PROGRAM
A conversation on the unlikely collaboration of the Democratic president and the Republican mayor that helped to revitalize New York during the Depression. Featured author Mason B. Williams in conversation with Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University, with Introductory Remarks by Joseph P. Viteritti, Thomas Hunter Professor of Public Policy, Chair of the Urban Affairs & Planning Department, Hunter College.
Part of the “Changing New York” series.
About the Book:
Two political titans forge a modern city and a vibrant public sector in this history of strong leadership at a time of national crisis.
City of Ambition is a brilliant history of the New Deal and its role in the making of modern New York City. The story of a remarkable collaboration between Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia, this is a case study in creative political leadership in the midst of a devastating depression. Roosevelt and La Guardia were an odd couple: patrician president and immigrant mayor, fireside chat and tabloid cartoon, pragmatic Democrat and reform Republican. But together, as leaders of America’s two largest governments in the depths of the Great Depression, they fashioned a route to recovery for the nation and the master plan for a great city.
Roosevelt and his “Brain Trust” – shrewd, energetic advisors such as Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins – sought to fight the Depression by channeling federal resources through America’s cities and counties. La Guardia had replaced Tammany Hall cronies with policy experts, such as the imperious Robert Moses, who were committed to a strong public sector. The two leaders worked closely together. La Guardia had a direct line of communication with FDR and his staff, often visiting Washington carrying piles of blueprints. Roosevelt relied on the mayor as his link to the nation’s cities and their needs. The combination was potent. La Guardia’s Gotham became a laboratory for New Deal reform. Roosevelt’s New Deal transformed city initiatives into major programs such as the Works Progress Administration, which changed the physical face of the United States. Together they built parks, bridges, and schools; put the unemployed to work; and strengthened the Progressive vision of government as serving the public purpose.
Today everyone knows the FDR Drive as a main route to La Guardia Airport. The intersection of steel and concrete speaks to a pair of dynamic leaders whose collaboration lifted a city and a nation. Here is their story.
SPEAKERS
Mason B. Williams Author: "City of Ambition"
Mason B. Williams is a graduate of Princeton University (AB summa cum laude, 2006) and Columbia University (PhD, 2012), where his dissertation (upon which City of Ambition is based) won the Bancroft Dissertation Prize. He is the Bernard and Irene Schwartz postdoctoral fellow at the New-York Historical Society and the New School. He was born and raised in Clarksburg, West Virginia and now lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the writer Alexis Schaitkin.
Ira Katznelson Columbia University's Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History
Ira Katznelson, Columbia University’s Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, is President of the Social Science Research Council, and Research Associate, Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge University. Previously, he taught at the Departments of Political Science at the University of Chicago (where he was chair) and the New School for Social Research (where he was Dean of the Graduate Faculty). His most recent books are Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (March 2013), Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns (with Andreas Kalyvas), and When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. Professor Katznelson was President of the American Political Science Association for 2005-2006. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is a member of the Roosevelt House Advisory Board.
Joseph P. Viteritti Thomas Hunter Professor of Public Policy and Chair of the Urban Affairs & Planning Department at Hunter College
Joseph P. Viteritti is the Thomas Hunter Professor of Public Policy and Chair of the Urban Affairs & Planning Department at Hunter College. He has also served as Faculty Chair of the Public Policy Program at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. Prior to coming to Hunter in 2004, he had taught at Princeton University, New York University, Harvard University, and the State University of New York at Albany.
Professor Viteritti specializes in education policy, state & local governance, and public law. His most recent of ten books is When Mayors Take Charge: School Governance in the City (ed.) (Brookings Institution Press). His more than 100 articles and essays have appeared in social science journals, law reviews, and popular media, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, and Education Week. He has an extensive record of public service, having served as special assistant to the Chancellor of Schools in New York, senior advisor to the school superintendents in Boston and San Francisco, and as director, member, or advisor to blue ribbon panels examining issues pertaining to education, city charters, police, corrections, public management, and compensation. He is a regular commentator on public affairs in the national and local media.
