A memorial lectureship honoring Joe Alex Morris Jr. '49. a journalist killed while covering the Iranian revolution in 1979, has been established by Harvard's Neiman Foundation for Journalism.

"The purpose of the lectureship is to bring a foreign correspondent who can offer a different perspective to the Nieman fellows and the larger audience at Harvard," Tenney Barbara K. Lehman, executive director of the Neiman Foundation, said yesterday. She added that the fund establishes the first memorial lectureship sponsored by the Nieman Foundation.

Foreign Correspondent

Scheduled to begin in the spring of 1982, the lectureship will be awarded to an American overseas correspondent or media commentator on foreign affairs by the Nieman Foundation, in consultation with each year's class of Nieman fellows. The recipient will spend three days at Harvard meeting with the fellows and other groups at Harvard.

Morris--a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times--covered events in the Middle East for about 25 years. In April 1981, the Nieman Foundation awarded him the Louis M. Lyons award for "conscience and integrity in journalism," an award established in 1964 in honor of a former curator of the Foundation.

Roots

Daphne B. Noyes, a staff assistant for the Nieman Foundation, said the lectureship was the result of efforts begun by Richard B. Stone '49, a classmate of Morris', and Morris' father, Joe Alex Morris Sr. Donations from the Morris family are being augmented by gifts from Morris' Harvard classmates and journalist colleagues.

The Nieman Foundation sponsors fellowships which enable 12 working journalists from the United States and 6 from overseas to study for a year in any part of Harvard University. The fellowships were established in 1938 by a bequest of Agnes Wahl Nieman, widow of the founder of The Milwaukee Journal.