After the ruling by Rosenkrantz. Houtthaker and Hoffmann, Bok appointed an ad hoc committee--whose membership University officials have refused to disclose--and charged it with reviewing Skocpol and reaching a recommendation on whether she should be tenured.

The spokesman for Bok, who asked not to be identified, refused to say yesterday if the ad hoc committee had recommended that Skocpol either be granted or denied tenure. "In his view, the recommendation of the committee was not conclusive," the spokesman said.

Skocpol said she knew what the ad hoc committee had recommended, but she declined to divulge the information.

She added that she and Bok had exchanged "a couple" of letters with Bok during the summer. She would not say if Bok had altered his position as a result of letters, stating only that they "clarified things."

Bok's review of the Sociology Department will cover "needs and priorities for the future" and their effect on, among other things, tenured appointments, Bok's spokesman said. The review was "precipitated but not caused" by the Skocpol case, the spokesman said.

Mission Impossible

James A. Davis, chairman of the Sociology Department, declined to comment on the delay, but said a review of the department would find it to be "dangerously small, with excellent people and a lack of consensus as to its mission."

"We only have about a half-dozen senior people," Davis said. "We do not have a party line of an integrated" concept of the field, he added. A review of the department would not uncover sexism, he added.

Bok's decision on Skocpol will be based on work done during the next three years as well as her scholarly accomplishments in the past. Bok's spokesman said. Best known for her award-winning States and Social Revolutions. Skocpol said she was aware her future writings would come under close scrutiny.

"I would, say I'm on the spot," she said. "But I was never planning to lay down and play dead as a scholar. I was always planning to produce more work," she added