An American exchange-program administrator has protested to the Soviet Ministry of Higher Education against press attacks upon a Harvard associate.

The protest was prompted by accusations of blackmail and espionage made last month by the Soviet government newspaper Izvestia against Marshall Shulman, an associate of Harvard's Russian Research Center. Schulman at the time was on a month-long visit to Moscow to discuss disarmament problems with Russian academic circles.

Robert F. Byrnes, professor of history at Indiana University, said in a letter that Izvestia's "unwarranted and irresponsible" attack jeopardized a program of scholarly exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. Byrnes is chairman of the Inter-University Committee on Travel Grants, an organization formed in 1955 to negotiate and administer exchanges of students and scholars with the Soviet Union.

Byrnes called on the Soviet authorities to take steps to "reduce the danger to our scholars from journalistic libel."