Andreu Mas-Colell, the new associate dean for affirmative action, has faced tougher opponents than the Harvard bureaucracy in his 45 years.

When Mas-Colell was a college student in Spain during the 1960s, he was active in the underground resistance to dictator Francisco Franco.

He was arrested several times, spent a month in prison and was finally acquitted in 1964 on charges of illegal association and illegal propagandizing.

"Although my professional avocation is mathematical economics--it is a bit abstract--I have been involved in the past in progressive politics," says Mas-Colell with characteristic understatement.

Mas-Colell's life since his undergraduate days has been less adventurous.

After doctoral study at the University of Minnesota and a teaching stint at the University of California at Berkeley, Mas-Colell secured a tenured post at Harvard in 1981.

The editor of Econometrica magazine, Mas-Colell specializes in economic theory with a strong quantitative component.

Social Causes

But Mas-Colell, who is the Berkman professor of economics, says he has never forgotten social causes. And he says his two decades in the U.S. have convinced him of the central role race plays here.

"Coming to this country I could recognize that the ethnic issue, the racial question was central to this country," he says.

Mas-Colell was appointed a month ago as the first associate dean for affirmative action in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

And now he faces a daunting task: trying to increase the paltry numbers of women and minority scholars in FAS in the face of tradition-bound hiring practices and, in many cases, a dwindling pool of candidates.

According to Mas-Colell, progress will not be achieved on affirmative action with strident rhetoric or draconian penalties, but through quiet, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

"I will try to make as little noise as I can. I believe that is the way the office can be most effective," says Mas-Colell.

But Mas-Colell is hardly representative of the traditional FAS administrator. A relative newcomer to Harvard, Mas-Colell has never held an administrative post--even within the Economics Department.