| Ted Landsmark | |
| Birth Name: | Theodore Augustus Burrell |
| Birth Date: | 17 May 1946 |
| Birth Place: | Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. |
| Alma Mater: | Yale University (BA, MED, JD) Boston University (PhD) |
| Occupation: | Educator Attorney |
Theodore "Ted" Carlisle Landsmark (born May 17, 1946) is an American educator and lawyer. Landsmark is currently distinguished professor of public policy and urban affairs and director of the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University. His research interests include diversity in design, environmental design, design education, higher education administration, community-based economic development, public policy, historic preservation, and African American art and artisanry.
Born in Kansas City, Landsmark moved to East Harlem, New York, before beginning his schooling.[1] He attended Stuyvesant High School in New York and St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, and earned his Bachelor of Arts, Master of Environmental Design, and Juris Doctor all from Yale University. He was a political editor for the Yale Daily News, and was part of the Aurelian Honor Society.[2] He then received his Doctor of Philosophy from Boston University in American and New England Studies.[3] Landsmark has received fellowships from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and the National Science Foundation.
Landsmark served as the president of Boston Architectural College from 1997 to 2014, and as chief academic officer at the American College of the Building Arts from 2015 to 2017. He has been a faculty member at the Massachusetts College of Art, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Landsmark has also served as a trustee for numerous arts-related organizations in Boston, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the New England Foundation for the Arts, Historic New England, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (whose board he chaired), the Design Futures Council, and the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center. In 2014, he was named to the board of directors of the Boston Planning and Development Agency by Mayor Marty Walsh.[4]
Landsmark is widely known for being the subject of the famed photograph The Soiling of Old Glory taken by photojournalist Stanley Forman that won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. On Landsmark's way to a meeting in Boston City Hall, he was met by young demonstrators against the Boston Desegregation Busing Crisis. It depicts a young white teenager, Joseph Rakes, assaulting Landsmark with a flagpole holding the American flag.[5]
In the 1970s, Landsmark was working in Boston as a civil rights attorney and advocate. Initially, Landsmark was working primarily to assist minority contractors in getting opportunities the construction industry.[6] It was not until his assault that he began to focus his efforts in the city's busing crisis.
Following the incident, Landsmark received widespread attention from locals and the media.[7] He parlayed the attention to increase awareness on the racial unrest in Boston. He was later hired by Mayor Raymond Flynn to improve youth and workforce development in the city.
Landsmark had polio as a child.[8]