The Dark Side of the Ivory Tower

John J. Sloan III is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology and Chair of the Department of Justice Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 scholarly articles, book chapters, research reports, and presentations and co-edited two previous books on campus crime. Professor Sloan has been a Research Scientist at the Institute for the Study of Children and Families at Eastern Michigan University, as well as Visiting Professor of Criminal Justice at the universities of Alabama and West Florida. Bonnie S. Fisher is Professor in the School of Criminal Justice and a research Fellow at the Center for Criminal Justice Research at the University of Cincinnati. She has authored or co-authored more than 150 scholarly publications and has co-edited four volumes that focus on victimization issues. Professor Fisher was an honorary visiting scholar at the University of Leicester, Scarman Centre in the UK; a visiting scholar in the Division of Prevention and Community Research at the Consultation Center at Yale University School of Medicine; and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“Increasingly, advocates denounce the college campus–once considered peaceful groves of academe–as a dangerous place, ridden with violent crime, sexual assault, and binge drinking. The Dark Side of the Ivory Tower identifies the people promoting these alarming claims, and explains how and why these problems became a focus for public concern. It offers a reasoned assessment of some of our most prominent campus panics.”—Joel Best, University of Delaware

• 1. Violence, vice, and victimization on American college and university campuses: a brief history lesson; 2. Constructing campus crime as a new social problem; 3. Constructing unsafe and violent college campuses; 4. Constructing the sexual victimization of college women on campus; 5. Constructing postsecondary institutional liability for campus crime; 6. Constructing binge drinking on college campuses; 7. The legacy of claimsmakers: institutionalizing the dark side of the ivory tower.