The Crimson on Columbia The Crimson ran an interesting piece yesterday on Columbia's expansion and how it puts pressure on Harvard to do more for the Allston community.

The Columbia plan, approved by the New York City Council last month, offers ammunition to local critics who say that Harvard isn’t doing enough to provide benefits to the Allston community that will be affected by the expansion.

I have no doubt that Columbia is doing more than Harvard in this regard—wouldn't take much, right?—but the reporter, Vidya Viswanathan—any relation to Kaavya?—doesn't really get into why that may be: Columbia doesn't dominate its community as Harvard does. It has much trickier local politics. And it also has the element of race to deal with: It's a largely white university expanding into a largely black area, and it has, in the past, made some terrible town-gown missteps. The residents of that area were smart enough to know this, and so they used the race card to pressure Columbia into making payments and payoffs that were surely substantially larger than Columbia would have paid were that situation not the case.

Don't get me wrong—it might well be the most judicious outcome, especially in the long term. Columbia should invest in this neighborhood. But it wasn't a pretty process.

The possibility of racial conflict doesn't seem to exist in Allston (unless I'm wrong), and Harvard's influence in its town and nearby Allston is much more dominant than Columbia's in Manhattan.

As I say, an interesting piece in the Crimson....
  ¶ 8:43 AM