Elizabeth Greenspan, Harvard University

The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site has been mired in countless controversies, and nearly all of them can be traced back to a central tension: competing senses of public versus private ownership of the land. This talk will explore how decision-makers negotiated this tension in the first years at Ground Zero, often through manipulations of architecture and space.

Based on her book, Battle for Ground Zero: Inside the Political Struggle to Rebuild the World Trade Center (Palgrave Macmillian 2013).

Elizabeth Greenspan has a Ph.D. in Anthropology and a Graduate Certificate in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.  She currently teaches at Harvard University and writes regularly about Ground Zero for The Atlantic online.  Her writing has also appeared in The Washinton Post and The Harvard Review, among other publications and she has worked for the Associated Press Rome Bureau and National Journal magazine.  She has lectured about Ground Zero and 9/11 at numerous collegs and universities, including Harvard, Brandeis College, Penn, Haverford, Temple University and SUNY-Albany.