There is a proposal afoot to bring the Center for International Affairs' (CFIA) Development Advisory Service (DAS) "closer to the Harvard community," Robert Dorfman, professor of Economies, said yesterday.
A report submitted to John T. Dunlop, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, last fall recommended that professorships be created with dual affiliation to the Kennedy School of Government and the DAS.
"If somebody were prepared to endow such professorships, we would be ready to consider action," Richard E. Neustadt, associate dean of the faculty of the Kennedy School, said. "But at the moment we have other priorities for the use of our own endowment and consider it an abstract proposition," he added.
Dorfman, who headed a committee to evaluate the status of the DAS at Harvard created in the fall of 1968, said that his committee recommended stronger emphasis of DAS advisors on teaching and research rather than justtheir current role advising underdeveloped nations on economic policy.
DAS advisors spend one year here doing research and two years overseas in the service of a host government. "The position is quite transitory. Most advisors don't look to the DAS as a life-time career," Dorfman said.
"Harvard has never financially supported the DAS in any way, as far as I know," Dorfman said. "Most of their funds come from public organizations such as the United Nations and foundations like the Ford Foundation."
"We would like more scholarships to bring to Harvard members of foreign governments for training as well as trainee grants for our students to do research abroad," he added.
Lester E. Gordon, director of the DAS, and Gustav Papenak, former DAS director, refused to comment on the recommendations and the probability of their enactment.
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