Joint Center Leans Towards Activism

When the Joint Center for Urban Studies was established in 1959, Harvard and M.I.T. expected it to concentrate on "armchair observation" of urban policy and problems. In recent years, however, there has been a growing recognition of the need to take a more active role in the city.

No one regrets the change, but all admit that greater involvement will inevitably drag the Center into the unscholarly world of political pressure, personal sensivities, and bureaucratic inertia.

This year may be a critical one for the future of the Center. The arrival of Daniel Patrick Moynihan as the new director of the Center coincided with a new, long-term grant from the Ford Foundation. A year ago, the was some doubt that Ford would continue its support, and James Q. Wilson, then the Director, was forced to reduce the Center's activities in anticipation of a possible financial squeeze. Now that Ford has agreed to maintain its annual contribution of $200,000 for the next seven years, the Center is engaged in rebuilding its programs. The allocation of these funds will influence its course over the next decade.

The Joint Center brings together scholars from fields as diverse as city planning, history, economics, law, engineering, anthropology, government, and public health. Supporting a small full-time staff, the Center provides fellowships for half a dozen graduate students, and contributes to the salaries of more than twenty Harvard and M.I.T. faculty members.

The inter-disciplinary character of the Joint Center was originally regarded as one of its chief attractions. The PR brochure declares that, "If inter-dependent people create inter-linked problems, inter-disciplinary scholarship may be a prerequisite for effective action." Members of the Center are inclined to smile at such language. Most regard the institution as a kind of "academic holding company," designed to attract contributions and contracts that would not ordinarily be offered to individual researchers of university departments.

Except for the popular weekly staff luncheon, few of the Center's members have much contact with their colleagues from other disciplines. To Chester W. Hartman, assistant professor of City Planning, the main advantage in having half his salary paid by the Joint Center is that it reduces his obligation to the City Planning Department, which requires too much teaching to suit his tastes.

The Work

The primary work of the Joint Center is a broad series of studies in urban history and problems--ranging from a study of Moslem cities in the Middle Ages to a recent symposium on "Public Library Functions in a Changing Metropolis." While these studies are generally of a non-controversial nature, a few of them turn out not to be. The Federal Bulldozer, Martin Anderson's vehement critique of the urban renewal program, outraged bureaucrats all over the nation, Many of those affiliated with the Center admit privately that they "got a little burned on that one" and suggest that more careful editing might have avoided the heat. But Moynihan stands firmly behind the book: "Anderson's heresy," he argues, "has become today's orthodoxy." It is probably no coincidence, however, that after the Bulldozer controversy, the Center's publications began to announce that "The findings and conclusions of this book are, as with all Joint Center publications, solely the responsibility of the contributor."

The same remainder will, almost certainly, be on a book by Stephen A. Thernstrom, assistant professor of History, who made a study of the planning which led up to Action for Boston Community Development--Boston's anti-Poverty agency--if the manuscript is published at all. Thernstrom's critical analysis has already provoked matters of anger from local politicians and officials, and the author frankly admits that the publication would probably "set off a minor furor." The issue is particularly sensitive because the Ford Foundation both helps the Joint Center and is also involved with ABCD. Moynihan insists, however, that both his and Harvard University Press's hesitation in publishing the manuscript is due not to fear of hostile reaction, but rather doubts that a work of such limited scope is appropriate for publication in book form.

The most sensitive sphere of activity for the Joint Center is the Metropolitan Boston area. Initially, there was considerable resistance from within the Joint Center and from the university administrators to the notion that the Center had a responsibility to assist the cities of Cambridge and Boston. Fears were expressed that the universities would become entangled in local politics and that town-gown conflicts would be exacerbated. Others predicted that scholars would bog down while trying to fight their way through the bewildering maze of political and bureaucratic jurisdictions that govern the metropolitan area. By now, however, most of the doubts have been resolved, and the Center plunges into issues as controversial as the effort to eliminate racial imbalance.

Richard Bolan, assistant to the director of the Center, gives credit to the students and the junior faculty for pushing their elders in the direction of greater local involvement. Other members of the Center observe that pressure from the Ford Foundation might have been a more important influence.

Although the Center now appears committed to a course of steadily increasing local activity, not all the earlier fears have proven unfounded. Political pressures do sometimes interfere; in 1965 the Center contracted with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, a state agency to prepare a comprehensive "plan for planning" that would outline the issues facing the Boston area and suggest strategies for dealing with them. When the Joint Center's research team offered a report on public finance to the Council's Economic Development Advisory Committee, they were firmly instructed to "stay away" from the issue. The chairman of the committee turned out to be a leading Republican legislator at that time involved in the battle over the state sales tax.

Bureaucratic inertia and sensitivity to criticism have so far been more troublesome than political entanglements. The Center has contracted to evaluate several urban programs run by government agencies and non-profit groups. To their chagrin, the Center's researchers are finding, as one put it, that "while academics may thrive on criticism, bureaucrats don't." When one of the Center's reports criticized a Roxbury agency for not reaching the low-income population that it was supposed to serve, the agency and the Federal officials who were financing it immediately denounced the Joint Center.

Center members are prepared for such attacks. "We've always felt," Lloyd Rodwin, Faculty Chairman, said, "that a lively controversy on the right issue is a good thing." But Moynihan points out that not all controversy revolves around the right issues.

Quoting Hannah Arendt, he charges that the bureaucrats tend to "dissolve every statement of fact into a declaration of purpose." "You tell them that poor people aren't getting any of their housing," he says, and their tell you that you are against housing for the poor." In spite of these difficulties, Moynihan and most of his staff believe that evaluation or urban programs is a useful activity for the Joint Center to undertake. Moynihan claims that the Center now tries to make sure, before signing any contracts, that their clients sincerely desire objective criticism. With these safeguards, Moynihan looks forward to expanding the Center's activities in the field of evaluation.

More Active

Moynihan also would like to see the Center involved in more activist programs. Traditionally, Harvard has shied away from this kind of project and has stressed basic research. At M.I.T., he says, "they think that basic research is what you do when' you don't know what you're doing"--they have always been more favorably disposed toward action-oriented programs.

The original Memorandum of Agreement between Harvard and M.I.T. stated that, "The principal responsibility of the Joint Center will be in basic research. An essential, but secondary, objective is to build a bridge between fundamental research and policy application at national and international as well as local levels." Moynihan, however, seems prepared to shift the emphasis and bring the Center closer to the M.I.T. philosophy.

Greater activism by the Joint Center is not only needed but also wanted in the community, Moynihan continued. Boston and Cambridge officials do not always seem eager for such assistance. When a non-profit group of academic planners who call themselves Urban Planning Aid (UPA) recently helped a Roxbury neighborhood facing renewal to win concessions from the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the BRA's director, Edward J. Logue, denounced UPA as a group of "tinker toy boys" using the renewal program as "an academic exercise." UPA, as it happens, includes two members of the Joint Center and has its offices at the same address as the annex of the Center. There is also talk of a more formal affiliation between the two groups. Moynihan insists that he has an excellent working relationship with Logue, but one may wonder how long this would last if the Center went in for more UPA-style activism.

Cambridge officials are ambivalent about the new emphasis that the Joint Center is apparently preparing to adopt. On the other hand, they recognize that the Center could help them cope with Cambridge's problems, and they resent what they consider the Center's neglect of Cambridge. "Most of those professors know their way around Washington better than they do around Cambridge," a Cambridge official declared recently. "You could plop them down four blocks from Central Square and they'd never find their way home."

Yet these same officials reject the idea that the Center should have any velopment programs. Rather, they regard the Center's planners as "brain-stormers" who should be on call to large practical role in the city's de-assist the city's own experts. Any attempt by the Joint Center to take a more active role would meet strong resistance.

At M.I.T., Moynihan says, "they think that basic research is what you do when you don't know what you're doing" - they have always been more favorably disposed toward action-oriented programs ... Greater activism by the Joint Center is not only needed but also wanted in the community.

The Center would also face financial problems in moving toward a more activist policy. At present, the Ford unrestricted grant, amounts to about a third of the Center's total budget. The other two-thirds comes from Foundation money, the Center's only grants and contracts that commit the Center to particular activities. Moynihan would like to reverse this ratio, in order to give the Center more flexibility and independence. But until he is able to attract more "unrestricted funds," he will have to go slow in changing the direction of Joint Center activity.

Moynihan has no illusions about the power of the Joint Center, even if it were greatly expanded. "What we need," he says, "is to make the bankers and lawyers and engineers and businessmen who build our cities more sensitive to the social and aesthetic consequences of what they are doing." Walking down the new three-foot-wide sidewalk on the west side of Palmer Street, he demonstrates his point by pretending to collide with the No Parking sign planted squarely in the middle of the walk and then by trying to slip between the building and a truck parked in the street. "As long as you have people who can spend thousands of dollars to build a sidewalk like this," he declared, "all the experts and all the activists in the world won't make the city amore pleasant place to live.