Can a city make you fight?
A conversation with LAS Black Studies Professor David Stovall on structural violence, student engagement, and interrupting harm before it begins.
Interview with David Stovall
For lifelong Chicagoan David Stovall, this question—and the foundation of his forthcoming book, Engineered Conflict—emerged as he began to notice subtle yet significant shifts within his own community.
“One of the things I started to notice was that certain spaces were receiving a lot of attention in terms of development and gentrification, often forcing people to move. But there were other things happening, too,” he explains.
Back in 2013, Chicago made headlines for a wave of Chicago Public Schools closures. But according to Stovall, “you can actually trace school closings back to the early 2000s. So I started to ask: where is this happening?”
As he traced the patterns, Stovall found connections between neighborhoods with decreasing affordable housing and diminishing access to basic communication infrastructure, such as payphones, and increased police presence, often deemed “hot spots.”
“This was before widespread cell phone use. People were still using pagers and payphones,” he says. “In some parts of the city, payphones were being shut off after 10 p.m. Supposedly, that was meant to curb drug activity. But everyone knew that if you cut people off from communication, the activity just moves somewhere else.”
When conversations about rising violence surfaced, Stovall immediately questioned the overlooked context.
“Anytime we talk about violence, it has a source. And the source isn’t always the so called ‘bad person.’ Situations can exacerbate violence. So, my question became: can a city make you fight?”
Alongside examining how a city’s infrastructure and policy choices can influence violence, Stovall began exploring the possibility of proactively interrupting violence rather than reacting to it after the fact.
In his classroom, he pushes students to move beyond linear, emotionally driven understandings of harm.
“I teach a class on violence, and I always tell my students that our conversations around violence often aren’t very robust because the harm is so great. When violence affects you or someone you love, it becomes harder to zoom out and examine the larger context,” he says. “It’s always about putting violence in context—whether it’s state-sanctioned, interpersonal, or something else.”
A major part of Stovall’s work involves engaging deeply with community organizations and bringing those practitioners into his classrooms at UIC. These guests offer firsthand insight into efforts to reduce violence across Chicago.
“Students are sometimes surprised by how straightforward many of the approaches are,” he says.
Stovall emphasizes that research driven violence prevention focuses on the fundamentals: access to healthcare, living wage employment, quality education, and stable housing.
“When you talk about policing your way out of violence or regulating teen curfews, those are symptoms. They don’t even begin to address the underlying issue,” he explains. “But if you have a process that gets to the root causes, you can actually do something—and be preventative in the long term.”
As for what he hopes Engineered Conflict will accomplish?
“In the book, I focus on people here in Chicago who are working to interrupt violence. You start with the issue, and then you end with possibility,” Stovall says. “Engineered conflict isn’t new—but my hope is that the book joins the larger conversation. If we understand violence and the context that exacerbates it, then there’s much more we can do to interrupt it.”
Upcoming Book Talk with David Stovall
Attend the upcoming lecture “Book Talk: Engineered Conflict Structural Violence and the Future of Black Life in Chicago” with Dr. David Stovall on February 4th, 2026 to learn more about his research and forthcoming book.