Rosovsky, Government Faculty to Meet On Kearns Nomination, Professors Say

Dean Rosovsky will meet with the senior faculty of the Government Department next week to discuss the department's nomination for tenure of Doris H. Kearns, associate professor of Government, members of the faculty said yesterday.

Don K. Price, professor of Government and dean of the faculty of public administration, said yesterday that the meeting is "not a normal one," but that he does not know whether Rosovsky will ask the department to reconsider its recommendation of October 1974.

Rosovsky will "consult" the department because of recent disclosures that Kearns does not plan to publish the manuscript she submitted to the senior faculty before it nominated her for tenure. Harvey C. Mansfield '53, chairman of the department on leave this year, said yesterday.

No Comment

Rosovsky declined to comment last night on the matter.

Kearns attempted in late April to terminate her contract with Basic Books publishing house in New York for publication of the 480-page manuscript, about former President Lyndon B. Johnson. Kearns served as an aide to Johnson in 1968.

Basic Books refused to terminate the contract, although Kearns subsequently, signed a contract with Simon & Schuster to co-author a new book about Johnson with Richard N. Goodwin, a former aide to the president.

Basic Books last Friday sued Kearns for breach of contract, and Kearns said she is now preparing a counter-suit.

Mansfield said yesterday that a possible ground for reconsideration of the nomination is "the question of whether the manuscript that we saw is going to be made available to the scholarly public" or whether a book, altered "by the process of co-authorship," will be published.

He said that if Kearns publishes a different book with Goodwin, the Government Department will have been cheated of a scholarly credit that it expected when it voted to grant Kearns tenure.

Kearns was not available for comment Wednesday or Thursday, but said last week that co-authorship would make the book a better one.

Chance for Tenure

Goodwin said yesterday, from Washington, "From my conversations with her. I don't think she thinks it [changing the nature of the book] hurt her chances for tenure."

He said that he and Kearns have completed about 300 pages of the new work.

President Bok and Rosovsky, followed by the Corporation and the board of Overseers, must approve a nomination for tenure before it becomes an appointment.

Under the normal procedure, the president also convenes an ad hoc committee of scholars in the nominee's field to offer a recommendation.

James Q. Wilson, acting chairman of the Government Department, said yesterday than an ad hoc committee had considered the Kearns nomination "sometime this spring," and Mansfield said that he has been told that it approved her candidacy.

Bok said yesterday that he has yet to receive "the normal recommendation from the dean," but declined to comment further.

"The wheels are cranking in the higher regions of the university" because of "what has come out," Mansfield said.

Wilson said yesterday that Kearns was nominated to fill a vacancy that the department is entitled to claim, under Faculty regulations, once every three years.

Mansfield said that a second possible ground for reconsideration of the nomination is the question, "to what extent the manuscript was rewritten."

Two editors saw the manuscript before Kearns submitted it to the Government Department Frwin A. Glikes, president of Basic Books, and Michael Rothschild a fiction writer.

Rothschild said Wednesday from Strong. Me, that he was retained by Kearns in 1973 and that over a period ending in late 1974 he spent "about four" week long sessions with Kearns editing the book.

Goodwin, Kearns's co-author on the new contract and her finance, said yesterday that Rothschild was paid about $8000.

Rothschild said he did no rewriting whatsoever.

Mansfield said yesterday that a stops in The New York Times nine days age about Kearns's new contract prompted discussion about her tenure nomination at Harvard.

One week ago The Wall Street Journal published an editorial titled. "A Test for Harvard," which suggested that Bok could "uphold academic standards" by denying Kearns's tenure.

"[The University] knows that the original manuscript was competent scholarship," the editorial read in part, "but will America's leading university choose to grant lifetime tenure on the basis of scholarship the author refuses to publish."

The editorial also said that Goodwin's co-authorship would turn a "piece of scholarship" into a "polemic."

Kearns said last week that Goodwin's assistance will make the book more scholarly, and that one of the reasons she chose to leave Basic Books is that Glikes, the publisher, wanted to delete scholarly portions from the manuscript.

Mansfield said yesterday that The Journal's editorial pointed out issues that now face Dean Rosovsky, including what he said was Goodwin's reputation as a non-academic.

Goodwin, a 1958 graduate of the Law School, said yesterday that his latest publication, the book. "The American Condition," is scholarly. He also noted his stint in 1967-68 as a visiting professor of public affairs at MIT, a job he resigned from in 1968 to work in the presidential campaign of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy (D. Minn.)

Senior faculty members of the Government Department said yesterday that Rosovsky sent a note to the department members this week that did not specifically mention Kearns but requested a meeting in University Hall next week.

John D. Montgomery, professor of public administration, said yesterday that the meeting is the first such meeting he has heard of in his 13 years at Harvard.

But he added. "Whenever any appointment is under consideration. If anything suddenly comes up that we didn't know before, then it's entirely appropriate to have such a meeting.