Looking back, McCready says he believes most Cantabrigians are ready to talk fairly with the University. But to his dismay, he says, a vocal anti-Harvard minority dominates town-gown discussions.
“I was not prepared to deal with those people who feel that if Harvard’s in any way associated with it, it’s bad,” McCready says.
He left the job at Harvard with the Riverside issue unresolved.
Grogan, McCready’s boss at Harvard, also took considerable heat from Cambridge community members for the Riverside issue as well as other Harvard projects in the city.
And he says he left feeling a similar surprise and disappointment that some people were so dead set against all that pertained to Harvard.
Grogan says public knowledge of the size of Harvard’s endowment handicapped his ability to promote the University’s interests.
Harvard is “just a bank account” to many people, Grogan says. “From a public relations perspective, the size of the endowment is a problem.”
Grogan also came down strongly at the time of his departure against the Cambridge City Council, which he said made no pretense of representing the greater Cambridge community.
“If you confined your research to [the City Council], you would conclude that Harvard was a kind of plague that descended on the city that caused all sorts of awful things to go on,” Grogan told The Crimson last spring.
On Tuesday, voters reelected seven out of the nine councillors who Grogan worked with last year.
Stone plans to meet with many of the same councillors in the near future. He says he is prepared for discussions on past Harvard missteps.
“Part of community relations is acknowledging strong feelings and mindsets,” he says.
Given Stone’s experience at Columbia, McCready forecasts that Stone will be able to weather community relations in Cambridge.
“He has really thick skin and I think that’s important,” McCready says. “There are some really tough issues out there, and with those issues it will probably get worse before it gets better.”
—David H. Gellis contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Andrew S. Holbrook can be reached at holbr@fas.harvard.edu.