Making Up Her Mind

Harvard still has no word from Stanford sociologist Nancy B. Tuma on what she plans to do about a Harvard tenure offer, reports Sociology Department Chairman James A. Davis.

But Davis says the scholar, who would be the department's first tenured woman, stopped in Cambridge last weekend on her way back from Europe and had a chat with Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky.

Tuma was on leave this past semester in Austria. The offer to her was part of an unusual package of three tenure offers to quantitative sociologists extended last May in an effort to revitalize a department which has come under fire in recent years.

The other two offers--to Chicago's Edward Laumann and Wisconsin's David Featherman--were turned down in the fall.

Davis says he expects another batch of offers in the spring--again probably in the quantitative field.