She likes the feel of this neighborhood, of the quirky store fronts that line Mass. Ave. They’re low to the ground and allow people to mingle.

For nearly 20 years, she has been fighting to preserve the flavor of the quiet place she calls home—a place with tree-lined streets and old-fashioned houses.

A member of the Agassiz Neighborhood Council (ANC), Goldberg is a very well-spoken woman. She speaks with all the precision and diplomacy of her profession (she’s a school psychologist).

Her experience and her skillful diplomacy make Goldberg easy to work with, says Agassiz resident Dave Wood.

“She brings a very unique perspective,” he says. “She has a very good way of putting things very emphatically, very directly, just sort of a very pleasant.”

Wood works with Goldberg in a neighborhood advocacy group. Agassiz is a well-organized community, with its own monthly newsletter and an up-to-date webpage.

Residents know what they want but, by comparison with other Cambridge advocacy, the effort in Agassiz is an understated one.

At the website, residents can sound off on a discussion board about Harvard—so long as they don’t use swear words. The board’s moderator recently removed one post with foul language.

Goldberg and other ANC members meet monthly to talk about community issues in the basement of their neighborhood school. Their meetings nearly always end by 9 p.m.

The slow-and-steady Agassiz approach has proved itself in past battles with Harvard. Goldberg recalls an effort more than two decades ago to keep the University from tearing down homes in the neighborhood. That struggle came even before she herself became involved in Agassiz activism (at the time, she explains, she had young children).

Community activists in neighborhoods around the city still talk about that victory, when Agassiz forced Harvard to pay for a new community center. And Goldberg said the neighborhood has not let down its guard.

“There was a lot of political lobbying. City councillors are responsive when large groups of citizens are involved,” she says. “We leaflet the neighborhood, we call, we make city councillors aware. It’s a real effort.”

These days Goldberg and her neighbors are upset over Harvard’s proposals to expand science buildings in Agassiz and remove the Peabody Museum and the Museum of Comparative Zoology from their neighborhood. They’ve started a petition drive this spring to keep the museums.

“The idea of turning those beautiful, historic museum buildings into office space—there’s something wrong with that,” Goldberg says. “You have to have some respect for cultural institutions, for the past.”

She balks at Harvard’s need to expand at all. And even though she acknowledges that the University needs more space for sciences, she does not want new laboratories in her neighborhood.