Phil Thompson, MIT Prof And Ex-NYCHA Manager, Named Deputy Mayor

NEW YORK CITY HALL — Phil Thompson, an urban planning scholar who worked under former Mayor David Dinkins, will return to City Hall next month as deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday. Thompson will start in March as the replacement for outgoing Deputy Mayor Richard Buery, who oversaw de Blasio's universal pre-kindergarten education intiative.

A Philadelphia native, Thompson led Dinkins' Office of Housing Coordination and was a deputy general manager for the New York City Housing Authority before joining the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002.

Thompson's appointment keeps an African-American man in a senior cabinet role that Buery was the first to hold. He will oversee myriad social programs including immigrant affairs, veterans services and educational initiatives.

The contours of Thompson's purview is still being finalized, de Blasio said, but he'll likely be involved in the mayor's efforts to strengthen city campaign finance laws and election procedures. Thompson said he also plans to be involved in initiatives to support contracting opportunities for minority- and women-owned businesses.

"He is someone who really thinks about the process of change and how to build it from the grassroots up, and that is so crucial to the role he will take on," de Blasio said.

Though they both attended Harvard University, Thompson has a different background than Buery, who came to City Hall in 2014 with experience in education and nonprofit management. He announced his departure in December.

Thompson has been an academic since his time with de Blasio and first lady Chirlane McCray in the Dinkins administration, working first at Columbia University and Barnard College before MIT. His research addresses a wide range of topics, including urban community-building, race in politics, environmental issues and criminal justice.

Thompson authored a 2015 paper about the political meaning of de Blasio's election, in which he called the mayor "a high-minded pragmatist, willing to experiment, but only with things having a good chance of success."

Another paper Thompson published that year condemned "broken windows" theory of policing, which says cracking down on small, petty crimes can prevent more serious crimes. Thompson said the paper addressed the original theory's racist origins. Its early proponents advocated targeting people who looked "suspicious," such as interracial couples or black men with large afros, he said.

Thompson said then-NYPD Commissoner Bill Bratton's remarks praising broken-windows strategies moved him to write about what the term really means. But he said he agrees with the premise that "small interactions" between communities and cops can drive crime down.

Thompson was also careful to distinguish those problematic tactics from de Blasio's and the NYPD's neighborhood policing initiative, which he praised.

"The mayor’s family would have been targeted," Thompson said, referring to the fact that McCray is black. "I don’t think that’s where the mayor is coming from and certainly that’s not the NYPD we see now."

(Lead image: Phil Thompson speaks at a City Hall news conference Thursday with Mayor Bill de Blasio and first lady Chirlane McCray. Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photo Office)