Nathan M. Pusey '28, the 24th President of Harvard University, will resign his position in June of 1971.

Pusey has been President of Harvard since 1953.

"In the hope that you will grant me the privilege of early retirement at the end of the next academic year, I write now formally to ask that you turn your attention to the task of choosing my successor," Pusey said in a letter to the Corporation-Harvard's second-highest governing body. Pusey would have reached the mandatory retirement age of 65 in April 1972 and could have remained as President until 1973.

In a regularly-scheduled meeting yesterday, the Corporation agreed to Pusey's request.

"It speaks with clarity, brevity and perception and with his innate sense of time and history," said R. Keith Kane '22, Senior Fellow of the Corporation, of Pusey's letter. "It reflects a man of strength and self-discipline-a man of character and courage."

"It seems to me, as I indicated to you last year, that the next change in presidents of Harvard should occur fairly soon, preferably near the beginning of the fresh chapter rather than three years from now," Pusey said. "If this can be arranged, my successor will have an opportunity to help design and order the new developments of the era ahead as well as effect their fulfillment."

For the full text of Pusey's letter see elsewhere on this page.

The next president will be chosen by the seven-man Corporation, and must by the charter of the College be approved by the Board of Overseers.

"As I shall soon be retiring as a Fellow of Harvard College, the responsibility of organizing the procedures that will lead to an election by the Corporation will rest on the next Senior Fellow, Francis H. Burr '35," Kane said.

Burr said that the Corporation will "welcome suggestions" from all interested Faculty, students, almuni and employees.

16 Years

Pusey has been a college president for 25 years-16 of them here. He became President-after nine years as president of Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin-when James Bryant Conant resigned in 1953 to become United States High Commissioner in Germany.

A specialist in general education, at Lawrence College Pusey set up a required course for all freshmen in which through the study of "great original works which have affected civilization and still affect it," students were brought in contact with the five major fields of learning: the social sciences, philosophy, the natural sciences, religion and the arts.

In his biography for the Anniversary report of the Class of 1928, Pusey wrote, "Liberal education is my chief concern. That young people growing up should have liberating intellectual experiences seems to me more important in any year than who should be president, though I recognize there may-be considerable irresponsibility in the attitude."

Pusey is the first President of the University to be born west of the Mississippi. A native of Council Bluffs, Iowa, he studied English and Comparative Literature at Harvard under the late Irving Babbitt, graduating magna in 1928. He received his A.M. from Harvard in 1932 and his Ph.D. in 1937.

Pusey served as an assistant in History here in 1932, and then, after a short stay at Lawrence as a tutor, he taught at Wesleyan University from 1940 to 1944 as a professor of Classics, although he also instructed Naval V-5 students in Physics. In 1944 he was elected president of Lawrence.