Rosovsky Becomes Number Two

Henry Rosovsky is now the Number Two man in the University.

Rosovsky will leave his teaching post in the Economics Department to become dean of the Faculty on July 1. He replaces the colorful John T. Dunlop, who resigned the position in January to join the Nixon administration.

President Bok's appointment of Rosovsky had been widely anticipated. Several high-level sources had tipped off The Crimson in March that Rosovsky and Gardner E. Lindzey, professor of Psychology, were the leading candidates for the deanship.

When Lindzey revealed in April he was planning to return to the University of Texas to assume an administrative post there, Rosovsky had an open field ahead of him.

The 45-year-old Rosovsky, who specializes in economic history, will head the largest, oldest and most prestigious of Harvard's nine faculties.

He will have extensive administrative responsibilities, including overseeing the 40 budgets under Faculty jurisdiction.

Bok last week cited what he called Rosovsky's proven administrative abilities and his serious educational concerns as the two qualities most important in the selection.

Rosovsky received high grades for his stewardship of the 1969 Faculty committee which drew up the original report mandating the formation of the Afro-American Studies Department. Bok said he had heard "very, very high recommendations" from people associated with the Rosovsky committee.

Rosovsky has also served as chairman of the Economics Department and as an elected member of the Faculty Council, the powerful Faculty legislative subcommittee.

Rosovsky met the press Tuesday afternoon and placed what he termed the "depoliticization of the Faculty" at the top of his agenda.

"We should debate issues solely on their merits without reflecting the political splits of the sixties," he said. "There is obviously a political content to many questions that the Faculty considers, but that should be secondary."

In the wake of the 1969 University Hall occupation, the Faculty split into informal liberal and conservative caucuses, although Dunlop managed to narrow the split in the past few years.

Rosovsky seems to have entered office as somewhat of a compromise candidate between the two wings of Faculty opinion. He is acceptable to conservatives, and not the anathema to liberals that James Q. Wilson, professor of Government and an early front-runner for the post, would have been.

Rosovsky was born in the free city of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) in 1927 of Russian-Jewish parents.