In the fall of 1979, I got a call from the vice president of George Washington University, informing me that I had just been awarded the opportunity to become the first “Benjamin Banneker Professor for Washington Studies” at the university. This came as a complete surprise. I had never heard of this position, nor did I know that I was being considered for it. This “prestigious honor” was described as having the following benefits and expectations: The university would match my salary. The position would involve my being on campus for the entire spring semester beginning in January 1980 where I would be provided an office, a research assistant, and access to the university library. I would teach one course of my choosing, engage in relevant research, and make one address to the university community.
“Good heavens!” I remarked, “Why me and what is this all about?”
He answered that it was due to Hard Living on Clay Street, a book I had written, which had been published in 1973, six years earlier, and which was about a neighborhood in the Washington metro area and had become a staple of many sociology and cultural anthropology courses at GW.
I was speechless. Then I answered that I was deeply honored but that there was something that they needed to know. It was that I had moved on. I was not a sociology professor nor an expert in such matters nor was I an academic or a researcher. In fact, I had moved on to a very practical field, which was developing affordable housing. Plus, I would need to see if I could get a leave of absence from my job at the National Housing Partnership. He said that the university understood all that; and for a variety of reasons, the decision makers at GW felt that at this time I was the right choice for this position. He gave me 48 hours to decide.
I discussed the opportunity with Embry, and she encouraged me to take it, then checked with my two bosses at NHP about a leave of absence and they approved. The HUD Section 8 Program was in jeopardy anyway, so that made their decision a little easier. I then got back to the vice president and accepted the offer. The GW vice president agreed that I could teach a course in the department that I had requested— in the GW Graduate School of City Planning and that the “original research” I was expected to do could be in affordable housing development, not sociology or anthropology. In January of 1980, I packed up my stuff at NHP and moved to a large office in the GW city planning school.
What to do? I had never taught before at any level and was far from being a real expert in anything except the HUD Section 8 Program, which was starting to be on life support. How would I get by for an entire semester? Well, I thought, I might not be the expert that I was supposed to be, but during my career up to that point, I had worked with a bunch of people who were. So, my plan was to bring in a lot of seasoned realexperts in real estate development for presentations to the class, which ultimately included many of the movers and shakers in the real estate and housing development world in the Washington region. Bob Gladstone, the founder of Gladstone Associates where I got started in my career, came to the class along with his son, and so did a bunch of other experts—a condo conversion guy, a community development guy, a single family housing developer, a multifamily housing developer, a major shopping center developer, and the head of the DC Department of Housing and Community Development. They all seemed to enjoy the experience of give and take with a very impressive bunch of GW graduate students and some very sharp juniors and seniors. I led the sessions on affordable housing, seniors housing, new towns and the fundamentals of real estate finance. I also divided the class into six five-person “development teams,” which had to present development proposals before a “zoning commission” composed of several class members, with other members of the class role playing as NIMBYs and elected officials. I gave an exam at the end of the semester and most students did well. It turned out to be a good class, which got high marks from the students, and was a great experience for me.
But all was not wine and roses. For some reason the head of the GW School of City Planning fought hard to keep the school from putting me in one of their offices and was furious that his department was where I ended up. I did not even know the guy, and was never introduced to him. Yet when I asked if I could join him and several of the planning faculty for one of their weekly lunches, one of the professors told me that the chair of the department had vetoed the idea. “The planning school director said that you would not be able to understand our conversation or fit into the group.” But it remains a mystery as to why he did not like me, especially since we had never even met.
But what really got to me was when the secretary of the director of the planning school came into my office a few weeks later and told me that the director had told her to tell me that by inviting so many students to come to my office, I was disrupting the life of the city planning department. I told her that if he wanted to keep my students out of my office, he should get his candy ass in here and tell me that face to face. He never did and we never actually met the entire semester that I was at GW.
But overall, it was a terrific experience for me. I had a spectacular “research assistant,” who was a planning school student who did a terrific job in helping me in class and was a champion sailboat racer, who gave me a lot of tips about racing Embry’s and my new sailboat, a 16-footer I named “Mother Courage.”
I had to do two other things to fulfill my obligations as the first Banneker Professor at GW. The first was to do original research and try to get that published. I did that and wrote a book called Real Estate Development Syndication, which was about the issues related to financing and developing affordable housing and which was published by Praeger in 1983. Not exactly what they had in mind, but, hey, I had warned them. The second was “my address to the university community,” which I did but which now I believe was a mistake on my part. Even though I had moved on from Hard Living on Clay Street to real estate and housing development, I should have talked about my “Clay Street” experience. Instead, I talked about a zoning battle in Prince Georges County, an error for which I remain apologetic. Afterall, that is why I got the position in the first place and that is what most people who came to the lecture expected.
But what to do next? Should I return to the National Housing Partnership or try something new. That will be the subject of the next post. My decision was life changing.