On August 19, 1963, former President John F. Kennedy '40 came to Cambridge to choose a site for a school of Government and Library which would be named after him. Citizen protest drove the library away from Cambridge to Columbia Point, but nearly 15 years after Kennedy's death, the school will be inaugurated this week-end. The ceremonies will symbolically launch what President Bok hopes will be a major professional school for public servants.

"The John F. Kennedy School of Government wants people who can run a junior prom," says Dorothy Bambach, dean of students at the Kennedy School.

The theory seems to be that if you can squeeze some coordinated effort out of unruly high-school students, you will, after some Kennedy School training, be able to perform the same magic on unruly bureaucrats.

The School offers two main programs to transform prom organizers into government agency organizers and policy makers: the ten-year-old Master of Public Policy Program (MPP) for those with at least five years of experience in the public sector--the first degree offered by the School when it was founded in 1937.

The School has come a long way since 1937. It was called The Graduate School of Public Administration, before 1966 when a $10 million grant from the Kennedy's changed it's name and boosted its image. Located in Littauer Center, along with the Government and Economics Departments, it "had to rely on the part-time volunteer services of those two departments' faculties in order to do its teaching," Don K. Price, professor of Government, and dean of the School from 1958 until 1977, recalls.

Price was the first outsider to be brought in primarily to work for the School which had grown--but not drastically--since 1937 when he arrived to assume the position of dean. He says that there were only two courses designed "clearly and specifically" by the School for its own purposes, although an increasing number of courses in the Government and Economics Departments were designed with the School in mind. All courses were formally listed as being in the Ec or Gov departments. "Classes were held all over the lot. I taught them wherever I could beg, borrow or steal some space," Price says.

A turning point in the development of the School was the formation of the MPP program. The Program was conceived in 1968, by Bok, then dean of the Law School, Robert H Ebert, Walker Professor of Medicine and then dean of the Medical School and John T. Dunlop, University Professor and then dean of the faculty. The deans "recognized that many students in law and medicine wanted to work in public and governmental areas, not go into private practice," says Price. "Neither in the Law or Medical School was it possible to include in the curriculum the sort of things they needed to know if they did that."

Bok, Ebert and Dunlop talked over the idea of a public policy curriculum with Price and they began to push for the formation of the MPP program and joint degrees with the Law and Medical Schools. They pushed hard enough and the 18 members of the first MPP class entered the Kennedy School in the fall of 1969. "It was not until the public policy degree was created that we began to develop courses that were listed as the School's courses," says Price.

In his Annual President's report of 1973-74, Bok focused on the goals--or "mission" as Kennedy School people like to say--of Harvard's school of government: to train a "new profession" of public servants to hold responsible positions in the government.

Governmentis getting so important, big and complicated that "like it or not, public officials will establish the framework that determines the ability of each segment of society to achieve its goals...," Bok wrote. He added, "Since Universities are primarily responsible for advanced training in our society, they share a unique opportunity and obligation to prepare a profession of public officials equipped to discharge these heavy responsibilites to the nation."

Bok aspires to a vision of the School in the 80's becoming a substantial professional school--he hopes it will be for the public sector what Harvard's Schools of Medecine, Law and Business do for their respective professions--Improve them. "The legal system and profession function better because we have law schools," says Bok.

Poohbah Palace

The new building on Boylston Street represents a major footstep for Bok. The space there will almost double the level of activity that the school had last year in Littauer Center. A five year plan calls for student enrollment to reach a peak of 500 and the addition of seven executive programs (short intensive programs for people already high on the ladder of government) to the three now in existence. The faculty will increase from 30 to 50 members and the number of research programs from one (the Center for Science and International Affairs) to six.

The School is "busy raising money, developing a very muscular intellectual agenda for a center in business and government, another in regulation, another in capital formation, one in energy and environment," Ira Jackson, associate dean of the Kennedy School, says.

Everyone at the School seems pleased, to say the least, about the school's new home. Sometimes the pervading feeling around the building borders on ecstatic jubilation. "God, this is a machine for teaching," exclaimes Mark H. Moore, associate professor in public policy, as he views a typical classroom, designed to give teacher room to interact with the students.