Beginning July 1, Kennedy School Dean Graham T. Allison '62 will be able to once again return to what he calls "the best job in the University"--a professorship.

Allison has been trying to "escape" the deanship of the Kennedy School to return to his passion--studying U.S.-Soviet relations--for the past six years, he says.

But Allison says he stayed on to complete a 12-year tenure at the insistence of President Derek C. Bok, who wanted him to see the Kennedy School through its first stage of development. Allison says the goal was to create a graduate school dedicated to excellence in government that would be as influential as Harvard's other prominent professional schools.

"The key accomplishment of which I am proud is the opportunity to have realized a vision," Allison says. "I feel very grateful for having had the opportunity to dream a dream, develop a strategy for trying to achieve it, working with an extraordinary group of people and ultimately to have seen the dream largely realized."

In trying to realize that vision, Allison--who at the age of 36 became Harvard's youngest dean of a graduate school--pursued an agenda dedicated to expanding the school's physical resources and endowment in the hope of attracting--and retaining--the brightest scholars and practitioners in the world of public policy.

But in an explosive growth that has added faculty and research centers in areas as diverse as poverty, the press and the environment--and executive programs which train everyone from new mayors to national security officers--critics have charged that the expansion has left the school too broad and unfocused. Observers of the school say that the next dean will usher in a long-needed period of consolidation during which the school will have to internalize and digest the hasty growth of the Allison years.

Under his aggressive leadership, the school's endowment grew from $20 million to over $150 million, the faculty more than tripled, and the number of degree candidates at the school increased from 200 to 800. Ten new research centers were established, and the school celebrated the ground-breaking of its third building.

"Graham managed the school under a period of expansion which was very big, very good, and very quick," says Lecturer in Public Policy Martin A. Linsky.

And in the course of his single-minded drive to build the endowment and cement a reputation for the school, the dean often paid too little heed to ethical concerns, critics say.

In 1986 Allison was rebuked by the nationalpress and members of the University's faculty forawarding a medal of "distinguished public service"to Attorney General Edwin Meese III.

The following year he again received nationalattention when The Crimson learned that he hadapproved a draft agreement to give a Texas couple"officer of the University" status in exchange fora $500,000 donation.

"Anybody who accomplishes a lot is bound to becontroversial," says Executive Dean Richard E.Cavanagh. "Graham was a creator, and his expansionmoved very quickly--there were bound to be bumpsalong the way."

Defending his growth strategy, Allison saysthat while his tenure was not without fault, theendowment he built for the school was the mostimportant thing he could have done to secure theschool's future.

"That this whole enterprise is now on anendowment base makes the Kennedy school apermanent feature of Harvard for the indefinitefuture," Allison says. "That is something to takesome great satisfaction in having been a part of."

Because the University operates on the "everytub on its own bottom" philosophy--meaning thatevery school is financially responsible foritself--without an aggressive effort by Allison tobuild a substantial endowment, the school couldnot have grown as it has over the past 12 years ineither physical resources or scholarship, Cavanaghsays.