Tufts Head Urges Talks On Arms Race

Tufts University President Jean Mayer has written a counterpart in the Soviet Union, urging that the universities together seek ways to halt the nuclear arms race.

Mayer said there is growing concern among Tufts students, "and I believe among all university students in the United States, about the escalating arms race between our two countries."

He asked Dr. A. Logunov, rector of the M. V. Lorrionosov State University in Moscow, to come to Boston for talks, or to send several faculty members to begin a dialogue on university ex changes.

The letter written Nov. 18, was disclosed by the university yesterday. There was no immediate report of an answer.

Mayer, a noted expert on human nutrition, suggested the use of his university's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy as a conference site for the first talk on joint plans.

But he said Tufts has a summer campus in a 13th century priory in Talloires, France, which could make a convenient meeting place or a follow up conference next summer.

"Perhaps a first step might be to open the university of each country to visiting professor from the other country who would come and talk about joint efforts to develop bilateral verifiable processes of arms control and disarmament," he wrote.

Mayer added, "It seems to me that as university president we ought to be able to devise joint educational programs which would increase our mutual perceptions of common risks and goals."

He asked for Logunov's views of the proposal.

"Surely, as presidents of our universities we are concerned with the future of our students and, for that matter, the future of civilization and the earth itself," Mayer wrote.

University spokesman Ralph Buglass said the Tufts campus has been the site of several anti-nuclear protests.

He said students voting last spring in a student government election approved a referendum question urging that Tufts be made a nuclear arms-free zone.

Buglass said some members of the Tufts faculty have expressed concern about the arms race publicly.

He said Mayer was one of a number of American university presidents who sent a letter to President Reagan recently urging more action to limit the arms race.