Professor David Freund examines the history of racial discrimination

Dr. David Freund needed to escape his quaint suburban environment for the weekend to convene with outside experts in his field. Freund, a University history professor, fled to the nation's capitol to become well-versed in his area of interest.

Collaborating with civil rights lawyers, political scientists, social scientists and other leading historians, Freund explored the historical origins of racial discrimination and the government's role in its development.

The long-term project, currently funded by the Ford Foundation, involves the independent research of varied experts. These colleagues share information through e-mail and adviser committee meetings, such as the conference that took place Sunday at Princeton.

Among the wide range of potential venues for the project are issues of public education and policy projects for government reform.

Freund said his research specifically examines the role that federal, state and local policies have played in structuring racial segregation from the 1930s to the present.

One area of Freund's work is housing policy that has denied cerain populations shelter based on race.

"I am working extensively on the role the Federal Housing Administration, an agency created in 1934, played in housing policies," Freund said.

"Critics and activists have complained about it. It is a very old and well-known story. I am trying to add some new components to it to understand the history of state sanctioned segregation," he added.

Studying these issues since the early 1990s as a graduate student, Freund began working in this cooperative effort in 1996-97.

While pursuing his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, he investigated the history of the "white flight" phenomenon after World War Two as well as racial segregation and housing policies.

His dissertation, which he intends to revise and publish in the near future, concentrates on how postwar suburbs were constructed and marketed as white spaces free of "urban blight and urban bodies," or apartments and non-whites, in Detroit.

According to Robin Kelley, a history professor at New York University and one of Freund's colleagues, the implications of Freund's work goes beyond the local political spher. For example, the political movement to portray suburbs as safe havens using implicit racial arguments was a national campaign.

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"The racial 'politics of place,' as Freund characterizes it, was not simply a local movement. This, too, was part of the national political landscape in the postwar period," Kelley said. "It was an ideological and cultural transformation that gave birth to both postwar suburbia and ensured its incomparable political power."

University history professor Daniel Rodgers, who is currently co-teaching HIS 280: Approaches to American History along with Freund, also served as Freund's thesis adviser.

"It is a fascinating and compelling story. It is some piece of work and I think it'll become an important book," Rodgers said.

"I've been working on it for a long time now," Freund said. "I am somewhere deep in editing it — it's in the works."

Kevin Kruse, a professor in the history department who co-precepted with Dr. Freund for HIS 274, said, "He's one of the most engaged teachers I've met here. He has what is necessary for a teacher, a real excitement for what he's teaching and he makes it come alive for students."

Among other relevant topics, Freund intends to speak about his current research project at an informal luncheon in 210 Dickinson Hall with history majors today at noon.

He said he will address the mechanics of researching and writing about modern history, as well as the process of integrating it with contemporary political issues.

Tackling the obstacles in applying history to academic and non-academic work and working together with people from other disciplines, often with different perspectives but the same questions, are also on his speaking agenda.