Prominent journalists and academicians gathered at the Kennedy School Saturday to formally inaugurate a new center dedicated to studying interactions between the press, the public, and the government.

Kennedy School Dean Graham T. Allison Jr. '62 told a gathering of several hundred that the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy will tackle previously neglected questions about the collision of these important forces in society.

Washington Post Executive Editor Benjamin C. Bradlee '43 delivered the keynote address, a speech about the press's responsibility in dealing with stories that involve national security (see accompanying story).

David Broder, a syndicated columnist and national political correspondent for The Post, shared his memories of Joan Shorenstein Barone, a Harvard Divinity School graduate who went on the work for The Post and CBS News.

Barone died of cancer in March 1985 at age 39. Her parents, Walter H. and Phyllis Shorenstein, provided a $5 million endowment to make the new center possible.

Mr. Shorenstein, a San Francisco real estate developer, said he intended to do little more than endow an academic chair, but the press center struck him as a perfectly fitting "living memorial" to his daughter.

Broder met Barone in an Institute of Politics study group and later brought her to The Post. He said that she "never became cynical about politics. She never doubted that news and television had more duty than just to entertain."

The opening of the $10 million center comes after nearly a decade of planning and fundraising. It is still in its incipient stages.

Nelson W. Polsby, an expert on Congress and the electoral process, was recruited from the University of California last April to fill the newlycreated Frank Stanton Chair for Press Scholarship, Harvard's only full-time teaching position dealing with the media.

Clark Hoyt, Washington Bureau Chief for the Knight-Ridder newspapers, has been named the Center's first fellow.

"What we hope the center will do is take on the hard issues," said Allison. Striking the proper balance between freedom of the press and matters of national security is one such issue, he said.

In an interview after his speech, Bradlee said that the center could contribute to society by studying the way the press deals with race in America and by looking for ways press...especially, the press must continue itsmission of publishing information that it, and italone, determines to be in the public interest, ina useful, timely, responsible manner, servingsociety and not government," he said.

The Post consults with government officialsabout sensitive cases, and national securityconcerns have caused the paper to withholdinformation for more than a dozen stories so farthis year, Bradlee said.

Bradlee cited one story The Post held for ninemonths, however, as an illustration of thetensions and disinformation news organizationsconfront.

In September 1985, two months before convictedspy Ronald Pelton was arrested for espionage andeight months before he went on trial, The Postlearned about the top secret intelligencecapability that Pelton had sold to the Soviets.