Separation Anxiety

In the calculus of the professional school model versus the science model, FAS officials and even some University administrators say moving all of science is virtually infeasible due to the impact it would have on undergraduate classes.

And they say splitting science between Allston and the North Yard is not a good solution, either.

Science professors are particularly concerned about separating research from the teaching facilities.

“There is tremendous resistance to moving to Allston,” says McKay Professor of Applied Physics Efthimios Kaxiras. “The biggest problem would be separating the Chemistry and Physics and Engineering here. Science works in an interdisciplinary way—and if these facilities were housed differently, it would be a tremendous blow to the sciences at Harvard.”

“It would be a big mistake to move parts of science across the river,” he says.

One FAS committee took investigating Allston’s potential meaning for the school into its own hands.

The Faculty Resource Committee, composed of eight professors and four administrators, discussed concerns about moving FAS science to Allston at two of their meetings this semester.

Professors on the Resource Committee have seen several drafts of FAS proposals for Allston land.

“It won’t be solved all at once. We have to figure out what has to be contiguous to what, what the public needs access to,” says History of Science Professor Peter Galison, a member of the committee who calls the Allston problem “a three-dimensional chess game.”

A definitive FAS plan is still a long way down the line, professors say.

“The bottom line is that we’re not that there yet—and that’s how it should be,” says Cohen.

The Resource Committee discussions in Allston serve in part to inform a memo on FAS’s options in Allston that Former Dean of the Faculty Jeremy Knowles and Kirby are working on, Cohen says.

Cohen calls the memo Knowles and Kirby are working on “a talking document.”

“We are in the process on drafting a set of alternative plans for the president to consider for Allston,” Kirby says. “The president needs to have the best information he can have. He should know what are a set of alternative possibilities and what are the implications.”