City Year Founders Put Harvard to Good Use

Michael H. Brown '83-'84 jokes that he and Alan A. Khazei '83 were roommates from the morning they moved into Grays Hall until the day of Brown's wedding.

But when they were separated for the first time in years, the two didn't have to go far to see each other during the day--just down the hall at their executive offices at City Year, the national public service program they founded together in 1988.

Since its founding, Brown and Khazei's youth service corps has grown from a summer pilot program of fewer than 100 volunteers to almost 1,000 volunteers at 10 sites across the country. City Year has attracted more than $40 million in private funding since 1988.

The teams of red-jacketed young people, who spend a year doing anything from constructing playgrounds to aiding the elderly, have served as the model for the Clinton administration's AmeriCorps public service program.

That success, in part, is due to Harvard. Its resources not only inspired Brown and Khazei to devote their lives to City Year, but the University's alumni network has helped the service organization thrive.

Indeed it was during the roommates' late-night discussions about General Education 105, "The Literature of Social Reflection," that helped Brown and Khazei discover their shared passion for equality and public service.

With those leanings in the back of his head, Brown says he was so moved by a speech given by then-Harvard President Derek C. Bok that he delayed his junior year in Cambridge to spend a year working for U.S. Representative Leon Panetta (D-Calif.) on Capitol Hill.

He says he found his calling while working on legislation to study the prospects of a national public service program. Trading ideas and hopes with Khazei--who was still in Cambridge--every night by phone, Brown says it was during that year that he came to understand the power of service to "focus and mature you."

"You really appreciate the opportunity to study full-time when you take time off," Brown says.

Once back at Harvard, Brown says he and Khazei began to pursue the idea of a national service program with more vigor. They began meeting weekly with a professor at the Kennedy School of Government, who would go on to serve as mentor for many years.

Although Brown says the College's liberal arts setting allowed the two roommates to "dream big things," it was not until arriving at Harvard Law School (HLS) that he found the theoretical basis for the plans they had been pondering.

Brown says working with HLS faculty members, such as University Professor Frank I. Michaelman, introduced him and Khazei to the idea of civic republicanism, a theory about creating civic virtue among all people, not just the elite.

"It gave us the entire intellectual framework for national service," Brown says. "It's an intellectual framework I couldn't have given you before I started HLS, even though I may have felt it."

But even after they had mastered the theory, Brown says the prospect of launching an actual service program seemed anything but easy.

Daunted by the task of raising $200,000 for the pilot program alone, the two enlisted help from a number of Harvard's most influential faculty. Among that group, Brown says they worked closely with then-Radcliffe President Matina S. Horner, who served on President Jimmy Carter's Task Force on Public Service and would go on to chair the City Year board of trustees. In addition, they sought out the help of Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, an expert in organizational change.

City Year's first check--for $25,000--soon came from Ira A. Jackson '70, then-senior vice president of Bank of Boston.

The two would go on to raise the full $200,000 and soon $1 million to continue the program, thanks in part to Harvard credentials, Brown says.

"[The Harvard name] did provide some level of legitimation for taking the risk the institutions were taking," he says. "Nothing ever felt easy, but looking back on it, we were 25- or 26- year-olds looking to raise $200,000 for a pilot."

Brown believes that what most attracted donors like Jackson was that, at the height of Eighties materialism, he and Khazei were Harvard alums who were putting their pedigree to work for an idealistic project.

Still, constantly being known as "those two guys from Harvard" has also been a challenge for the co-founders to surmount, Brown says.

"What the Harvard name can do is provide a bit of prejudice in one way or the other," he says. " 'They come from a privileged institution and a privileged background' is the assumption. You have to build a level of trust over time."

But if City Year's current status is any measure of the level of trust built in the past 11 years, Khazei, now in Bosnia, and Brown have been tremendously successful.

The organization recently expanded its program to the Seattle area, its 10th service site and boasts a laundry list of corporate and private sponsors-all started from the convergence of rooming forms on a Harvard dean's desk.

"I think City Year is this 18-year conversation that Alan and I have been having that started in Grays Hall," he says. "Harvard has just had a tremendous influence."