When President Derek C. Bok releases a statement on faculty involvement with the CIA this fall, the long-awaited document won't specify any guidelines for professors seeking government contracts. Nor will it offer any solution to the tension caused when federal regulations infringe upon academic freedom.

What the Bok manifesto will be, however, is a "stimulus for thought" and an attempt to "clarify the issues" concerning CIA-backed academic research.

In fact, Bok says that until he began his investigation six months ago into the CIA presence on college campuses, he was uninformed himself about many of the issues surrounding the intelligence agency's rules for academics. Bok began his investigation after learning that two Harvard Government professors, Nadav Safran and Samuel P. Huntington, failed to disclose their acceptance of CIA funds. Both professors granted the spy agency pre-publication review of their manuscripts, which many scholars consider unethical.

The fact that Bok claims to have been uninformed about many of the issues involved with the CIA's presence on campus is not unusual. Bok, a lawyer by profession, takes a hands-off approach to many day-to-day decisions made at the University; he prefers instead to set overall policy guidelines and to respond to problems at the University with logical, methodical and sometimes decade-long discussions.

In turn, the man who has guided the University for the last 15 years frustrates both students and faculty on campus who say his slow, plodding style of leadership has prevented Harvard from making progress on issues ranging from divestment to increasing the number of female professors.

From the beginning of his career as a Harvard administrator, Bok has taken a calm, almost court-room like attitude toward controversy on campus. His style presents a striking contrast to his predecessor, Nathan M. Pusey '28, who in 1969 ordered police to forcibly evict student protesters who had seized University Hall. The bloody incident sparked a three-day University wide strike. Pusey announced his intention to resign shortly thereafter that turbulent spring, but the strife-torn University remained divided.

Enter Derek Bok, who at 41, was dean of the Law School in 1971. Instead of arresting students who seized a room in Langdell Library, Bok discussed academic policies with protesters over donuts and coffee through the night. Low-key, rational, and highly effective.

Though Bok came of age at Harvard at the close of its most turbulent era, institutional expansion--and not divisive student protest--has hallmarked his Massachusetts Hall career.

While at the school's helm, this Philadelphia-born labor law expert has moulded Harvard's metamorphosis in several key areas: the endowment more than tripled to $3 billion; graduate schools, like the Kennedy School of Government, have rapidly expanded; and, in what Bok calls the most significant change of all, undergraduate life became co-educational when Radcliffe signed a merger agreement with Harvard.

Perhaps the most significant change at the University has been the complete overhaul and inflation of the central administration, where Bok has increased the number of vice presidents from one to five.

Since Bok took over, administration of the University has been structured to give the president authority to direct academic and policy concerns, and the freedom to let management professionals run this $4 billion corporation.

Mid-level bureaucrats now deal with a host of University problems including Harvard's stance on its South African-related investments, planting grass in the Yard, and even managing a power plant.

Bok transfered portfolio responsibilities to the Harvard Management Corporation and the University's extensive land holdings to Harvard Real Estate, Inc.--thus avoiding the pedantic details of daily management.

Bok says his job is essentially to help the "key people in the institution avoid getting sucked into spending so much time on day-to-day matters because if that happens, then they can't step back and reflect."

Internal restructuring also has given Bok the opportunity to devote more of his own time to reflecting on external issues. "American society is much more interested in its universities," Bok says, adding that the Ivory Tower has similarly grown more interested with the outside world.