Pusey Addresses Academic Gathering At Inauguration of M.I.T. President

In a ceremony reminiscent of both an English royal coronation and a Harvard commencement, M.I.T. yesterday inaugurated Howard W. Johnson as its twelfth president.

Dressed in full academic regalia and marching in the order of the age of their institutions representatives from more than 225 American and foreign universities filed into Rockwell Cage, a dirt-floored athletic building decorated for the occasion with towering pine trees.

It took close to half an hour for what must have been one of the world's most prestigious academic gatherings to be seated. Harvard, although only the seventh-oldest institution represented, is the oldest American university, so President Pusey was designated to great the new president on behalf of American higher education.

The oldest was the Sorbonne (1253), represented by Pierre Aigrain of the French Education Ministry, who greeted Johnson on behalf of foreign universities. Yale was tenth. Radcliffe, represented by Mrs. Bunting, was 172nd.

Pusey's talk followed a welcome from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by Governor Volpe, the first of five speakers to greet the audience of 4000 after the Chief Marshall, with red robes and a five-foot high golden mace, had declared, "The ceremony is convened."

Older Sister

Pusey spoke about the relationship between Harvard and M.I.T. and referred to himself as "spokesman for an older sister who, like Moses' sibling, 'stood at a distance' to see what would happen when the baby was found among the reeds." The conclusion of the simile drew a laugh when Pusey said that now, "The Institute no longer seems far downstream, and the baby institution--that's you-- is obviously doing very well."

He noted that "we in Cambridge have come to occupy a position of extraordinary responsibility in the world of learning." Colleges today, Pusey said, "are no longer in the wings but near the center of the stage of human activity."

The new president, in his inaugural address, also spoke about the relationship of universities to society. He said that M.I.T. holds an important position because of the increasing importance to society to technology.

Johnson, a 44-year-old industrial management specialist, is the third non-scientist to be president of M.I.T. He joined the faculty in 1955, and since 1959 has been dean of the university's Alfred P. Sloane School of Management. Actually, yesterday's ceremony was only a formality; Johnson became president on July 1 when Julius Stratton retired to head the Ford Foundation.