Taubman College’s Andrew Herscher, professor of architecture, published a new book about the history of colonization and indigenous peoples in Michigan and the role the University of Michigan played in that history. With a long career of activist research collaboration with local communities, Herscher’s work uses the study of architecture to highlight struggles for rights, justice, and democracy.

Under the Campus, the Land: Anishinaabe Futuring, Colonial Non-Memory, and the Origin of the University of Michigan (University of Michigan Press, 2025) narrates the University of Michigan’s place in both Anishinaabe and colonial history. It traces the emergence of the university in Anishinaabe imagination, the university’s participation in the colonization of Anishinaabe homelands, Anishinaabe efforts to claim their right to an education, and the university’s history of disavowing, marginalizing, and minimizing its responsibilities and obligations to Anishinaabe people. Building on past discussions held on campus, the book provides a new perspective on the relationship between American universities and settler colonialism.

The book will be launched on Wednesday, April 9, 6:30pm, at Literati Bookstore, 124 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor, with Eric Hemenway, Director of Repatriation, Archives and Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, and on Sunday, April 13, 2:00pm, at the University of Michigan Museum of Art with Bethany Hughes, Associate Professor in the Department of American Culture.