Since the presidential campaign, the Kennedy School of Government has become synonymous in the media with technocratic competence and the name--and the failure--of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

Just three months ago, an article in The New York Times referred to Harvard's Kennedy School as a "'temple of technocracy' on the Charles" and quoted the former Boston Mayor Kevin White as saying that while he had once actively brought young Harvard graduates into City Hall, he would not hire Kennedy School people now.

"They're creating a new political class that knows how to administer but doesn't know the people in the neighborhood," the article written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author J. Anthony Lukas quoted White as saying. "They talk about competence. I'd rather not be called competent. I'd be offended by that word."

A month later, President Derek C. Bok joined in the scrutiny of Harvard's youngest professional school--the school which many have said the president regards as his principal legacy. In his first public response to the criticisms levelled at the Kennedy School, Bok called on the school to pursue a curriculum that would help public servants "move beyond being mere bureaucrats and technicians to become the kinds of human beings to whom we would willingly entrust decisions that affect our lives."

Last week the school gave its first official signs of reaction to the persistent criticisms. Ending the first phase of an intense two-year-long curriculum review, the school's faculty by a wide margin voted its approval of the general direction of the review's coordinating committee, which called for a greater emphasis on ethics and politics in the curriculum.

The likely shift will be a significant one for a school which throughout the past 20 years has been dominated by quantitative and management-oriented approaches to teaching government.

The faculty's public approval of the suggested changes comes soon after the presidential campaign, the Lukas article and Bok's appointment of a well-known scholar, Professor of Government Robert D. Putnam, as the new dean.

But despite the fact that many view Putnam's selection as a signal from Bok that the school must consolidate its curriculum, most Kennedy School professors insist that the recent review was not prompted by the external criticisms.

"I don't think the campaign had much to do with it, or how the Kennedy School was perceived during the campaign," says Baker Professor of Public Management Herman "Dutch" Leonard, who chaired the review's coordinating committee. "It was just time for the school to sit back and ask ourselves what the mission of the school was and if our curriculum was doing that."

During the past 12 years, the school has pursued a course of explosive growth under outgoing Dean Graham T. Allison '62, which many have said left the curriculum unfocused and for too long a time ignored. The current review is the first conducted at the school since the curriculum was implemented 20 years ago.

"Yes, there were things that needed changing in the school's previous approach, and yes, we needed midcourse corrections," Putnam says. "But the changes emerged above all from self-criticism rather than from outside criticism of the school."

Whether or not the school's review is a reaction to external or internal criticism--or both--the debate it has sparked over the extent to which quantitative approaches should continue to dominate the school's curriculum promises to reshape the school under Putnam.

While Allison played a relatively insignificant part in the review--leaving the process in the hands of faculty and students--professors say they expect Putnam will play a larger role in determining the future direction of the curriculum review. The next stage, they say, will include the actual development of courses in ethics and politics.

"We've gotten a big boulder rolling and we're in motion, but now a lot of what is going to happen will depend on Dean Putnam," Ramsey Professor of Political Economy Richard J. Zeckhauser says.

Many professors say that the addition of courses in ethics and politics to the core has left an older guard of professors in the quantitative subjects--and also some professors of management--feeling somewhat isolated and skeptical about the shifts in the school's approach.