Word: mits
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...NAME, the Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard suggests an academic storehouse of expertise on ghetto problems. But the Center has from its inception been unwilling, or unable, or unsuited--depending on whom you talk to--to "do anything" in Roxbury...
Unable--because it is hamstrung by its connections with Harvard (less severely with MIT) and by its financial dependence on foundations and government agencies. When it makes occasional forays into active planning, it is forced to work with paying government agencies rather than grass-roots groups. (The Center is a cog in the system...
When the Center was set up between Harvard and MIT on a Ford Foundation grant in 1959, it was deliberately geared toward academic, scholarly, detached urban research...
...founders, Lloyd Rowdin of MIT and Martin Meyerson of Harvard, modeled the Center after traditional research centers in other fields--with the fundamental view that you can do urban research the same way as other research. The analogy stemmed at least partly from a desire to prove "legitimate" a field of research which was not at the time entirely respectable...
...pressure for pure research and for a thoroughly academic faculty was largely Harvard's. Says Stephen Thernstrom, the sole Brandeis member, "There was pressure from Harvard for 'first-class' people, not, say, consultants to the mayor. MIT is more promiscuous. MIT would have liked more autonomy; Harvard, as usual, was much fussier about appointments...