"We were discussing whether another philosopher had enough originally, and [Dreben] said, 'I despise originally,'" she remembers, saying he was combatting "the false notion that a philosopher has to come up with an original idea every other week."

"He said exactly the opposite of what anyone might expect him to say, and he said it very impressively," she adds. "What he was doing was forcing you to think about what you mean by philosophy."

Administrative Load

But for the last 15 years, Dreben has not always had enough time for philosophy because of the heavy--and diverse--administrative load he has carried.

His first position was Faculty parliamentarian, a job he took in 1969, a time when the Faculty was politically polarized and facing divisive issues like the school's ties with the federal government and the military. He was consistently barraged with questions of procedure during the series of contentious Faculty meetings held during that period.

"There was a parliamentarian before me, but it wasn't a position that was very demanding," Dreben says. "When topics at Faculty meetings became issues that were so large and substantial, it became rather essential to have much more formality."

Dreben left the job in 1973, when incoming Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky asked his friend to head the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). But Dreben still remains the authority on legislative matters at Faculty meetings. For instance, at the Faculty's last meeting on February 14, it was Dreben to whom Bok turned for a judgement of order in the debate over the Reserve Officers Training Corps.

In this three years on the job, Dreben carried GSAS through a painful period of shrinkage owing to financial stringencies. His principle legacy is the current financial aid plan, which offers admission only to as many students as the school can afford to aid.

"That's a plan that he was more responsible for than anyone else," says Rosovsky. "It is a plan that is not overwhelmingly popular among the Faculty, because it limits the number of graduate students."

After steering the GSAS through "a very critical juncture in the graduate school's history," as he terms it, Dreben took a year of leave from the Faculty to settle into his new position as chairman of the Society of Fellows, which he still holds.

The next year, 1977, Rosovsky again tapped Dreben, this time for his current position, special assistant to the dean, which is where his role in the ad hoc process comes in.

Because "the people you want are the very people who are booked up years in advance," according to Dreben, it takes at least six weeks to convene an ad hoc committee. But Dreben adds that he is constantly amazed that the process runs so smoothly and defends it as a principle guarantor of the quality of Harvard's Faculty.

"The whole system rests on the goodwill of very distinguished people at other institutions," he says. "It is hard to believe since we are so cynical, but there is a great deal of integrity in the ad hoc process," he says.

Professors say that Dreben's wide-ranging academic background reinforces his administrative duties, which also include making certain that the department's dossier of a tenure nomination is complete. This is the file of papers the department assembles to buck its case for a tenure nomination.

Dreben downplays this role, saying that he only "makes sure that the case satisfies the paper standards,"--nothing substantive.