CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

This report, commissioned by Dr. William Birenbaum, then the president of the Educational Affiliate of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and later the first president of Staten Island Community College, argues that urban institutions of higher education should be re-envisioned and integrated into the communities that they are serving.

A direct response to student activism and community pressure, the report suggests that both the social dissatisfaction of students and “poverty-stricken” neighborhoods in the city could benefit from new urban college campuses that would educate disenfranchised people and function as cultural as well as educational hubs. Although offered as a hypothetical model that would be applicable to cities across the United States, it further argued that a community-controlled college in the Bedford-Stuyvesant community in Brooklyn would be a catalyst for urban renewal there.