Civic Engagement On the Rise After Sept. 11

For Ira A. Jackson ’70, the director of the Kennedy School’s Center for Business and Government, Sept. 11 rewrote the book—literally.

Jackson had been writing a book calling for a new level of engagement between businesses and government in public service endeavors.

Then the terrorists struck, and the society he envisioned seemed to come about spontaneously, with every sector of society taking part in the relief effort.

“I have to re-write from the first sentence on,” Jackson says.

Community involvement, ranging from blood drives to benefit concerts, has been surging since Sept. 11. Jackson sees this as a unique opportunity.

He says the last few weeks call to mind the spirit that sustained America during World War II.

“Boys scouts used to go to the gas stations and collect rubber mats from cars to contribute them to the war effort,” he says.

In similar fashion, Americans are uniting now to deal with the security crisis and with the sense of grief many Americans are facing, Jackson says.

The government should promote this civic involvement as much as possible—both domestically and internationally—through funding political and public service reforms, he says.

“We have an opportunity to build a civic society the likes of which we haven’t seen since World War II,” he says.

The Right Man For The Job

For many years, Jackson swam against the political current in a society that believed a government that governs best governs least.

Businesses, Jackson says, often looked at community service as a distraction in the pursuit of profits.

“A funny thing happened to capitalism on its way to riches: it forgot that the democratic institutions that helped to create, nurture and protect a healthy climate for business themselves need to be nurtured and supported,” the beginning of his book read.

Jackson had a chance to put his theories into practice during his 12-year tenure as executive vice president of BankBoston, now Fleet Bank.

While at BankBoston, Jackson moved the company towards greater involvement in the Boston community.

“Ira brought to the bank the point of view that you can do well and do good at the same time,” says Fleet Bank chief executive officer Chad Gifford. “Everyone around him was strongly impacted by his beliefs.”

Gifford says Jackson pioneered Fleet’s First Community Bank, which catered to low-income communities. He also helped BankBoston win the Ron Brown Award—presented at the White House by the vice president—for investment in the inner city.

“He wrote the book on corporate involvement in the community,” says former Mass. Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, for whom Jackson served as a top aide before accepting the position at BankBoston. “He demonstrated to the corporate world that [community service] isn’t just good citizenship, it’s good business,” Dukakis says.

For Jackson, his time at BankBoston validated his vision for business.

“BankBoston proved to me that business can have a heart as well as a head,” he says.

A Different Take

Businesses have felt this heart much more strongly in the past weeks, following the fall of the World Trade Center. And Jackson’s ideas are enjoying increased popularity, although not under the circumstances he would have liked.

“He’s been doing this his entire life,” says Littauer Professor of Public Policy and Administration at the Kennedy School William W. Hogan. “But now the rest of the world suddenly realized he had a point.”

Jackson laments, however, that it took terrorism to give his ideas a boost.

“It shouldn’t take a grotesque event such as this for people to realize and appreciate the importance of a strong public sector and a competent governmment,” he says.

He says he would like to see the government continue to support the flourishing of civic involvement that he claims could usher in a “new era” of engaged democracy.

“Just as President Bush has been so willing to apply power and the levers of public spending, I hope the business community doesn’t fall back on its traditional playbook,” Jackson says.

But Jackson says he is hopeful and enthusiastic about the changing national mood—a change he saw firsthand on a trip to New York two weeks ago.

While getting out of a cab, Jackson lost his cell phone, which slipped from his briefcase.

Soon after, he got a call from a reporter for Fox News, who had found the phone and dialed the last number Jackson had called to find the phone’s owner.

Jackson was pleasantly surprised.

“It was a very un-New Yorker thing to do,” Jackson says. “I think there’s something different going on.”

—Staff writer William M. Rasmussen can be reached at wrasmuss@fas.harvard.edu.