After a stealthy, 20-year effort to acquire land, Harvard University has gone public with plans to expand from Cambridge, Massachusetts, into a 200-acre site across the river in Allston. The new campus will feature a science hub, according to a letter released last week by Harvard President Larry Summers.
A lack of space for science is the main driver behind the move, Summers wrote. "We need to invest not only in the more traditional approaches to science led by single investigators," he wrote, but in "more integrative approaches" that require more complex facilities. The Allston campus will likely be home to the graduate schools of education and public health, as well as one or two undergraduate houses.
During a presentation to the faculty, Summers took sharp questions from physicist Daniel Fisher, among others, who suggested that new spending on bricks and mortar might shortchange the single- investigator work that is Harvard's hallmark. To hash out such concerns, Summers is assembling a large body of advisers, including a science and technology task force led by Provost Steven Hyman.
