A biotech downturn and pulled federal funds have stymied the university’s property bet in Boston’s Allston neighborhood — while nearby MIT has thrived. Harvard had little room for growth in Cambridge, its home since the 1600s. But just across the Charles River sat Allston, a working-class Boston neighborhood where the university had assembled hundreds of acres of land. There, Summers envisioned developing a sort of Silicon Valley of the East — a worthy competitor to California’s Stan...