The director of the Institute of Politics declined to commit himself yesterday on Nixon speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan's charge that the Institute is part of an American "liberal establishment."

"I don't know what the term means," Ernest R. May, professor of History and director of the Institute, said yesterday. "Certainly we try to be as balanced as we can, so I think I'd be disposed to say no. But I wouldn't want to say I disagree with Buchanan completely."

Buchanan's remark about the Institute came during his testimony before the Senate Watergate committee Wednesday afternoon. Under questioning by Senator Edward Gurney (R-Fla.), Buchanan said that the Ford Foundation, the Institute of Politics and the Brookings Institute, among others, exemplify the politically liberal foundations that he suggested are the principle beneficiaries of foundations' current tax-exempt status.

Besides pursuing similar goals and helping to give liberal conclusions unwarranted publicity, respect and in some cases money, Buchanan said liberal foundations have many of the same people on their boards of directors.

"There is one Ford Foundation trustee on our advisory committee," May said yesterday, "but anyone who knows anything about organizations like the Institute knows that advisory committees don't have much to do with actually running them."

"The Institute has never pretended to be the hard cutting edge of the affirmative action movement," Jeffrey Sagansky '74, chairman of the Institute's Student Advisory Committee, said yesterday, "but basically it sounds like part of the Republican conspiracy theory of academia." In addition to his activity with the Institute, Sagansky is a Young Republican.

Among the Fellows at the Institute this year are Pierre Pelham, president pro tempore of the Alabama Senate and chief campaign aide to Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, and David Brudnoy, editor of The Conservative Alternative.

More liberal Fellows include Anne Wexler, director of the Democratic National Committee's voter registration drive; Jack Walsh, organization director for Boston Mayor Kevin H. White; Robert M. Shrum, chief speechwriter for Senator George S. McGovern; and John J. Buckley, sheriff of Middlesex County.

"There's no question that most of the people at the Institute are or have been Democrats," May said yesterday, "but that's because most people at Harvard are Democrats. I think we have more Democrats and more conservatives than you would get in a Harvard institution chosen at random."

"Buchanan himself has been a guest of ours several times," he said.

"You have to remember," John S. Saloma, visiting faculty associate of the Institute, said yesterday, "when Buchanan says liberal, his view is that that includes most of the institutions in the country. So it doesn't really say much about the Institute of Politics.