We know you nasty little tweakers can’t get enough raw coverage of the SACRPH (Society for American City and Regional Planning History) conference.  So don’t even play.  After a long delay, we finally have a new installment of our interview series from the organization’s last conference, where our intrepid reporters had deep rap sessions with historians and other scholars about their newly published books.  This time, Sayf sits down with the bad boy of the Virginia Tech History Department to talk about his excellent new book, Building the Ivory Tower: Universities and Metropolitan Development in the Twentieth Century, published in 2017 by University of Pennsylvania Press.

How have universities reshaped the environment of American cities? How have they wielded their power, influences, and resources to transform the built environment and local economies? Will we ever known if Lee Bollinger is wearing a wig?  Stay tuned.