Peter Berkowitz, the associate professor of government who was denied a tenure appointment in April 1997, said he expects to file a formal grievance with the Faculty's Docket Committee in the next week.

The Docket Committee, made up of three Faculty members, may either dismiss Berkowitz's petition or convene an ad hoc grievance panel to consider his complaint.

In his grievance, Berkowitz states that "in two fundamental ways, Harvard failed to follow its own procedures" in the process of reviewing him for tenure, and his appeal to the Docket Committee culminates in a demand for a new hearing.

Longtime University observers said Berkowitz's decision to protest his tenure denial on procedural grounds--rather than on the basis of discrimination--is unprecedented.

"I don't know of a situation where there's been this kind of appeal," said former Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky, who is also a member of the Corporation, the University's chief governing board.

Berkowitz's raises two broad procedural objections in his grievance. First, he alleges that the ad hoc committee convened to discuss his appointment was not well-constituted; some of its members lacked expertise in his field, while others were predictably antipathetic to his cause.

Second, Berkowitz charges that a colleague in the government department compromised the tenure review proceedings because he was able to exercise inordinate influence over other Faculty members.

In the year-and-a-half since Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine elected not to grant Berkowitz tenure, the associate professor has enlisted the aid of campus heavyweights Martin H. Peretz, the publisher of the New Republic magazine and a social studies lecturer, and Charles R. Nesson '60, Weld professor of law at Harvard Law School (HLS).

Details of Berkowitz's appeal have been broadcast to the world over the Internet since Nesson included the case in his "Winter Evidence" course last year at HLS and his students created a Berkowitz Web site, which includes an exchange of letters between the professor and Harvard administrators.

Most controversially, the Web site lists the names of the members of Berkowitz's ad hoc tenure review committee, names that had been confidential.

With Peretz's financial assistance, Berkowitz said he has also engaged a Boston attorney, Matthew Feinberg, of Feinberg & Kamholtz.

"The thrust of the whole thing is a judgment on our part that we have not been fairly dealt with," Feinberg said.

The lawyer conceded that "outside legal action is a possibility" once Berkowitz has exhausted Harvard's internal avenues for appeal.

According to the University's "Guidelines for the Resolution of Faculty Grievances," the submission of a complaint to the Docket Committee constitutes the final step in an intracollegiate appeal.

Berkowitz said the Board of Overseers and the Joint Committee on Appointments remain possible authorities to whom he might direct his complaint. He has also not ruled out the option of suing the University if the Docket Committee finds against him, he said.