The Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois, Chicago is a high-visibility urban-policy research center that is sometimes drawn into controversial issues. University leadership must defend academic freedom vigorously, but that freedom cannot be used indiscriminately for faculty pronouncements; faculty and administrators must ensure…

At the University of Minnesota, the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs was established as an all-university unit with resources to establish community connections, facilitate and support faculty and graduate student urban research and outreach, and help integrate urban concerns into a large, urban-located land-grant university. Its structure,…

The Center for California Studies, a unit of California State University, Sacramento, focuses on governance issues and depends on state funds for administering four fellowship programs. It exists in a borderland between academe and state government, public policy think tanks and interdisciplinary studies, graduate education and career training.…