Summertime, and the Reading Is Meaty

Ana Baptista, associate director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center and interim chair of environmental policy and sustainability management at Milano says:

“I’m reading a great little book right now by Samantha Macbride called Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States. It brings to light the underbelly of a widely lauded environmental activity - recycling. The author peels back the covers and reveals the social and human impact of the recycling industry when it fails to deliver on its public-facing promises of sustainability. 

“The environmental historian William Cronon writes elegantly and poignantly about the relationship between humans and nature – the source of so much of our angst and alienation in the era of climate change. He’s the editor of Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, which includes his thoughtful introductory essay, ‘The Trouble with Wilderness: Or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.’ (It was also published separately in 1996 in the journal Environmental History.)”

Darrick Hamilton, associate professor of economics and urban policy, director of the Milano doctoral program (and occasional Urban Matters contributor describing his research on racial wealth disparities in the US), has this to say about historian Ira Katznelson’s highly praised When Affirmative Action Was White:

“In his aptly titled book, Katznelson documents the great political compromise that led to the wide-scale, intentional exclusion of blacks from New Deal and World War II public policies, which are largely responsible for the asset development of a white American middle class. The great political compromise to coerce white Southern Democratic legislators to vote for transformative New Deal policies while maintaining a system of Jim Crow apartheid and white privilege was built on the exclusion of overwhelmingly black-dominated agriculture and domestic occupations, the administration of benefits placed in the hands of local authority with hostility to blacks, and the Congressional prevention of antidiscrimination clauses in the administration of benefits. This, coupled with the use of restrictive covenants, redlining, and general housing and lending discrimination, paints a clear picture of disparate discriminatory structural factors that inhibit blacks from accumulating wealth.” 

Sean Jacobs, assistant professor of international affairs at Milano, urges reading (or re-reading) Martinique-born psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon’s searching analysis of the destructive social and psychological consequences of colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth, first published in 1961. Says Jacobs:

“Written by one of the 20th century's most important intellectuals, the book—a critique of colonialism, nationalism, and imperialism—has regained relevance again.”

Michael Park, visiting associate professor of professional practice and chair of the management programs at Milano, says, “I'm reading Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, by Angela Duckworth. In the ongoing debates about whether it's possible to focus education on developing character, this is both practical and scholarly.  Duckworth believes that that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence she calls ‘grit.’ As I'm reading it, I’m keeping in mind my 11-year-old grandson, who shocked me a couple of years ago by declaring that he was not one of those kids who ‘loves school.’ I’m thinking about how to encourage him to keep at it.”