Former Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson '41 will deliver the Godkin lectures next fall at the Kennedy School of Government.

Don K. Price, dean of the Kennedy School and the person who selects the Godkin lecturer, said yesterday that the Corporation confirmed the appointment during the Christmas recess.

Richardson, who resigned as attorney general when President Nixon fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox '34 last October, will lecture on foreign policy. The Godkin lecturer traditionally gives three lectures on three consecutive nights.

Arthur M. Okun, a member of the Council of Economic Advisors and a fellow at the Brookings Institute, will deliver this year's Godkin lectures April 16-18.

The lecture series became embroiled in a minor controversy last March when the 1972-73 lecturer, Carl Kaysen, cancelled just four days before the scheduled talks.

Kaysen, director of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., said at that time that "important business" forced him to cancel the lecture.

Sources indicated, however, that a dispute at the Institute influenced his decision. The dispute arose when Kaysen nominated Robert N. Bellah '48 for a one-year term despite a 14-6 vote against the appointment by the Institute's permanent faculty.

The faculty then formed a commission to evaluate Kaysen's performance as director.

The Godkin series began in 1903 when friends of Edwin L. Godkin, former editor of the New York Evening Post and of the Nation, donated money for an annual lectureship.

Past lecturers include psychologist Erik Erikson, foreign policy adviser McGeorge Bundy, former New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, and Edward Heath, now Great Britain's prime minister.

Richardson, who returned to private law practice in Washington, D.C. after he resigned as attorney general, held two other cabinet posts in the Nixon administration.

He entered the cabinet as secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, taking over as secretary of defense in November 1972.

Richardson's political associates speculate that Richardson may seek the 1976 Republican presidential nomination. For the present, Richardson will direct a project for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.