Results by title

Ira Harkavy has spent his fifty-plus-year career at the University of Pennsylvania advocating for the democratization of teaching, research, and learning. Since 1992, he has been the Founding Director of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, whose mission is to develop democratic, mutually beneficial partnerships between Penn and its local community of West Philadelphia.

For the Long Haul is a conversational memoir, moderated by Harkavy’s colleague John Puckett, that features social history and pragmatic arguments stressing the importance of education. The authors discuss Harkavy’s distinguished career and put his life’s work in local and historical context, including his engagement of diverse faculty, students, and staff to take his projects to the nation and the wider world.

Puckett traces Harkavy’s activist origins from his childhood in the Bronx through his undergraduate and graduate studies at Penn. As he developed university-assisted community schools, Harkavy encountered challenges such as the impact of racism and local communities’ distrust of universities. Those experiences show how his learning shaped his thinking about “participation, partnership, and producing change in the world.”

In this era where universities are under attack, For the Long Haul emphasizes Harkavy’s considerable achievements and the importance of higher education for democracy.