Revived vision?

Plans for a UT-Houston data science center should be reconsidered now.

Houston made a mistake. The chancellor of the University of Texas System may have made mistakes, as well, but it’s up to this city to launch an effort to recover from its own shortsightedness.

We’re referring, of course, to plans the UT System had for its 300-plus acres near the Texas Medical Center, plans now scuttled after UT Chancellor William McRaven was forced to surrender a few weeks ago to petty politics and parochial concerns exhibited by lawmakers, UT regents and University of Houston officials. Houston-area lawmakers with UH connections were high-fiving each other when McRaven walked away, but a just-released report from an advisory group of Houston civic and business leaders underscores what we’ve lost.

Co-chaired by Carin Marcy Barth and Paul Hobby, the 18-member Houston Task Force envisoned not a full-fledged campus offering undergraduate instruction but a collaborative institute for data science. As the report lays out, the Houston institution would have been a research and academic consortium of public and private partners from academic institutions, national laboratories and industry. The institute might have resembled Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study or the National Humanities Center in North Carolina or Cornell University’s forthcoming New York City campus that will offer data and business programs.

The focus of the institute would have been the role of so-called Big Data in three areas that reflect this city’s strength — energy, health care and education systems. The advisory group’s report included an endorsement from Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. “Big Data is the oil wealth of the 21st Century,” he said. “Texas needs to invest in Big Data, and I am excited that the University of Texas System is leading the way. I can think of no better place to start this initiative than Houston.”

Other Houstonians thought otherwise, to this community’s detriment. Tilman Fertitta, chairman of the UH System Board of Regents, said the university’s leaders, supporters and elected officials mounted a group effort to “stand our ground against an unnecessary duplication of resources that didn’t align with the state’s plan for higher education.”

In this case, the star of CNBC’s “Billion Dollar Buyer” came a cropper on a billion-dollar idea for Houston. So did UH Chancellor and President Renu Khator, who should have followed the example set by her counterpart at Rice University. President David Leebron saw the UT proposal not as a threat but as an opportunity for collaboration.

Houston’s legislative delegation was just as short-sighted. State Sen. John Whitmire and state Rep. Carol Alvarado, both Houston Democrats and UH alumni, worked hard to fend off what they considered a UT intrusion. So did state Sens. Sylvia Garcia and Borris Miles, also Houston Democrats. When it comes to Gov. Greg Abbott, who made the appointment of three new UT regents conditional on their opposition to the UT-Houston plan, petty politics may have been at play. Perhaps McRaven, the man who directed the successful raid to kill Osama bin Laden, didn’t pay due deference to the governor. Or perhaps Abbott sees the charismatic former admiral as a potential political rival.

McRaven could have handled his ambitious project more deftly. Speaking to Rice MBA students a few weeks before the UT-Houston effort crashed, he laid out leadership lessons from his 37 years in the military. As reported by the Houston Business Journal, those lessons included keeping stakeholders informed. “As a leader you have to communicate at all times,” he said. The chancellor didn’t do that.

Can the plan be revived? We believe the effort should be made. So does David Wolff, chairman and president of Wolff Companies and former Metro chairman. He points out that the nation’s fourthlargest city can accommodate any number of higher-education ventures and that a greater UT presence in Houston would diversify the city’s economy and boost its reputation as a laboratory of new ideas and innovative thinking.

So who will take the lead? The Greater Houston Partnership? UT alumni? The mayor’s office? Philanthropic groups and individuals? We need farsighted men and women with ambitious ideas about this city’s future, a future that includes a greater UT presence. The eyes of Texas have been averted, for now. We need a robust effort to re-direct them to the Bayou City.