"Whitlock has opened up lines of communication that never existed before," one City politician explains. The improved communications has combined with the University's larger size to yield some distinct benefits for both Harvard and the City's politicians. Explains one old-hand: "Politicians who used to be critical of Harvard and M.I.T. now spend a lot of their time perfecting their relations with the universities personnel directors to get jobs for their constituents." The dividends to Harvard are even greater.
For one, the Harvard Administration feels more secure with the information Whitlock gathers and the friends he has made. In Whitlock they feel they have someone who can mollify the politicians and help smooth over differences; moreover--and just as important--they feel they have an "expert," someone who can offer them more than guess-work about different events in the City.
The existence of Whitlock's job at all says a lot about how the University Administration looks at the City. First, it is a clear indication that in the mid-fifties, when Whitlock took over, there was dissatisfaction with town-gown relations and a desire to pay more attention to the City. That desire still exists and so does the motivation that prompted it.
Harvard officials are not enamoured of Cambridge, nor are they pleased by the daily course of local politics. Most members of the Administration tend to regard the City's politicians as inconveniences--illogical, disorganized obstacles who are to be feared as much for their irrationality as for their deliberate calculations. They see Cambridge as a community without coherence or distinguishing characteristics. They wish there were a greater degree of homogeneity among different elements. Instead, they accept the inevitability of periodic conflict, and see the University, associated as it is with the upper class crust of the City, as a major component of the bipolar alignment that has traditionally characterized Cambridge: "the Brattle Street crowd" versus everybody else.
The roots of the hostility, Harvard officials think, lie in the coincidence of many different, but related conflicts: Yankee-Irish, rich-poor, and educated-uneducated. But Harvard's dislike for this state of affairs has not warped its good sense: the University must survive in this place, and thus the need for someone like Whitlock.
The formula seems to have had its successes. On specific items that it has sought from the City (for example, the closing of two streets, one to allow for the construction of a $2.8 million car underpass and the other to facilitate the constructions of Peabody Terrace), Harvard has been consistently successful. Some times the University has encountered some vocal opposition and delay but when the roll call has come the votes have always been there. This was not always the case. "Back in the thirties," recalls one politician "the University just didn't have the votes."
Police Relations
In other areas, Harvard has also made improvements. For example Dean Robert B. Watson has established a good working relationship with the Cambridge police. As the partial result, the police are consistently excellent in handling student disturbances, which range from springtime "riots" to anti-war protests. In addition, there seems to be a silent concord between Harvard and the police to let the University handle its own disciplinary problems.
Harvard's good fortune, to be sure, is not all a tribute to the present policies. Specific events in the