Professor Rusk's Problem

For Dean Rusk, the past nine years have combined adversity and irony in uncommon measure. Never outspoken, he endured silently the taunts of John Kennedy's house intellectuals and the attacks of Lyndon Johnson's congressional opponents. Never wealthy, he suffered financially from his appointment as Secretary of State, struggling to meet a Cabinet officer's expenses while educating his children.

Unlike most high officials who leave the Government for well-paid positions in industry, academe or the professions, Rusk has even had trouble finding suitable employment. A Rockefeller Foundation fellowship has paid the bills since last January. He declines to indulge in the lucrative self-defense of memoir writing. And while his identification with L.B.J.'s hawkish Viet Nam policy has made him anathema to many northern universities, his liberalism is an obstacle to his going home to Georgia.

Rusk's latest difficulty began when Dean Lindsey Cowen invited him to become the first holder of the heavily endowed Samuel H. Sibley Professorship of International Law at the University of Georgia Law School. Cowen thought the appointment a natural for the scholarly Rusk. "The Secretary of State makes international law decisions every day, and in fact, makes international law himself by the treaties in which he has a hand," Cowen reasoned. "There could be no man more qualified to teach and advise on international law."

Personal Opposition. Though most University of Georgia law students agreed with Cowen's evaluation of Rusk, word of the selection triggered an immediate outcry from conservatives on the 15-member board of regents that must approve the appointment. Regent Roy V. Harris, editor of the racist Augusta Courier and state chairman of George Wallace's American Independent Party, led the assault on Rusk's policies and qualifications. But Harris' blasts were not really aimed at the policies that have made Rusk persona non grata among liberals in the North. His target was Rusk's liberalism on the race issue. Rusk, who remembers his own humble origins in Georgia's red-clay Cherokee County, long ago antagonized his segregationist former neighbors by his support for civil rights legislation. He shocked them even more two years ago when he acquiesced to his daughter's marriage to a Negro.

As always, Rusk has maintained his calm. "I'm just chuckling these days and leaving it all to them," he says. This time, he may well get the last chuckle. Governor Lester Maddox, who has been bitingly critical of Rusk, cannot legally alter the makeup of the board of regents with new appointments until after the first of the year. The board's moderates, who constitute a majority, were not planning to wait. They scheduled a special meeting for this week, intending to approve Rusk's appointment.

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