For the third time in five years, the Kennedy School of Government is looking for a dean. This time, weary professors simply want an easy transition and a continuation of Dean Albert Carnesale's successful administration.

The faculty also wants a speedy search. Left leaderless in the midst of the University's $2.1 billion capital campaign, the school is also badly understaffed. Several top teachers are in Washington, and almost 10 searches will be going on this fall in a faculty of only about 95 people.

"A lot of our very best faculty went down to Washington. We took a much larger hit than any other part of Harvard," says Harmon Professor of International Science William D. Clark. "[Faculty members] are running pretty close to empty now."

Carnesale, University provost since July 1, still performs his official functions as dean--he gave the welcoming speech to incoming Kennedy School students last Friday, for instance.

But the question is whether a half-time dean is good enough during the largest fund drive in the history of higher education.

"The school is in a reasonable operating situation," says Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment Robert Z. Lawrence. But "if you spoke to me in six months or a year, I would say things wouldn't be functioning."

Faculty members say they are already taking many of their concerns to academic dean Alan Altshuler, rather than Carnesale.

"Clearly, [Carnesale] is shifting his focus to the provost's office," says Frederick M. Scherer, professor of business and government.

Altshuler himself says Carnesale's team can hold the fort for at least another academic year without a full-time leader.

President Neil L. Rudenstine, however, has said the wait won't be that long--he hopes to end the search maybe even as early as this fall.

Faculty members say they expect an insider, given Rudenstine's rush and the desire for continuity.

"People don't want to take a chance, and that gives insiders a leg up," Lawrence says.

Rumored Candidates

A search committee member says both insiders and outsiders remain on the list, but will name no names. In the meantime, the rumor mill churns out the usual suspects:

* Dillon Professor of International Affairs Joseph S. Nye Jr. Nye has been through this wringer before, as a contender in the 1991 search. A close associate of both former Kennedy School Dean Graham T. Allison '62 and Carnesale in the Avoiding Nuclear War project in the 1980s, he also has administrative experience as the director of the Center for International Affairs.

As the yet-to-be confirmed Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Nye may not want to return to Cambridge in time to become dean. Harvard omitted his name from the course catalog's list of government faculty this year.

* Wiener Professor of Public Policy David T. Ellwood. Like Nye, Ellwood is a natural choice. A labor economist and welfare expert, he was academic dean under Carnesale.

But as the Clinton administration's point person on welfare reform, Ellwood is actually making his theories into national policy. Does he really want to abandon the job to deal with irate faculty and well-heeled alumni?

* Former Wiener Professor of Social Policy Mary Jo Bane. As a one-time commissioner of the New York State Department of Social Services, Bane has as much administrative experience as any other candidate. As a woman, she may prove attractive to a school which, according to the 1994 Affirmative Action Plan, lacks gender and racial faculty diversity.

"We just don't have the women faculty we ought to have," Pratt Public Service Professor Lewis M. Branscomb says. "Maybe if we're lucky we could get one back as dean."

But Bane, too, is firmly ensconced in the government elite. She is Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Children and Family.

* Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs Ashton B. Carter. Carter was director of the Center for Science and International Affairs. Like Nye, his expertise is in international relations, which could be a plus--several faculty say the school's foreign scholarship should be beefed up.

Like every other widely-cited inside possibility, however, he's in Washington. Carter is Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Security and Counter-Proliferation.

* Altshuler, perhaps the most obvious candidate, has repeatedly denied wanting the post, colleagues say.

A past dean of the New York University Graduate School of Public Administration, Altshuler has the administrative background and, as a former Massachusetts state secretary of transportation and construction, the governmental experience to lead the school. But rumor says he left NYU to get back to research: why leave one bureaucracy to lead another?

Altshuler declined to comment.

A Wish for Stability

Whoever the final choice is, though, many hope he or she will end the revolving door in the Kennedy School dean's office and bring some needed peace to the school.

"One thing you'd hope is the next dean comes and stays for awhile," says Dwight H. Perkins, Burbank Professor of Political Economy.

Carnesale provided such stability, but only for three years. After years of mushrooming growth and a huge fiscal crisis, he helped raise money and bring together a badly divided faculty.

He was also adroit at the political balancing acts the Kennedy School demanded, getting along equally well with practitioners and academics and deftly balancing resources between international and domestic issues.

The new dean needs to continue "making a group of warring fiefdoms work as a unified whole," Scherer says, and raise the money to support the structure.

Carnesale knew everyone. He would "walk into your office and say 'Richard, how are you doing and how's that project going,'" says Ramsey Professor of Political Economy Richard J. Zeckhauser. "When you got a grant, he would drop you a little note."

The dean also worked to bind schools more closely together, and faculty members say they want his successor to continue the effort.

For instance, Clark says Carnesale personally released him from some Kennedy School duties to allow time for work with the University committee on the environment.

Perhaps only an insider can duplicate that kind of personal contact and interdisciplinary work, and help a school still on the mend to decide exactly what it wants to do with itself.

Branscomb says that even after three years under Carnesale, his school still doesn't have a "groove swing" on some key identity questions.

"The business school tries to train CEOs," Perkins says. "The Kennedy School definition is not quite as clear yet."