Harvard, Columbia Start Fund Drive For Soviet Studies

In a joint news conference at the Harvard Club of New York, President Bok and Columbia University President William J. McGill announced yesterday the launching of a joint fund drive to raise $8 million for the two universities' Russian studies institutes.

The new drive will create a permanent endowment which will be shared equally by both the Russian Research Center at Harvard and the Russian Institute at Columbia.

The fund drive is an attempt to substitute an endowment for diminishing foundation grants and individual gifts which previously financed the programs, President Bok said yesterday.

Howard L. Clark, chairman of the American Express Company, was appointed to head the first part of the fund drive, which hopes to raise $2.6 million in immediately necessary funds. Bok and McGill said in a joint statement released yesterday.

Expert Gap

The statement cited the need for more trained experts on Soviet affairs, especially since the advent of the detente policy. Russia's institute for study of the United States (modeled after Harvard's Russian Research Center) has begun a major expansion, the statement said.

Soviet specialists are more competent in American affairs than all but "a few of the older generation of American Soviet specialists" are in Soviet policy, the statement added.

The first contribution to the fund drive, a $500,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, was announced yesterday.