The Vietnam war will be the focus of two new courses in the Spring term--one in the Social Relations department and one at the Law School.

Social Relations 285, a seminar, will study social issues, forces which generate them, and reaction to them, from a behavioral sciences viewpoint. Vietnam will be the issue studied this spring.

A maximum of 20 graduate students in Social Relations, Social Anthropology, and Government, will be admitted.

Alex Inkeles, professor of Sociology, organized the course. Seymour M. Lipset, professor of Government and Social Relations, David H. P. Maybury-Lewis, associate professor of Anthropology, and Andre Modigliani, assistant professor of Social Psychology, will join him in leading the seminar.

Public opinion polls about the war, the relationship between attitude toward the war and socio-economic background, and the effect of the war on Vietnamese village life might be topics chosen for individual study, Inkeles said yesterday.

He also said that criteria for selecting students would probably include motivation for studying the war, special competence in an area of social relations--such as polling--or knowledge about Vietnam.

The "motivation" criterion might tend to favor students strongly opposed to the war, Inkeles acknowledged, but added "we hope for some diversity of viewpoint." A student "gets points not for his opinions, but for his skill as a social scientist," he added.

Inkeles said that the idea for the course originated with the students in the faculty-student discussion group on Vietnam within the behavioral science complex.

A non-credit course in the role of the law and the lawyer--both as professional and private citizen--in the Vietnam war by members of the Law School Faculty will also be offered this Spring.

Issues Covered

Some of the issues to be covered include the constitutional history and present status of the power to wage war, the status of the Vietnam war under international law, the history and administration of compulsory military service, and right to dissent.

Course organizer Alan M. Dershowitz, professor of Law, said that the course is not being given for credit only for administrative reasons. Law School facilities will be used, and the Law Faculty members will participate on a voluntary basis, he said.

Teaching the course in addition to Dershowitz will be Albert M. Sacks, professor of Law; Frank I. Michelman, professor of Law; Charles Fried, professor of Law; Paul M. Bator, professor of Law; Louis L. Jaffe, Byrne Professor of Administrative Law; Lloyd L. Weinreb, assistant professor of Law; Abram J. Chayes '43 professor of Law; and possibly others.

Dershowitz said that the reading would be drawn from primary and secondary sources and that the course would be taught in the "usual law school, Socratic manner."

This kind of course is "not at all new" in law schools, Dershowitz said. "One of the important roles of legal education is to take issues which are terribly important and explore the relevance and the role of law in these issues," he added