Universities and Democratic Culture

We live in a time of paradoxes and contrasts that have considerable consequences for the health of our democratic community. Although the demographic landscape of our nation has become less and less white, our patterns of residential segregation have not changed. According to data gathered by the Harvard Civil Rights Project,1 we have created a growing number of “apartheid public schools,”2 where isolation and poverty have joined forces to close off the traditional route to upward mobility in our society, a tragedy compounded by the increasing value of education in a “knowledge economy.”