But since any University moves in Allston are many years off, a build-up of biotech around Harvard’s land will take time.

“Our project is a couple of years ahead of its time—that’s its blessing, but it’s also its curse,” Doherty says.

The Valley of Doubt

So add Larry Summers, shake, stir, let sit five to ten years and voila, right? Unfortunately the chemistry is not quite so straightforward.

When Hyman describes them, new collaborations sound distinctly within reach. But past history provides a mixed record, and the current reality is not so encouraging.

Themes of interdisciplinary collaboration were a hallmark of Rudenstine’s administration. But success came only in the form of isolated programs. Summers used his institutional pulpit to argue for a change in Harvard’s sometimes balkanized culture.

It’s not clear what can be done, however. Summers may find it hard to prod on collaborations between departments, let alone schools.

“I don’t know that [collaborations] can be institutionalized,” Tarr Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Markus Meister says. “People find people, that’s how collaborations come about,” he says, adding that he sees no institutional barrier that needs to be broken.

The traditional autonomy of the schools will also make for difficulties, especially with regard to planning for Allston.

Cabot Professor of Biology Richard M. Losick writes in an e-mail that he is supportive of Summers’ goal of fostering greater collaboration “but would much prefer that [it] be done in Cambridge than in Allston.”

Losick also mentions a common objection—a move to Allston would separate undergraduates from the science Faculty.

“It would be unfortunate if our research facilities were partly centered at a location removed from where undergraduate education takes place,” Losick says.

Administrators echo the concern that undergraduates must not be left behind, but argue that regardless of whether it is FAS science departments or the Law School that relocates to Allston, the two campuses must be well connected.

At the same time, others say that a move might be acceptable, but only if all of FAS natural science moved together.

“If you’re going to move the sciences, you’re going to have to move all of it,” Meister says. “Otherwise you lose the attractiveness for Faculty members of coming to Harvard.”