Informed of Mansfield's comments in late January, Rudenstine said, "Jeez, I didn't see that comment."

Rudenstine added that he believed the grade inflation that began in the late 1960s was the result of a widespread questioning of the value, accuracy and meaning of grades as an indicator of ability and achievement.

"I don't think that had anything whatsoever to do with minority students," Rudenstine said at the time. "That was well in motion, well before minority students were being enrolled in any numbers. It had an awful lot to do with the frame of mind and ideology of the 60s."

Rudenstine stressed again yesterday his own disagreement with Mansfield's comments, referring to his own observations and experiences as a graduate student in the early 1960s and, later, as a junior faculty member at Harvard and an administrator at Princeton.

"When I was in graduate school, if you got a B-plus you knew that you had virtually flunked the course," he said. "I think everybody learned how to read transcripts."

Still, Rudenstine refused to agree with the flyer's characterization of Mansfield's remarks as "racist." "I really can't attribute, and wouldn't attribute, an attitude to Professor Mansfield, and I don't even know the context in which he was speaking." Rudenstine said. "I think he's a person who analyzes situations as he sees them. He gave an analysis. I don't have to agree with it.