Last month, Harvard Real Estate, the University's property management arm, bought a condominium from one faculty member so that another professor could buy it days later. In so doing, Harvard breeched its 1975 promise not to purchase real estate outside its own self-imposed boundaries and revealed its unfortunate willingness to sacrifice its credibility with the Cambridge community for small, short lived gains.

The violation, though not large, is more than a technicality. By holding the unit, Harvard prevented any possibility that the home would go on the open market, where the hundreds of Cantabrigians in need of housing would have had a chance at the property. It also allowed the professor to buy the condo at a far lower interest rate than that available to area residents.

Beyond mere morality, however, Harvard has bankable reasons to carefully keep the few promises it makes to this community. Broken pledges can only antagonize Cambridge, which has an untested but potentially powerful arsenal of regulatory weapons.

That two communities as large and overlapping as Cambridge and Harvard should have their differences is unavoidable. That Harvard should increase those tensions unnecessarily simply to hand one faculty member an apartment is shameful.