Kaysen Named Lecturer Again After 1973 GodkinCancellation

Carl Kaysen, former Harvard professor and director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, who withdrew from his appointment as Godkin Lecturer in 1973, is once again scheduled to deliver the Godkin Lectures next March.

Kaysen withdrew four days before he was scheduled to give the first of the lectures in 1973 saying that "important business" would prevent him from speaking.

At that time, Kaysen was embroiled in an academic power struggle at the Institute so intense that it made national news magazines. Kaysen, contacted yesterday, would not link the controversy to his cancellation of the lecture series.

The controversy centered around Kaysen's decision to hire Robert N. Bellah '48 as the first member of a new school of social science at the Institute.

Faculty is Anti-Bellah

Members of the faculty voted against hiring Bellah, but Kaysen ignored the vote, saying the faculty did not have jurisdiction over the decision because Bellah was to be a member of a new department.

Kaysen then took the issue to the board of trustees who approved both the creation of the department and the hiring of Bellah.

Bellah ultimately turned down the appointment.

Kaysen's opponents, who were mainly representatives of the "hard sciences," made further unsuccessful attempts to curtail the creation of the social sciences department.

Last April Kaysen announced his resignation from the Institute effective this June.

Friends of Edwin L. Godkin founded the lecture series in 1903. The lectures are to deal with "the essentials of free government."