Some community leaders said they believe GW’s incoming president may help repair relations between GW and the Foggy Bottom community.
D.C. Councilmember for Ward 2, Jack Evans, said he has not yet met Knapp but looked forward to working on improving town-gown relations. Ward 2 includes Foggy Bottom, which has been the site of ongoing conflict between some neighborhood activists and the University over development issues.
“I hope that we can start a new beginning here and kind of bring this … Vietnam War to an end,” Evans said. “Clearly there is an opportunity here and I hope it is not squandered.”
Steven Knapp, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Johns Hopkins University, was chosen earlier this month to succeed University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. He assumes the presidency Aug. 1.
Evans said Knapp’s experience with neighborhood relations in Baltimore might have given him an advantage over other candidates for the position. The University has been very successful under Trachtenberg, Evans said, but Knapp has the potential to take the next step in being less development-oriented.
“He used to be the head of the English Department at Stanford … That’s a big deal,” Evans said.
Michael Akin, GW’s director of D.C. and Foggy Bottom/West End Affairs, agreed with Evans’ idea of a new beginning.
“I think having a new leader will absolutely bring a different vision,” he said. “I think what the University’s done – in terms of community relations in the last 5 years – has been pretty remarkable; we’ve made a lot of progress. Having a change at the top, I think, will help people understand how significant some of those changes have been.”
Akin said some of the animosity between neighbors and GW may stem from disliking Trachtenberg’s personality, which has been criticized by some as being obstinate and hard-headed. Knapp and members of the Presidential Search Committee that chose him describe the incoming leader as a “listener.”
Some residents’ aversion to change is probably the main reason behind the rift in Foggy Bottom, Akin said. After hearing Knapp’s acceptance speech in the Jack Morton Auditorium Tuesday, Akin said the president-elect’s ideas were in sync with the University’s issues.
“I don’t know a lot about what he’s done in Baltimore but how he defined community as being local but also District(-wide), that’s a very important definition that I think we can do a lot with,” Akin said.
In the press conference Tuesday, Knapp said he saw a lot of the problems with the community are due to inadequate communication.
“(It is) one of the great challenges, I think, for any university because of the complexity of what we do,” Knapp said. “It’s not always easy to communicate the breadth of what we’re doing in the community and it’s not always easy to explain why we’re building the facilities that we’re building.”
Knapp has worked extensively with the community in Baltimore – an unusual task for a provost, he said – and believed that more advocacy on the part of students and faculty would go far in improving relations. At Johns Hopkins, he helped develop a program to give a free undergraduate education to select students in Baltimore public schools, and he worked on a program in which the university improved public health systems in inner-city areas.
Many of the issues community members have with the University are based on a lack of trust, said Joy Howell, president of the Foggy Bottom Association. The association has opposed the University’s 20-year Campus Plan at Zoning Commission hearings and sued D.C. agencies to stop the development applications. The Campus Plan lays out development for the next 20 years and concentrates density in the center of campus.
Howell said GW’s appetite for real estate in the neighborhood should also be reduced.
“Our hope is that he would be someone who will keep his word to the community and guide GW’s growth in a way that makes GW a good neighbor for the rest of Foggy Bottom,” Howell said.
Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Dorothy Miller, a Foggy Bottom resident and one of GW’s most vocal critics, said she does not see much changing under Knapp.
“Nothing is going to change because Louis Katz is still running the show,” Miller said. Katz is GW’s executive vice president and treasurer and oversees GW’s zoning applications and development.
-David Ceasar contributed to this report.</i
