Guerard Will Resign Post To Join Stanford Faculty

Literary critic Albert J. Guerard, professor of English, will leave the University to become professor of English at Stanford next year.

Guerard said that he may accept a chair at Stanford in honor of his late father, who was a well-known professor of general literature there. His appointment will not be officially confirmed until a meeting of the Stanford trustees on Thursday.

A reliable source indicated that Guerard is dissatisfied with his position here because he does not have enough time for writing. Guerard teaches Comparative Literature 166, English J, and a freshman seminar on writing and introspective literature.

While calling the subject "too complicated to explain," Guerard stated that he had "no negative feeling" toward the English Department. "I have only the greatest gratitude for my treatment here," he said. "It was a choice between two places I like very much."

Both Harvard and Stanford are very liberal in granting time for writing, Guerard added, although most of his fiction and critical writing was accomplished during "generous" leaves of absence.

Confident of Stanford Future

"I have the greatest confidence in Stanford; the college has changed its policy in the last few years and I am sure it will become a great university," he said. "This, of course, is no repudiation of Harvard."

Guerard also denied that he was attracted to Stanford while at the Ford Center of Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, Calif. At the center he worked on a novel and critical essays, and read in psychology, but his work had "nothing to do with Stanford," he commented.

An official at Palo Alto stated that the university's "rapid development" appealed to Guerard, who is himself a graduate of Stanford.

Guerard received his A.M. from Harvard in 1936 and joined the faculty here after earning a Ph.D. from Stanford in 1938. He became professor of English in 1954.