and earned his doctorate
there in the sociology of education in 1972.
He joined the faculty of Syracuse University
in the Cultural Foundations of Education
and Sociology departments.
His major books include The World
We Created at Hamilton High (Harvard
University Press, 1988), named one of
the eight best books of the year by the
American School Board Journal, and
Gerald Grant and Christine Murray,
Teaching in America: The Slow Revolution
(Harvard, 1999), winner of the Virginia and
Warren Stone Prize awarded annually by
Harvard University Press for an outstanding
book on education and society, and of
the 2000 American Educational Studies
Association Critics’ Choice Award.
In recent years, his work has turned to
broader questions of urban social policy.
His essay “Fluctuations of Social Capital
in an Urban Neighborhood,” appears in
Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti, eds.,
Making Good Citizens: Education and Civil
Society, Yale University Press, 2001. Grant’s
latest book, Hope and Despair in the
American City, was published by Harvard
University Press in 2009.
Hope and Despair
in the American City
The Hannah Hammond Professor
of Education and Sociology Emeritus,
Syracuse University
“In this perceptive and important book, Gerald Grant tells
the modern tale of two cities. … The choice between Syracuse
and Raleigh, he concludes, is the choice between hope and
despair, the choice between one America and two Americas.
In most cities, he writes, there is an ‘invisible wall’ that keeps
inner city children separate from more affluent suburban kids.
If Barack Obama genuinely wants to provide equal educational
opportunity for children, however, he needs to take steps
to tear down that wall.”
- Richard Kahlenberg, The Washington Monthly
October 15, 4:30 pm
Jacobus Lounge
Sponsored By: Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee (CICC), Campus Artist and Lecture
Series (CALS), School of Education Dean’s Office, Urban Education Club, New York State Master
Teacher Program, Sociology/Anthropology Department, and Cortland’s Urban Recruitment of
Educators Program (C.U.R.E.)
For more information please contact:
Brian Barrett, Foundations and Social Advocacy Department or
Scott Moranda, History Department
Website: cortland.edu/committees/cultural-and-intellectual-climate-committee/index.dot
Twitter: @SUNYCortCICC