While a move to Allston might strain ties with the Longwood community, it would allow the school to forge stronger relationships with Cambridge-area schools like KSG, FAS, HBS and GSE.
Professor of Medicine Howard H. Hiatt, a former SPH dean, says moving from Longwood would be a “a very serious blow,” but probably not an irreparable one.
“Public health is a field that involves many, many disciplines, only one of which is medicine,” he says. “I don’t really consider it an open-and-shut case.”
As a result, faculty are largely divided by department in their Allston opinions. The departments more closely related to social sciences tend to favor an Allston move, while departments more aligned with hard science tend to favor remaining in Longwood, the Payette report says.
In light of the school’s many interdisciplinary needs, Hiatt says Allston presented the advantage of proximity to many of Harvard’s schools.
“Where should SPH be?” Hiatt says. “It ought to be right in the middle of a large university.”
In addition to the potential collaborations, Shore noted that the Allston location would enable SPH to woo undergraduates.
“It would be good to have undergraduates know more about public health…and see that as a potential career opportunity,” Shore says.
But Laird worries that given the number of Longwood students SPH classes typically draw, course enrollments will be jeopardized.
“It’s hard for me to believe that enrollments in our classes won’t decline,” Laird says.
Students, like faculty, are split on the issue. The report found that the two non-SPH facilities most utilized by the school’s students are HMS and KSG—one in Longwood, and one in Cambridge.
SPH Student Coordinating Committee Treasurer Caron M. Lee says she favors the move to Allston, although she notes that she studies in a social science department, while many students in clinical departments are more up in arms.
SPH Dean Barry R. Bloom has created two parallel faculty committees to study a potential move. The committees will aim to make a preliminary report to SPH faculty by early next year and to conclude their work before summer, according to SPH Dean for Academic Affairs James H. Ware.
“We are now intensely discussing if we should go forward with this and how we would deal with the negatives if we did,” Ware says. “It’s not a closed discussion—it’s not a settled matter at our faculty, but now there’s an urgency. Time is of the essence.”
As they weigh the possibility of uprooting from Longwood for the greener pastures of Allston, SPH faculty and administrators are careful to approach the issue with an open mind.
“People don’t want to preempt the decision, so everything is left slightly open,” Canning says.
But that may not matter, as many see Summers’ letter as confirmation that for SPH, Allston is a foregone conclusion.
“I think it’s inevitable,” Wyshak says.
—Staff writer Stephen M. Marks can be reached at marks@fas.harvard.edu.