Tag Archives: Harvard

Agassiz, what’s in a Name

21 Jan

Support builds for a ‘Baldwin neighborhood,’ removing racist association of Agassiz name

By Tom Meek
Thursday, January 16, 2020
Cambridge Rindge and Latin School senior Maya Counter, right, leads a discussion Tuesday about changing the name of the Agassiz neighborhood. With her is Ann Charlotte Hogstadius, her mother. (Photo: Tom Meek)

A name change for the Agassiz neighborhood won unanimous approval this week at a community meeting, with the caveat by several voters that more conversation is needed.

The proposal to change the name to the “Baldwin neighborhood” comes from Maya Counter, a resident of the neighborhood and co-president of the Black Student Union at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. But it’s not new – Counter, a senior, came upon the idea her sophomore year while researching a history class project and learning of the “flawed science and racist beliefs” of namesake Louis Agassiz.

It’s also not an idea new to the neighborhood. In 2002, a School Committee vote renamed the Agassiz School on Oxford Street to address the same discomfort; addressing the neighborhood name might have followed, according to people active in neighborhood politics at the time, had not many of the students and parents who pushed for the change felt burned out by the effort.

The neighborhood’s Maria L. Baldwin School was known as the Agassiz School until 2002. (Photo: Marc Levy)

There was little disagreement Tuesday about Agassiz and the context of his legacy. The Swiss-born scientist who lived from 1807 to 1873 was famous for founding Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, but controversial for pushing racially divisive theories as science. He believed in polygenism, the idea that human races are of different origins, and that whites were intellectually superior to other races. He has been discredited for his racism, and his belief in creationism lost out to the evolutionary theories of contemporary Charles Darwin.

His name was taken off the local elementary school in honor of Maria Baldwin, who in 1899 became the first black female school principal in the Northeast – “the most distinguished position achieved by a person of negro descent in the teaching world of America,” W.E.B. Du Bois said in 1917.

It was at the school that the Agassiz Neighborhood Council met Tuesday to give Counter the “constructive conversation” she requested, and a positive reaction by the approximately 30 neighborhood residents and staff in attendance.

Maria Baldwin, circa 1885. (Photo: Library of Congress)

Wider involvement sought

But there were concerns about process after Counter announced she had reached out to Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui and planned to present to the City Council at month’s end.

Many at the ANC meeting expressed a strong desire to be involved in the process and felt that one meeting in a neighborhood of approximately 6,000 residents – with only two dozen in attendance – was not enough. (To prepare for the meeting, Counter posted about the idea on the neighborhood social media site Nextdoor. As at the meeting, there was strong support for a name change, though also some challenges that “you can’t erase the past.”) Some people at the meeting were concerned that Counter was rushing to get the change done before graduation.

Some also floated the notion that perhaps the neighborhood was named after Agassiz’s wife, Elizabeth Cabot, a naturalist and the founder of Radcliffe College, and therefore the name might still be applicable. But correspondence from Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission, stated, “The Agassiz neighborhood was named after the Agassiz School, which is now the Baldwin School.”

No clear-cut process

Renaming a neighborhood lacks a clear-cut process, despite the recent change of Area IV to “The Port.” There too, race played a role, as residents believed the term “Area IV” was a police designation (it was created by the city facilitate analysis of the then upcoming 1940 U.S. Census). The change was made official by a City Council vote in 2015 after several rounds of community solicitation. In that situation too, not everyone felt the process had been inclusive enough, said Lee Farris, a resident of The Port who is active in civic affairs.

The Agassiz change may be simpler. A policy order by city councillor E. Denise Simmons approved unanimously in April asks the city to review the names of streets, schools and public buildings “that may be named in honor of those who have ties to the American slave trade” and work on renaming them “as soon as possible.” Agassiz, while not a slave owner and on record as an abolitionist, could be linked to slavery for espousing the beliefs that enabled it.

“Why keep it?”

There is already some eagerness for a name change among the hosts of the Tuesday meeting.

In 2007 the nonprofit that provides after-school services, runs the Maud Morgan Arts Center, hosts the Agassiz Neighborhood Council meetings and provides other community services, was rebranded the Agassiz Baldwin Community – a half-measure that doesn’t sit well with Counter. “Why keep it?” she said in an interview before the meeting, referring to the “Agassiz” part of the name. “He thought she was biologically inferior. It’s disrespectful to her.”

At the meeting, the nonprofit’s executive director, Maria La Page, agreed that having the name “Agassiz” upfront was a burden for an organization that holds inclusion at its core.

The Agassiz neighborhood is between Harvard and Porter squares and touches on Somerville, defined by Massachusetts Avenue to the west and Kirkland Street to the south.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Art on the Square

27 Oct

Encounter art installations in Harvard Square that, one way or another, talk back to viewers

 

By Tom Meek
Friday, October 26, 2018
David Buckley Borden’s “Warning Warming,” on Harvard’s Science Center Plaza. (Photo: Tom Meek)

Harvard Square is home to two new large art installations, strikingly placed at the Charles Hotel and as a centerpiece at Harvard’s Science Center Plaza: One’s a multilayer interactive experience meant to absorb and regurgitate our urban surroundings; the other is an ominous summation of our ever-changing climate. Both have strong Harvard roots.

In the Science Center Plaza is David Buckley Borden’s “Warning Warming,” a striking, multi-hued A-frame structure, informing us of unhappy environmental prospects. The white, then sunny tint transmutes into a fiery orange-red, representing rising temperatures, while the other side of the segmented 3D exhibit forecasts a concerning map of CO2 levels. Borden is a fellow at the Harvard Forest – a research department and actual forest on Route 2, managed and cultivated by the university – and a self-proclaimed “recovering landscape architect” who says the project is a something of a spinoff from the “Hemlock Hospice” project out at the Harvard Forest, where the titular trees will become “functionally extinct by 2025” due to an invasive, aphid-like insect from Japan. 

“Warning Warning,” like “Hemlock Hospice,” was collaborative. “These are science communications,” he said in conversation, “and I’m like the creative director.” According to Borden, who studied at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, it took a team of about 10 to design and assemble the 25-foot structure. It will remain on the plaza until early December. (“Hemlock Hospice” comes down Nov. 18, and Borden a side project called “Triple Decker Ecology” is on display at the Somerville Museum until Dec. 9.)

Allen Sayegh’s “Pulsus” has been installed at The Charles Hotel. (Photo: Tom Meek)

Over at the Charles Hotel is “Pulsus,” a 30-foot casting extending into the hotel’s lower courtyard by GSD associate professor in practice Allen Sayegh and Invivia Design, where Sayegh is a partner. Invivia and the school’s Responsive Environments and Artifacts Lab, which Sayegh oversees, focus on the intersection of technology, human environmental factors and architecture. 

Most folk who see “Pulsus” wonder if Han Solo might not be frozen in there. Indeed, it is made up of seven “negative and positive” human body imprints and designed to be reflective of human activity by absorbing the cityscape sounds and reverberating them in a “pulsating, communicative” fashion. As Sayegh describes it, the work “gathers data from different sources – real-time police conversations, tweets from around the community, among others – and then translates these into different types of tonal sounds, producing the buzzing that you can hear and feel when you’re close to it.” The installation at Charles Square is currently inert, but a video about the structure shows “Pulsus” in its full interactive glory at its inaugural installation in New York City in 2017, when it cooled and misted (commissioned by the New York City Department of Transportation) and just outside the school’s Gund Hall on Quincy Street. Construction at Gund meant Pulsus had to move. It’s new location is in part because of Sayegh’s relationship with Michael Pagliarini, the chef and owner of Benedetto at The Charles Hotel; Invivia’s office abuts Pagliarini‘s other revered eatery, Giulia. Sayegh said he hoped to have “Pulsus” fully interactive again and plans some type of reintroductory event in the spring. According to The Charles, the installation will remain for the foreseeable future. 

When fully interactive, “Pulsus” should again collect the “anxiety and vibrancy” of the city through publicly available data sources and code written for the project that converts it into harmonious sounds. Some of the information is preserved – you can actually make out police transmissions, Sayegh said.

Reactions to the current installation vary, but mostly reflect awe. “Han, are you in there?” one observer jokes as he knocks on one of the body bubbles. “More like something from ‘Alien,’” his friend adds, “but I really dig it.” One woman first thought the undulating construct might be some form of industrial wrap left over from the Head of the Charles, but was motivated to learn more even though she found placement of the work – at the bottom of the stairs connecting the hotel’s upper and lower courtyards – “odd.” Another observer wondered if it could be a hazard for the elderly who rely on the center railing ending at the structure’s base.

Other recent design projects by Invivia include “Ora” (2016), an enormous, pulsating orb that occupied Harvard Yard and “The Draem”(2015), a Copenhagen installation marking the the Armenian Genocide in Denmark.

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Porter Square Clean Up

9 Sep

Group effort cleans Porter Square Saturday; power washing, window cleaning to come

 

By Tom Meek 
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Cigarette butts are the main haul in a Saturday sweep in Porter Square as part of an organized cleanup. (Photo: Tom Meek)

If the T plaza at Porter Square and the stretch of Massachusetts Avenue north and south of it looks a bit trimmer and neater, thank the Porter Square Neighborhood Association, Porter Square Shopping Center owner Gravestar, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, a smattering of area residents and 15 or so students from Harvard who threw in a part of their Day of Service. The “Porter Square and Mass Ave Clean Up!” organized by the association kicked off Saturday with about 30 volunteers broken into teams to weed, sweep and pick up trash along the corridor over four hours. Gravestar and the city donated tools and trash bags, and coffee and doughnuts were provided for those lending sweat and sinew. (For volunteers, the bane of the cigarette butt far outweighed that of the resilient reed.)

The MBTA and Gravestar have promised power washing and window cleaning follow-ups, association organizer Ruth Ryals said.

Tags: , , , , ,

Watch Dogging the Historic Charm of Harvard Square

12 Jun

Harvard Square isn’t losing Defense Fund, it’s just gaining Neighborhood Association

Longtime thorn in side of developers morphs with new generation

By Tom Meek and Marc Levy
Monday, June 12, 2017
Gladys “Pebble” Gifford, Caroline James, Marilee Meyer and Abra Berkowitz amid work on Harvard Square issues. (Photo: Carole Perrault)

The Harvard Square Defense Fund is back – rebranded.

The citizens group had some powerhouse years after its founding in 1979 by Gladys “Pebble” Gifford – blocking fast food franchises, sending the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum off to Boston and reshaping Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts – but has been dormant for years, even as people griped that the quaint square was losing its charm amid an infestation of banks and chain retailers. Believing the fund dissolved as far back as 2008, when Gifford gave testimony against the coming of The Sinclair nightclub in 2011, she did so as just a neighbor.

“The directors all got elderly or died. We thought we’d officially put it to bed,” Gifford said of her organization.

But when the city announced a $4.6 million plan to revamp the square’s 89-year-old Out of Town News kiosk and surrounding plaza, activists worried the alterations would nullify its classic charm and iconic features.

Members of the group Our Harvard Square, which includes Suzanne Blier, a Harvard architectural historian, and Susan Labandibar, president of Tech Networks of Boston, began calling for the structure – already on the list of the National Register of Historic Places – to be designated as a landmark by the Cambridge Historic Commission in hopes it would further ensure its preservation.  Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , ,

Casting Doubt

21 Mar

Harvard Professor, Documentary Take On Climate Change ‘Merchants Of Doubt’

Fred Singer, a physicist and critic of the climate change consensus among scientists (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics).

The documentary “Merchants of Doubt,” based on the 2010 book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, targets the naysayers of climate change, shining a light on the corporations that employ scientists denying climate change to misdirect and obfuscate in order to protect the bottom line. The book’s authors argue that this practice started with Big Tobacco. When the health risks of smoking became widely documented by the medical and scientific communities, tobacco responded by conducting their own studies, putting scientists in their pocket, conjuring up counter-evidence and most importantly, casting doubt.

“It’s easy to poke holes,” Oreskes, a professor of history of science at Harvard said in an interview. “Real science is hard.” And it seems especially arcane when it comes to the state of our environment’s health. “Global warming and climate change are very complex,” she explains. “There’s a lot of science behind it, so it’s not so easy to explain, and scientists are not the best at explaining. That’s why it’s easy for a ‘merchant of doubt’ to hold up a snowball in Congress.” (Oreskes will take part in a Q&A at the Kendall Square Cinema after the 7:10 p.m. shows Friday and Saturday.)

Naomi Oreskes, author of the book "Merchants of Doubt." (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

The reference to Sen. Jim Inhofe’s now-infamous gimmick of tossing a snowball at his fellow lawmakers to “prove” that global warming’s a myth is one of the many face-palming gems in “Merchants of Doubt.” The documentary is directed by Richard Kenner, best known for turning a few people vegan with“Food, Inc,” the raw and edgy examination of the mass livestock and meatpacking industries, which was Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary in 2010. Oreskes and Conway’s book singles out the squad of well-paid scientist and academics, referred to contemptuously as the “gang of four,” who have been doing the bidding of big business since the cigarette lobby of the 1960s. The movie focuses in on one of the four, the aging physicist Fred Singer, as well as on the Koch brothers and Marc Morano, a mouthpiece for conservative interests, who, while lacking discernible academic cred (his CV lists ties to Rush Limbaugh and Inhofe), compels with the kind of winning charisma and unshakable confidence that would make Ronald Reagan smile.

Kenner’s environmental illumination isn’t quite as biting or tightly tied as “Food, Inc,” and while, comparisons to “An Inconvenient Truth,” 2007’s Oscar winner,  and “The 11th Hour” are inevitable, “Merchants of Doubt” walks its own path and confidently so. It’s less about trying to convince us that global warming is happening, more about showing that there are people out there trying to actively deny it for monetary gain. Kenner punctures the decade-spanning narrative with interludes of a wry magician (Jamy Ian Swiss who is also in “An Honest Lair” also opening in Boston at the same time) wowing a small crown with deft sleight-of-hand. The cutaways from the “merchants” to the acts of chicanery draw a barbed parallel to the work Morano and Co. do as they spin and deflect for “deep carbonized” special interests.

Marc Morano, a leading climate change skeptic, featured in "Merchants of Doubt" (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

And to Inhofe’s point, Oreskes understands the lazy logic employed there and points to the shifting jet stream as the polar ice caps melt. The pummeling that Boston took this winter and our current all-time snowfall record helps underscore the point. “People finally are starting to get it,” Oreskes says, perking up on the Boston subject, “that it’s not just a singular freak occurrence and that these weather pattern disruptions are the result of climate change and global warming.”

Well before the movie, Oreskes’s work researching scientific consensus on climate change and advocacy had been a touchstone for many, especially those who had embraced the notion of “going green” as something more than just a lifestyle choice. “Scientific debates are settled by evidence, not arguments,” says Quinton Zondervan, president of Green Cambridge and a fan of Oreskes’s book. “At the end of the day,” he poses in a vein akin to Oreskes, “people need to ask themselves a simple question: Am I making the world a better place, or am I contributing to its destruction?”   Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , ,

Cannonball Launches Weapons Scare

24 Mar

Cannonball quiets Harvard quad

Time bomb

By TOM MEEK  |  November 4, 2009

 

It’s been awhile since we had to worry about the multi-colored national danger spectrum, but last week, the northwestern quadrant of Harvard Square was put on high alert. It turned out, though, that the deployment of bomb-squad vehicles, flanked by police cruisers and fire engines, that rolled in and cordoned off a section of Garden Street adjacent to the Harvard Quadrangle had nothing to do with a dirty bomb or even terrorist activity, but rather (appropriate for a school so immersed in ancient history) a Civil War–era cannonball.For me, the ordeal was something of a minor inconvenience, as I happen to live in the building where the relic rested. My downstairs neighbors — an amiable middle-aged married couple — set the commotion in motion: they had kept the cannonball in their apartment for 20 years as an accent piece. They declined to go on record, as they wished to remain off the grid and un-googleable. Ironically, however, it was Google that ignited the situation.

The husband had found the metallic ball “lying around” the turn-of-the-century constructed building when they moved in, and adopted it. Recently, though, a few clicks on the Internet caused the wife to become concerned that the ball might be explosive, so she contacted a Civil War authority, who told her to contact the police, who in turn, because it was military ordnance, called in the Department of Defense Disposal Unit from the naval base in Newport, Rhode Island.

Another neighbor, who also wished to remain anonymous, described the incident as surreal. “I felt like I had just stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone when I walked outside my apartment to find the bomb squad, DOD, and Navy in the middle of what seemed like a special-ops mission to diffuse an antique cannonball that had been used as a doorstop for 20 years.”

Clearly, such a show of strength for an item so benign for so long would hardly have been deemed necessary if the exact same sequence had unfolded before 9/11. But the shroud of secrecy still remaining over the offending materiel hardly seems necessary. I contacted the Cambridge Police to find out where the cannonball had been taken and what conclusions had been drawn from its examination, but at press time, still had not heard back from them.

Tags: , ,