Land Tenure Center Newsletter
Number 81, Spring 2001, p. 2
Summer 2001 began with Who Owns America? III (see page 6). The conference theme was the land needs of minority populations in North America, and it is directly connected to our collaborative project with Tuskegee University in Alabama. As part of this project, and tied into the conference, nine law students from six US law schools were in Madison for training before going off for the summer to provide land-related legal services in under-served rural minority communities throughout the United States (page 7). This is the fifth year of this highly successful legal extern program.
LTC’s role in training and education is becoming as central as its long-standing role in applied policy research. Sometimes this is related to an LTC project but just as often comes about because of the Center’s reputation as a focal point for land scholarship and studies. In the last six months, and continuing through this summer, we have had and will have extended visits from scholars and policymakers from Albania, Austria, Canada, Ethiopia, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, and Zimbabwe.
Perhaps the most important activity of the coming fiscal year (beginning July) will be a self-study requested of LTC by the Dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences at UW-Madison. It has been nearly a decade since the last study of this type, and a lot has happened in the world and for LTC. The study will provide a basis for understanding the role of LTC both within the University and within the global research and policy community.
As I reflect on land issues globally I am most struck by the spread of private property as a social institution. Private property’s existence is often viewed is an essential, noncontestable, and always positive component of democratic societies, market economies, and modern states. LTC’s experience would suggest that a variety of tenure forms have to exist to solve the assortment of land problems that present themselves. The attendees at our summer conference and many of our visitors would testify to this.
Copyright © 2001 by Land Tenure Center and Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin. All rights reserved.
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