In that time period, racist white residents were hardly unique to the residential neighborhoods around the University of Chicago. It’s fair enough to criticize Hutchins, or Edward Levi, for their roles in managing neighborhood transitions in the 1930s and the decades that followed. But what was the eventual outcome?
How many other elite, private universities find themselves located today in a middle-class, multi-racial residential community like Hyde Park-Kenwood?
Rich white people did not pick up the University of Chicago and move. That’s exactly what many residents, businesses and factories did all over America. Maybe that’s not saying much, but there are limits to how positively “unique and unconventional” a college can be in addressing the deep, systemic problems of a surrounding community as big and complicated as the city of Chicago. Arguably, what UChicago and other “elite” private colleges could be doing today is relaxing a bit on their elite exclusivity to identify, admit and support more talented, low-SES students. The town-gown relationship (including activities of its private police force) may need some work too.
HS students looking for a unique and unconventional college should keep these problems in mind.
It’s one thing to run an “alternative” school for 2000 students somewhere in rural New England.
It seems to be harder for an urban research university to innovate on a larger scale, with real impact, without walling itself off as an exclusive Ivory Tower.