Higher Education as "Place": Location, Race, and College Attendance Policies

Space counts in college. Brown and the many higher education cases leading to that important legal decision were about place: where Negro schoolchildren would be allowed to attend school or whether Black students could attend white law schools. The issue of place has also been contested in other college settings, such as whether institutions can locate in certain "service" areas, whether college policies can be localized or tied to locales, whether regions and regional populations have legal claims to proportional college resources, or whether the siting of higher education can trigger racial claims. Indeed, each of these scenarios has been tested in court, each with its own incontestable racial calculus. And placing colleges near populations is a central feature of universal access, the theme of this special issue.