The first intrusions into this collegial and somewhat clubby process, however, are coming from affirmative action--the government program that requires "documentary evidence" that a search was made for qualified women and minority candidates to fill each vacancy. It was in light of this new program that the department considered Doris Kearns for tenure last year.

Professors in the Government Department refer to Kearns as a "very special person." And everything about her tenure case has been unusual, an exception to the traditional standards of tenure. If her appointment eventually goes through, she will be the second woman in the department's history, one of the few to rise directly from an assistant professorship to a tenured chair, the department's youngest member, and the only person the Gov faculty ever approved before publication of at least one scholarly work.

Kearns is often called "brilliant" and "disarming," able to win over almost anyone after a few minutes of conversation. Her post in the Johnson Administration, which gave her access to enough intimate details of the president's life to put together a psychobiography, came quite unexpectedly, shortly after she co-authored an article for The New Republic on how to dump Johnson in '68.

While at Harvard her courses--especially Gov 154, "The American Presidency,"--have been very popular. Her lectures were peppered with anecdotes about Johnson and her midnight swims with him; in the background lay the rumors--which she at one time substantiated--that Johnson was in love with her and wanted to marry her.

Although her teaching received a lot of praise, when it came time for the department to vote on her tenure, she had not met what Mansfield called "the definite and reasonable requirement of publishing at least one scholarly work." She asked the department to postpone consideration from the fall of '73 until spring '74. Acting on the basis of a partially completed manuscript of her Johnson book, the department decided in October 1974 to recommend her tenure to the Dean of the Faculty.

Phyllis Keller, assistant dean of the Faculty, confirmed that the original recommendation was unanimous. Under the University's affirmative action program, Keller now sees everything connected with an appointment, including the "confidential" letters that each member of the department must send to. Rosovsky setting out his views on a tenure candidate.

Everything was going well for Kearns; after she received departmental approval, an ad hoc committee under Rosovsky studied the recommendation and, according to two reports, reacted favorably. But just as what Mansfield called "the highest prize in a man's life" was within her grasp, Kearns became involved in legal and romantic affairs that have seriously hurt her reputation here and sidetracked her appointment.

In June she broke with her original publisher, Basic Books, and announced plans to revise the book, co-authoring it with her current lover, Richard Goodwin. Goodwin is a freelance presidential adviser with many enemies in government and academic circles. Kearn's announcement prompted a suit from Basic Books alleging breach of contract, a caustic editorial in The Wall Street Journal, and the revelation that the manuscript she submitted to the Gov department had already been edited, for about $8000, by fiction writer Michael Rothschild.

Erwin Glikes, her editor at Basic, a division of Harper and Row, Inc., expressed bitterness about the switch. He charged that Kearns was being "hurt and badly used" by Goodwin. The suit from Glikes's publishing house is still unresolved, he said, and the lawyers for each side have just begun to discuss it.

The editorial, which one Journal editor confided was aimed basically at Goodwin, said the co-authorship would turn a "piece of scholarship" into "polemic." It asked whether Harvard would grant tenure "on the basis of scholarship the author would never publish."

In two May meetings precipitated in part by the editorial, the senior Gov faculty gave a definite "no" to the Journal's question.

According to one source in the department, the disclosures dissolved away Kearns's unanimous support; a small contingent, including Judith N. Shklar, the only tenured woman in the department, called the publicity irrelevant and said the faculty should stand behind its decision, and a second group maintained the department had made a mistake and should admit it by reversing itself. But the great majority of Gov faculty remained somewhere in the middle--generally favorable to Kearns but concerned that the book would not turn out to be the scholarly work they had reviewed.

Mansfield announced after the second meeting that four scholars who worked closely with Kearns on the book had absolved her of any charges of plagiarism from Rothschild, the fiction editor, but that, for reasons the department would not specify, consideration of her appointment would be postponed until the fall.

Privately, however, the department sent Kearns a letter telling her that she must drop her plan to co-author the book, return to the original manuscript and show "evidence of publication" such as galleys or proofs before her appointment can go through.

As one source said, "the ball is in her court now," and the department will wait as long as it takes for Kearns to finish the book. If she follows through on the department's advice, she'll probably get tenure, the source said.