In a surprise move yesterday, Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) read a statement by five Harvard professors condemning further escalation of the Vietnam war before Secretary of State Dean Rusk and a national television audience.

The statement was signed by Jerome A. Cohen, professor of Law, John K. Fairbank, Director of the East Asian Research Center, Edwin O. Reischauer, University Professor, Benjamin I. Schwartz '38, professor of History and Government, and James C. Thomson Jr., assistant professor of History. It appears in the New York Times today.

Fulbright's action, a complete surprise to the five professors, came at the close of two days of public hearings on the war. Rusk attended the hearings to defend the administration's policy in Vietnam.

By reading the statement, Fulbright underlined the key issue of the hearings--whether further escalations would be allowed. By endorsing it, he set himself and the majority of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in direct opposition to any further escalation of U.S. troop commitments in Vietnam.

The statement outlined possible escalatory moves before warning that "such measures are fraught with peril. They would substantially increase the risks of a direct military confrontation with China and the Soviet Union."

The basic problems, the five professors said, "are essentially political. They cannot be solved by military escalation."

Reischauer, contacted at his home yesterday, said that the point of the current debate in Washington was "whether to go ahead with escalation or put a ceiling on our involvment in Vietnam." "The statement," he added, "was intended to discourage such plans."