The Joint Center For Urban Studies:

IN NAME, the Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard suggests an academic storehouse of expertise on ghetto problems. But the Center has from its inception been unwilling, or unable, or unsuited--depending on whom you talk to--to "do anything" in Roxbury.

Unwilling--because, members point out, the Center has always been academic in intent, avoiding political or community entanglements. It functions simply to find scholarly research on an individual basis. (The Center, that is, serves an "umbrella function" for armchair urban scholars.)

Unable--because it is hamstrung by its connections with Harvard (less severely with MIT) and by its financial dependence on foundations and government agencies. When it makes occasional forays into active planning, it is forced to work with paying government agencies rather than grass-roots groups. (The Center is a cog in the system.)

Unsuited, in any case: The Center in fact has very little expertise to offer Roxbury and, significantly, Roxbury has not shown any genuine interest in using the Center.

These stock explanations for the Center's non-involvement are all exaggerated but all partly true. The Center's main function is permissive support of basic research. On a limited scale, it also operates on a contract basis to supply technical assistance to public agencies. What it doesn't do is to initiate the kind of innovative social experimentation that radical and semi-radical activsts would like to see implemented in the ghetto.

Why has the Joint Center developed as it has?

When the Center was set up between Harvard and MIT on a Ford Foundation grant in 1959, it was deliberately geared toward academic, scholarly, detached urban research.

The co-founders, Lloyd Rowdin of MIT and Martin Meyerson of Harvard, modeled the Center after traditional research centers in other fields--with the fundamental view that you can do urban research the same way as other research. The analogy stemmed at least partly from a desire to prove "legitimate" a field of research which was not at the time entirely respectable.

The pressure for pure research and for a thoroughly academic faculty was largely Harvard's. Says Stephen Thernstrom, the sole Brandeis member, "There was pressure from Harvard for 'first-class' people, not, say, consultants to the mayor. MIT is more promiscuous. MIT would have liked more autonomy; Harvard, as usual, was much fussier about appointments."

Members of the Center are expected to observe the rules for research generally observed at the two universities--which means they must produce publishable results.

What kind of research has this academic approach yielded? Scattered, of course, and ranging over the whole spectrum or relevance--from a study of Muslim cities in the middle ages to a study of current Boston antipoverty programs.

Ironically, criticism of the Joint Center is aimed not at the barely useful historical studies, but at the most obviously utilitarian ones--the evaluative studies of race, housing, education, and welfare programs. Critics typically complain that although these studies deal with immediate problems, they do so in a descriptive and speculative way; they define issues and propose solutions without giving and concrete and tangible assistance.

In December, Roxbury spokesmen Bryant Rollins and George Morrison launched a broadside against the Joint Center after Harvard and MIT received $6 million from the Ford Foundation for urban research: "Research conducted by armchair theoreticians and uninvolved intellectuals is a pure waste of money and works to maintain the status quo. By [this] time, people throughout Boston--and particularly people in our black community--should be entirely fed up with researchers and social planners and urban developers telling us and our communities what our problems are and what the solutions are."

A FEW PEOPLE at the Joint Center are quite sympathetic to Roxbury exasperation. But they also defend basic research in utilitarian terms. "In a highly unquotable fashion," comments one Center member, "the function of the Center is to undermine bullshit." Joint Center studies supply data of the sort that, when supplied by the government, is highly unreliable and political. Center members are able to evaluate government programs from a more-or-less neutral position. (The most controversial policy study--The Federal Bulldozer, done by Martin Anderson--was a slashing criticism of the urban renewal program.

Perhaps the most critical role of academic urban research is that of contradicting some of the shibboleths--including liberal ones--which guide policy-making. (The Coleman Report, for example--not a Joint Center product but of the same type--has shaken up educators by indicating that a number of factors "obviously" related to classroom performance appear to have no bearing on performance.)

Whether or not these studies are, as research director Leonard Fein puts it, "terribly relevant to action" depends on one's optimism. The poor have been exasperated precisely because they have seen none of the action this research is terribly relevant to.

Less vociferous critics of the Joint Center than Bryant Rollins point out that the academic style of urban research ignores the problems of implementing change. There are, for example, a variety of possibilities for improving academic performance of ghetto children--"black" curricula, integration, compensatory education, community schools, federal regional schools, and so on. The theoretical pros and cons of these proposals have generated a lot of discussion--but the fact remains that no one knows to what extent any of them might be effective, or what their unanticipated consequences would be. Says Peter Labovitz, lecturer in city planning at Harvard and consultant at Arthur D. Little, "We are quickly finding out there's not much to study in theory. We need reality-testing."

Consulant firms and agencies offer a better opportunity to study the dynamics of change, and in this respect are, according to Labovitz, a "better lab for learning than the university." Research planning firms like Arthur D. Little start with a specific client or problem, identify his objectives, and design a project around a specific need.

This approach, however fruitful, is clearly outside the design of the Joint Center. Research firms work with multi-discipline teams toward a designated objective. The Center, in contrast, is an amorphous collection of about 60 independently-working people. As Fein puts it, "One does not expect an aggregate product out of this kind of enterprise." Most members regard the Joint Center in non-organizational, personal, functional terms. Comments one fellow, "It gives me office space, a secretary and a grant"--as well as carpets and refrigerators, a disenchanted outsider notes.

Barring urban catastrophe, the Joint Center will continue to do eminently respectable and ultimately useful research. It will not involve itself in the ghetto. Says Jack Rosenthal, a visiting associate, "If you examine the Joint Center on its own terms, it's really rather good: as a research center for people who have their own things to do. It's taking a perfectly sensible course--but a luxurious one at this point."

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan took over as director of the Center in 1966, trend-predictors expected him to chart a more policy-oriented course than his predecessors, Martin Meyerson and James Q. Wilson. While the basic orientation of the Center has remained armchair--and to all indication will remain so--the Center has begun to do policy-advising ("staff studies") with clients or agencies that request assistance, much as a consulting firm would.

Nevertheless, staff studies are kept within the mold of academic enterprise. Says Rodwin, "When (the Joint Center) takes on a practical assignment it does so because the study has scholarly and practical significance beyond the particular case."

For all of the fanfare, technical assistance remains a peripheral concern; the Center has actually engaged in only two action programs.

The first, initiated in 1961, involved "comprehensive planning" in an undeveloped region in Venezuela. The second -- the Metropolitan Boston Studies program, started in 1965--is the rubric under which technical assistance has been given to various Boston agencies which request it. The most frequently cited (and apparently only significant) study produced has been a study of redistricting to alleviate racial imbalance in Boston schools, done for the Massachusetts Department of Education. On less urgent matters, staff members have consulted with other agencies -- the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and BRA, among others.

THE CENTER'S "active" role has been largely passive -- instrumental rather than innovative. Says Fein, "We're a switching station--in theory, we can plug a person into a problem. As it happens, the problems put on our desk have nothing to do with the ghetto."

Unorganized sectors and low-income organizations are ignored because they do not request assistance and in any case could not pay for it. Unless recruiting of clients is begun, they will continue to be by-passed. Comments Fein, "It's unlikely that we'll initiate a program of our own--that's outside both our tradition and resources. People say, 'Well, the ghetto is different, you have to stimulate requests.' That is no longer true; You have to wait. The ghetto is gaining sophistication."

He adds, however, that the Center is receptive. "Nothing stops Model Cities people or United Front people any more than it stops the Metropolitan Planning Council from coming to us. That is not to say, of course, that all of their requests would be acceded to."

The Center is not quite as flexible as Fein suggests. According to Barr, there are budgetary reasons why the Center prefers to work through well-endowed agencies. "The Joint Center has the kind of framework that adapts well to serving established agencies," he says. "We normally look for a paying client. We can get a lot more mileage on funds that way.

Since the Center lacks "free" funds which would allow it to initiate projects independently, it must work in the areas specified by paying clients. A less explicit pressure is the Center's need to avoid alienating the sources of grant money. The Center cannot "afford" to tamper with, say, black community schools or business organizations.

Both Joint Center administrators and alienated outsiders agree on one thing: The Joint Center is not an effective institution for cooperating with the ghetto.

Both members and non-members point to Urban Planning Aid as the kind of enterprise academic people can engage in outside the auspices of the university. UPA is a firm of consultants founded, as Thernstrom puts it, "on the assumption that one of the reasons poor people get screwed is that they no technical competence." The members (two of them, Chester Hartman and Lisa Peattie, are Joint Center members) volunteer their services to represent the poor to development authorities.

UPA, funded entirely by the American Friends Service Committee, has none of the financial hang-ups the Joint Center has--at any rate it has different ones. Roxbury groups which are unlikely to request assistance from an urban-studies center affiliated with Harvard and MIT are considerably more inclined to go to a private organization.

The eal difference, of course, is one of perspective. UPA exists not for research, but as a service for its clients--low-income organizations which, says executive director James L. Morey, are "typically fighting the agencies the Joint Center is working for." Adds Morey, "We've been called the Cambridge Robin Hoods. I don't think the Joint Center could be called that by any standard."

A private organization like UPA has the added advantage of being able to work relatively quietly. Both Hartman and Fein suggest that relationships between academic "experts" and the community should be formed outside the public eye--"without trying to earn brownie points," says Fein. Technical assistance, says Hartman, "should be given by individuals offering something in subservient roles."

What is needed between Harvard and Roxbury seems to be a normal diversity in the pattern of engagement, an escape from the institutional rigidities of organizational relations.

If the Joint Center is not going to be the catalyst between the university and the ghetto, that does not render the Center useless. Ghetto problems are by far the most urgent concern of urbanists, but obviously not the only ones. The urgency of ghetto problems tends to suggest to people an "obvious" institutional role for the urbanstudies Center in the ghetto--but as the Joint Center stands now, it is singularly and paradoxically unsuited to assisting the community it studies