Hirschman Considers Job At Princeton

The Princeton Institute for Advanced Study last Wednesday offered Albert O. Hirschman, Littauer Professor of Political Economy, a full-time professorship in its school of social sciences. Hirschman said yesterday he will decide whether to accept the appointment in about a month.

"It's obviously an honor to be asked. The institute is the only one of its kind in the country, but I have many ties with Harvard to consider," he said.

Hirschman spent last year as a visiting member of the institute.

Should he accept the appointment, Hirschman will be one of two full-time professors in the institute's social science school.

The school of social sciences is the youngest of the institute's four schools. Political Economist Carl Kaysen, director of the institute, founded the social science school in 1967. It has been the subject of bitter controversy among institute trustees and faculty members.

Conflict arose last spring between Kaysen and several of the institute's most prominent professors over the appointment of Robert Bellah, a well-known Berkeley professor of the sociology of religion, to the social science school. Bellah eventually was offered the post, but declined it for both personal and professional reasons.

The Institute for Advanced Study has no official connection with Princeton University. It consists of four schools, in mathematics, physics, history and social science. Its thirty full-time professors are at liberty to think, read and write with no obligations to teach or to publish