Building the Ivory Tower
POLITICS AND CULTURE IN MODERN AMERICA
Series Editors: Margot Canaday, Glenda Gilmore, Michael Kazin, Stephen Pitti, Thomas J. Sugrue
Volumes in the series narrate and analyze political and social change in the broadest dimensions from 1865 to the present, including ideas about the ways people have sought and wielded power in the public sphere and the language and institutions of politics at all levels—local, national, and transnational. The series is motivated by a desire to reverse the fragmentation of modern U.S. history and to encourage synthetic perspectives on social movements and the state; on gender, race, and labor; and on intellectual history and popular culture.
Building the Ivory Tower
Universities and Metropolitan Development in the Twentieth Century
LaDale C. Winling
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
Philadelphia
This book is made possible by a collaborative grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Copyright © 2018 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Winling, LaDale C., author.
Title: Building the ivory tower : universities and metropolitan development in the twentieth century / LaDale C. Winling.
Other titles: Politics and culture in modern America.
Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018] |
Series: Politics and culture in modern America | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017013306 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4968-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Community and college—United States—History—20th century—Case studies. | University towns—Economic aspects—20th century—Case studies | Cities and towns—United States—Growth—History—20th century—Case studies. | Cities and towns—Effects of technological innovations on—United States—History—20th century—Case studies. | Land use—United States—History—20th century—Case studies.
Classification: LCC LC238 .W56 2018 | DDC 378.1/03—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013306
For Kate, Ernest, and Sammy
Contents
Introduction. The Landscape of Knowledge
Chapter 1. The Gravity of Capital
Chapter 3. Origins of the University Crisis
Chapter 4. Radical Politics and Conservative Landscapes
Chapter 5. The Working Class Versus the Creative Class
Epilogue. The New Contested City
Introduction
The Landscape of Knowledge
Harvard University was on top of the educational world. In January 2007, administrators announced the plan for expanding their campus in the Allston neighborhood of Boston.1 The nation’s oldest institution of higher education had the largest endowment in the country and was financing a bold move to build scientific laboratories and an art museum across the Charles River from its traditional Cambridge campus. At that time, Boston was one of the centers of the new economy, with researchers, graduates, and entrepreneurs from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) composing much of its creative class. The New York Times pointed out that Harvard amenities would replace nothing more than “a gas station and a Dunkin’ Donuts” at Barry’s Corner, an industrial site and working-class neighborhood in Allston.2 Mayor Thomas Menino hailed the 2007 announcement for the Allston campus as the first step in making Harvard “the future of Boston.”3 Harvard’s ambition was central to the growth of the region. Contractors began clearing the site at the end of 2007.4
The fall was steep. Two years later, Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust sent a letter out to the university’s deans in the midst of the economic crisis, announcing that the endowment, once $36 billion, had lost nearly a third of its value. There would be budget cuts. The university instituted a faculty hiring freeze and halted construction on the new campus, leaving a hole in the Boston landscape. The nation’s wealthiest and most prestigious university had been laid low, its signature efforts to lead the nation in biological research were in embarrassing disarray, and a three-decade-long expansion initiative had stalled.
The proposed science and art complex in Allston represented the volatile potential of this new direction for growth in higher education. The increasing reliance on philanthropy to compensate for shrinking public support had paid off handsomely in boom times. Harvard and universities across the country could buy more land, conduct more research, enroll more students, and provide more financial aid than ever.5 Residents of Allston, upset by the halt to construction, felt the promise had been empty. Harvard had bought their property, forced their businesses out of the neighborhood, promised them jobs and entry into the tech economy, razed their community, and then parked bulldozers and stacked leftover materials on a nearly vacant site. A casual observer might have thought that the federal government had authorized a new wave of urban renewal: the results looked strikingly similar to slum clearance and redevelopment efforts in Boston a half-century before.
The Harvard case reflects an important moment in a transformation more than a century in the making, as universities of all types became central to American economic growth and key drivers of urban development. They made the creation of knowledge a foundation of economic growth—through education, research, and cultural production. This production of knowledge required