Originally published in Carroll Capital, the print publication of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. .听
In 1949, Seavey Joyce, SJ, was flying into Logan Airport to begin teaching at Boston College. As he told reporters years later, he looked down on a sparse skyline and asked himself, 鈥淲here is Boston?鈥� It was not a literal question. Joyce, a son of the city, was asking where Boston stood among the great metropolises of America and the world. The answer was: Nowhere.
An early Citizen Seminar at Boston College in the 1950s brings together political and business leaders鈥攇roups once deeply divided鈥攊n conversations that helped revive the City of Boston.
Boston was floundering as middle-class residents flocked to the suburbs and property values shrank along with the tax base. Shortly after Joyce鈥檚 flight into Nowheresville, a relative political unknown named John B. Hynes emerged victorious in Boston鈥檚 1949 mayoral election. He wanted to change the city鈥檚 reputation as an antibusiness backwater, and within a few years he sought out the counsel of Joyce, a Harvard-trained economist who had become dean of the Carroll School of Management.
In 1954, the mayor and the Jesuit helped launch the Citizen Seminars, a series of high-level gatherings widely credited with planting the seeds of 鈥渢he New Boston,鈥� a modern, thriving city.
Hosted on campus by the Carroll School (then known as the School of Management), the seminars offered a neutral ground for public conversations about Boston鈥檚 predicament. Remarkably, the dialogue partners included what the late Boston College University Historian Thomas O鈥機onnor called 鈥渢he two most hostile elements in Boston politics鈥濃�擨rish Catholic politicians and Protestant Brahmin business leaders. Hundreds of leaders from all sectors participated in multiple sessions each year, tracing through a maze of challenges, from transportation and energy to infrastructure and private-public cooperation.
There was socializing over drinks and meals, with ample servings of humor that leavened the weighty policy discussions. Typical was a 1958 conference wonkily titled 鈥淭he Role of Aviation and Airports in the Future Development of Greater Boston,鈥� the proceedings of which are stored in the Burns Library archives.
Speaking to the gathering, then鈥揢S Senator John F. Kennedy disarmingly noted that he knew next to nothing about aviation other than having spent countless hours on planes, such that 鈥渕y political opponents can justifiably accuse me of being a senator who is always up in the air, or with his head in the clouds.鈥� What the near-future president said he knew was that Boston would not prosper without 鈥渞adically different airports,鈥� unlike Logan with its runways designed for propeller planes.
In his remarks, Joyce told of riding Boston鈥檚 trains and passing cattle cars, at which times 鈥淚 have felt some stirring of sympathy for the poor beasts.鈥� But then he considered the chronic delays, poorly ventilated train cars, and other unpleasantries suffered by human riders. 鈥淎t such times, I have felt the sympathy lavished upon the cattle was quite misspent,鈥� he said, undoubtedly to laughter. His bottom line: 鈥淲e need a comprehensive plan for transportation.鈥�
Through the Citizen Seminars, Boston got that and much more. From those meetings came ideas and a consensus for change that led to such Boston landmarks as the Prudential Center, the World Trade Center, and the Hynes Convention Center, together with critical coordinating agencies like the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
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Citizen Seminar at Boston College, March 9, 1966.
This 鈥淣ew Boston鈥� was not an unmixed blessing. In the name of 鈥渦rban renewal,鈥� the city bulldozed stable, blue-collar, ethnically diverse neighborhoods such as the West End, making way for an elevated highway through downtown and other development projects. Though widely regretted today, such measures arose from a sincere belief that 鈥渁 major shock to the system seemed necessary to wake the city from its lethargy,鈥� James Aloisi, a former Massachusetts secretary of transportation, explained in CommonWealth magazine in 2013.
The Citizen Seminars, with John T. Galvin 鈥�37 at the helm, continued to 鈥渋nfluence the course of Boston鈥檚 history,鈥� O鈥機onnor wrote in The Heights in 1988. The latter-day seminars, presented by the Boston College Chief Executives Club, highlighted topics such as school reform and the need for vibrant city parks before fading out in the early 2010s.
For his part, Joyce went on to become Boston College鈥檚 president from 1968 to 1972, steering the University through a tempestuous era of student uprisings. When he died in 1988, his successor as president, J. Donald Monan, SJ, paid tribute to Joyce as one who 鈥渢urned the face of Boston College outward to the civic community and, through his endeavors, enriched both.鈥�
