New director named for Land Tenure Center

Harvey M. Jacobs, a professor of urban and regional planning, has been named the new director of the Land Tenure Center (LTC) at UW–Madison, effective July 1.

Harvey Jacobs

“I have great respect for what the center represents as an institution,” said Jacobs, who is also a professor in the Institute for Environmental Studies. “As is true of many people of my generation, I looked to the work of the center for inspiration during crucial periods of intellectual development. I accept this position with enthusiasm for the potential of the center to remain a leading research, outreach, and training unit for the 21st century.”

“Professor Jacobs is uniquely qualified to lead LTC’s programs and we look forward to his participation as the Center’s new director,” said Elton D. Aberle, dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, after appointing Jacobs.

Established in 1962 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, LTC centers its research and training on the relationship land ownership has with social structure, economic development, political organization, and environmental sustainability. LTC has now worked in more than 75 countries. Jacobs says that the issues at the core of the center’s activities these past 37 years are more meaningful today than even at the time of the center’s founding.

Jacobs points out numerous examples worldwide. Land is central to the process of state definition in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and central Asia. It is a locus for the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, Middle East, and Africa. It is at the center of debates in North America about how far government regulation can extend before individual rights are threatened. And land is crucial to the reassertion of tribal rights by native peoples in the United States and other countries.

Jacobs has been a member of the UW–Madison faculty for 15 years. He has been named one of the best professors at the university by the Wisconsin Student Association, and his colleagues elected him as a charter member of the Wisconsin Teaching Academy. His work is required reading in urban planning programs throughout the country, and he has conducted research in Albania, France, Italy, Kenya, Poland, and the United States. In the last decade, Jacobs focused his domestic research on the rise, impact and meaning of the private property rights movement in the United States.

Last year his book, Who Owns America? Social Conflict Over Property Rights, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press. His international research focuses on public policy alternatives for protecting agricultural land at the edge of rapidly growing cities in developing countries.