Papanek Resigns as Head Of Development Advisors

Gustay Papanek, lecturer on Economics, has stepped down as director of Harvard's Development Advisory Service (DAS), and Lester E. Gordon, former deputy director, has succeeded him in the post.

The DAS is the so-called "activist" wing of the Center for International Affairs, an on-campus institute that performs independent research on foreign policy issues. Funded primarily by the Ford Foundation and the United Nations Development Group, the DAS advises governments of underdeveloped countries on economic matters. It has no connection with the U. S. government.

Head of the DAS since its founding in 1962, Papanek said last month that he was quitting because "it's a huge administrative job. I wanted to have more time for teaching and research." He plans to remain with the DAS in a non-administrative capacity.

This year, the DAS has teams of economic advisors in six countries: Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Liberia, Malaysia, and Pakistan. It will probably undertake other field projects in Africa, including one in Tanzania, in the near future, Gordon said last month.

The new DAS director, who began a three-year term of office on July 1, added that the agency would give increased consideration to the social and cultural impact of economic growth in Third World countries. One of the differences between the DAS and the government's development program, he said, "is that our University surroundings encourage and make it possible for us to rethink what we're doing."

Leftist students and Faculty members have criticized the DAS on the grounds that its operations, while neither sponsored nor sanctioned by the U. S. government, have invariably aided the economic interests of American corporations who do business abroad.

Critics

They have been particularly critical of the DAS' involvement in Indonesia, a nation whose military government is friendly to American investors, and Liberia, whose economy is virtually dominated by Firestone Rubber and Bethlehem Steel.

DAS officials last month denied these charges, pointing out that their advisors have often counselled foreign governments against disadvantageous trade agreements with the U. S. They said that corporate representatives had once asked the American Embassy in Liberia to try to curtail DAS activity there.

Papanek said that the DAS has undertaken several major changes in its eight-year existence, including:

an increase of from two to six field projects operating at any one time;

a much larger percentage of research personnel on the DAS staff (in 1962, there were three researchers in Cambridge and 20 staffers engaged abroad; now there are 15 researchers and 40 participating in field projects);

"much less concern with growth as the overwhelmingly important objec-tive" of development, and a more careful analysis of straightforward growth in terms of "who pays for it and who benefits from it":

involvement of Harvard graduate students in both research and field projects:

a greater number of foreigners on the DAS staff with a corresponding drop in the proportion of Americans;

a doubling of the percentage of staffers whose primary affiliation is with the University (from 25 to 50 per cent).

While acknowledging the need for constant criticism and re-evaluation of the DAS' work. Papanek condemned the specific tactics of Harvard radicals, who have generally advocated abolition of the CFIA and the DAS. "They haven't wanted to change our approach to problems, they've just wanted to attack us," he said.