Professors Deny LBJ Is Reluctant Use Harvardmen in Government

Harvard professors yesterday emphatically denied a Boston Globe correspondent's contention that President Johnson doesn't like the idea of appointing Harvard professors to the government.

A page story in the Globe yesterday hinted that Morton H. Halperin, assistant professor of Government, would soon in at least four other Harvardmen who have received Johnson appointments. But, said the article, "stories about the President's denigration of Harvard men accurately reflect his native instincts." Halperin, who acknowledged the possibility that he would leave Harvard's Center for International Affairs to join the Department, disputed the article's main point.

'Not Allergic'

Johnson, he said, "gives no special weight an academic from Cambridge, but not all allergic to Harvard." The President could have found someone each of his recent Harvard appointments if he had wished to, Halperin asserted.

Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg of Economics, labelled the Globe articles "absolutely ridiculous.' If there are less Harvard people in Washington now than there were in the Kennedy administration, he said, it is not because of an anti-Harvard bias on Johnson's part.

Kennedy, Galbraith explained, tended to hire people he knew who worked with him in the Senate and in his campaigns," and thus assembled a group of his Harvard acquaintances. Johnson's appointments have been rather more impersonal," not anti-Harvard, Galbraith said.

Samuel H. Beer, professor of Government, also refuted the Globe's contention "Just look at the record," Beer said. He cited Harvardmen in Presidential task forces, the Economic Advisory Board, and the Cabinet, and those who act as unofficial advisors.

The people who have specific expertise have all been called on, he said.