"You're in a Ferrari. I'm Waiting for the Bus": Confronting Tensions in Community-University Partnerships

There have been increasing calls within HCI to build sustained partnerships with communities that go beyond surface-level engagement. However, little is known about how communities view such partnerships and their outcomes. In collaboration with a community-based organization, we co-analyzed a series of interviews to understand the impacts of university-led research initiatives and publicly deployed technologies on local communities, and to explore strategies for more equitable community-university partnerships. Our findings reveal that local communities often perceive technology companies and academic institutions as potential threats due to their shared role in a series of projects, including predictive policing, surveillance, and broader concerns on technological bias and exclusion against minoritized groups. While interviewees named material benefits, sustained relationships, and meaningful accountability as desirable from universities, they pointed to academia's institutional priorities that pose barriers to forming effective partnerships. Drawing from la paperson's concept of a Third University, we argue that researchers and academic institutions must contend with these complexities, while taking a decolonizing approach to community-university partnerships through the lens of revestment.