Ivory Tower Tempest

For years the Institute for Advanced Study hummed quietly with the intellectual energies of men like Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Now the halls of its large Georgian central building, set on an isolated wooded hilltop near Princeton University, are filled with outraged mutterings about "breach of confidence," "contemptible conduct" and "second-rate scholarship." This uncharacteristic rancor surrounds an epic struggle between a majority of the institute's faculty and its director, Economist Carl Kaysen.

The immediate issue is whether Sociologist Robert N. Bellah, 46, a professor at Berkeley, is worthy of being named to the institute's permanent faculty. Sociologists Talcott Parsons and David Riesman of Harvard, where Bellah once taught, consider him an "extraordinary" scholar in his field, the sociology of religion. Now, however, he is caught in a contest between the "hard" scientists in mathematics at the institute and the "softer" social scientists. The real issue is only partly his credentials as a scholar: the larger question is who will chart the institute's future.

The institute grants no degrees, has no scheduled courses and no laboratories. It has 28 permanent faculty members--ten mathematicians, six natural scientists, ten historians and two social scientists. They, and the 131 others who visit for a year, devote their time to research and writing. The institute, which is not part of Princeton University, was founded in 1930 as an ivory-towered haven for leading mathematicians and gradually expanded to include schools of natural science (physics) and historical studies. Over the years, however, tension developed between the mathematicians and humanists. Once the mathematicians suggested that rather than expand its library, the institute should throw out books over 25 years old. Later they so bitterly contested the credentials of two physicists whom Director Oppenheimer wanted on the faculty that he withdrew the nominations.

By deferring to faculty opinion, Oppenheimer prevented open warfare. Not so Kaysen. Now 53, he is a blunt, graying man who once taught economics at Harvard. Fresh from five years of advising Presidents Kennedy and Johnson on national security and disarmament, he succeeded Oppenheimer in 1966. The switch from scholar-intellectual to action-intellectual offended many of the mathematicians. Even worse, Kaysen and the trustees announced that they intended to found a New School of Social Sciences. "We know more about the atom than about ourselves," Kaysen says, "and the consequences are everywhere to be seen."

The faculty resented not being consulted on his plans, but at first Kaysen calmed them by moving slowly. Not until 1970 did he make his first appointment to the School of Social Science--naming Anthropologist Clifford Geertz as head--and it received no opposition. Last October, however, when he decided to nominate Bellah, he aroused that special combination of incandescent anger and pettiness of which large intellects are sometimes capable.

Symbols. For a "hard" scientist, Bellah's work made an easy target. He does not rely on mathematical models or statistical samples. He is a comparative and historical sociologist who "makes sense of other people's data." His interest in religion, in fact, may be one reason he is held in low esteem by some scientists. As Institute Physicist Freeman Dyson notes: "There are a lot of scientists who consider religion as a childhood disease." Logician Morton White dismissed Bellah's work as "pedestrian and pretentious." Mathematician Andre Weil called him "not of the intellectual and academic quality of a professor at the institute." When Geertz challenged their credentials to judge, White retorted: "This guy doesn't write in Chinese, in Japanese, or in mathematical symbols we can't understand. This wasn't a case of no spikka da English."

To resolve the dispute, the opinion of five outside scholars was sought. Three experts in his specialty endorsed him heartily; the other two had reservations. That convinced the mathematicians that Bellah could not be first rate. By 14 to 7 the faculty urged Kaysen to withdraw the nomination. He refused, and the trustees appointed Bellah.

That incensed most of the faculty. "This is an outrageous breach of procedure," declared Classical Philosopher Harold F. Cherniss of the School of Historical Studies. Dissenters mailed copies of the minutes of faculty discussions to sympathetic colleagues. They also sent letters critical of Bellah's work to the New York Times, a step that Bellah called "contemptible." Then they demanded that the trustees appoint an outside commission to evaluate Kaysen's stewardship--which amounted to a vote of no confidence.

The trustees refused and Kaysen declined to resign. He insists that the faculty vote against Bellah was only advisory, and that the future of the institute will be charted by the director and trustees. He suggests that the faculty "cool down and get back to work." Bellah also has refused to resign. Viewing himself as a scapegoat, he says, half-jokingly: "This place lacks the normal frictions to release aggressions, so they come out in situations like this." Then, rather sadly gazing out of his window, he adds: "You know, this is a somewhat strange place."

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