* Schelling heads a research project on theory of conflict and on the political and diplomatic role of military force.

* Morton Halperin started a project on the military role of Communist China.

* Hollis B. Chenery and a group of associates are developing a theoretical framework for evaluating the effectiveness of foreign aid.

* Seymour Martin Lipset is studying the role of students and universities in the politics of underdeveloped countries.

* Samuel P. Huntington and his associates are probing the growth of political institutions in young nations.

* Alex Inkeles, with a group started in 1961, is studying how work in factories or comparable enterprises affects a person's attitudes and habits that relate to his adjustment to a developing country.

* Bowie, on leave from the University to become Counselor in the State Department, and Henry A. Kissinger have been conducting extended projects on the nature of international systems and on the ways in which varying concepts of the international environment influence the making and execution of foreign policy.

And, in the last few years, the Center has organized a number of regular research seminars which are also open to scholars from Harvard, M.I.T., Brandeis, and Boston University. What these seminars and the research projects both show is a strong concern for problems of underdeveloped countries--an emphasis that has not always been of first importance at the Center. "This trend has not been deliberate," says Schelling, explaining that three of the four senior Faculty members at the Center's beginning, Kissinger, Bowie, and himself, concentrated on Atlantic problems, diplomacy, and Eastern Europe. Only Mason studied underdeveloped countries.

But since then, Inkeles, Huntington, Chenery Lipset, and Raymond Vernon--all concerned primarily with development--have become senior Faculty members (now known as the Executive Committee). Of this years' $761,000 allocated for research, $477,000 is going towards the study of development and modernization, And when added to the $1,279,000 spent by the Development Advisory Service last year, the dominating interest in development is even more apparent.

II.

The Development Advisory Service has expanded interest in economic development that was absent in the early days of the Center. Though organized as a part of Harvard for only three years, the DAS really began 14 years ago when Mason and the Ford Foundation set up an economic advisory office in Pakistan at the request of its government. Another office soon followed in Iran. With the help of David Bell, then a lecturer in Economics, Mason handled the DAS himself until four years ago when the growing task was too much.

He then re-organized it into a semi-independent part of the Center for International Affairs. Harvard appoints the permanent staff here, and contracts are negotiated through the Center. But a separate University committee, chaired by Mason, meets five or six times a year to set DAS policy.

The DAS is now providing 38 permanent economic advisers to the governments of Pakistan, Argentina, Colombia, Liberia, Malaysia, and Greece. And it is reaching the limits of its capacity. "The DAS can undertake additional field projects in the near future only at the risk of reducing the quality of advisers overstraining its management capacity, and minimizing opportunities to absorb and disseminate the experience gained in the field," Gustav F. Papenak, Director of the DAS, explains.

The feedback from advisers, who rotate back to Cambridge every two or three years, is increasing the DAS's academic contributions. Last year, one adviser returned; this year, three; next year, seven. About 22 short-term advisers go out for three months and provide a more immediate feedback into teaching and research.

Although the DAS has had no formal teaching function in the past, this year it is undertaking a graduatelevel course and using cases drawn from the experience of overseas advisers. Moreover, a slew of professors in economics--Simon S. Kuznets, Arthur Smithies, John R. Meyer, and Mason, to name a few--have gone out with the DAS to consult with field experts and then applied their findings in courses.