Canadian Ambassador Takes CFIA Post

Canadian Ambassador to the United States Allan Gotlieb last week was named to a visiting professorship in Canadian Studies and will teach a course on the politics of his home country this spring.

Gotlieb will serve as the 1989 William Lyon Mackenzie King Professor of Canadian Studies, a position named after the longest-serving prime minister of Canada. He will teach in the Government Department, but will hold a post in the Center for International Affairs (CFIA).

Neither the new professor nor CFIA administrators were available for comment yesterday.

Prior to his appointment as ambassador in 1981, Gotlieb, as Secretary of state for external affairs, held the top position in the Canadian foreign ministry.

Gotlieb plans to resign from his post as ambassador in January, and will be replaced by Derek H. Burney, now chief of staff to the Canadian Prime Minister.

The King professorship is currently held by Jane Jenson, visiting professor of political science at Carleton University in Ottowa. She will remain at Harvard during the spring term.

Gotlieb most recently appeared in the headlines when he received a subpoena to testify in the perjury trial of former White House aide Michael K. Deaver. The grand jury summoned Gotlieb and his wife Sondra in May, 1987, citing his close relationship with Deaver, who was accused of lying under oath about his lobbying contract with the Canadian government.

The subpoena led to a controversy about the extent of the Gotliebs' diplomatic immunity and the American court's apparent infringement on it. The State Department's Department of Protocol eventually sided with the Canadian government's protest over the subpoena.

Gotlieb is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School. He was also a Rhodes Scholar, and has held visiting professorships at several Canadian universities and The Hague Academy of International Law.

Sondra K. Gotlieb is a novelist and winner of the 1979 Stephen Leacock Prize for Humour. Her work includes parodies of Washington diplomatic life.