A Little Spinach with Your Pop Culture
Meanwhile, back at Harvard, the university "Task Force on Science and Technology" has released a report on the development of the Allston campus. It's too dry for me to sum up, so I'll just quote the Crimson's article today:
" A Harvard task force will recommend today that future Allston development be anchored around two science complexes of 500,000 square feet each, in which faculty from different fields will work collaboratively on several broad areas of interdisciplinary research."
The twelve-page document has a lot of filler, with lines like, "The Task Force found extraordinary variety in the subject, scale, and organization of research being conducted at the University." (Shocked, shocked.)
But between the lines, the implications of this report for Harvard are fascinating and profound. First, the projects it advocates will require staggering sums of money—in the billions of dollars, surely. Brace yourselves, Harvard alums—you know what's coming. But it will be interesting to see if the university develops new fundraising methods, and particularly closer partnerships with the private sector, to pay for all this.
Second, and perhaps most important, if anything like these proposals get built, the identity of Harvard will change fundamentally; it really will look a lot like MIT. From all I can tell, the Allston development includes no new growth for the humanities. So consider all the science that would be conducted on both sides of the Charles, and you can see that the identity of Harvard would become primarily that of a science and technology-oriented research university.
With particular emphasis, I should add, on the word university. This massive science complex would primarily engage graduate students, post-docs, and scientists. The importance of Harvard College—the sense that it is the university's crown jewel—would surely diminish.
The plot thickens, doesn't it?
