Building the Ivory Tower examines the role of American universities as urban developers and their changing effects on cities in the twentieth century. LaDale C. Winling explores philanthropy, real estate investments, architectural landscapes, and urban politics to reckon with the tensions of university growth in our cities.

On October 1 and 2, 1964, several hundred students at the University of California's Berkeley campus held a police car captive for thirty-two hours, until administrative leaders of the university agreed to negotiate a series of grievances. The prolonged conflict that emerged from the encounter of the newly formed "Free Speech Movement" convulsed the campus for almost a year. This report uses the Berkeley events as raw material for studying the genesis of collective action in a conflict setting and presents a sociological history of the Free Speech controversy.