Transition at M.l.T.

As a fount of military research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the nation's major defense contractors. Military money makes up a big part of the university's budget, but Provost Jerome B. Wiesner is far from pleased. He thinks M.I.T. is too much in thrall to military-industrial interests --and time after time he has snapped at the hands that feed his university. As President Kennedy's science adviser, he fought for the nuclear test-ban treaty, opposed manned lunar exploration and launched one of the first big probes of dangerous pesticides. A critic of U.S. policy in Viet Nam, he was a major organizer of opposition to the ABM in 1969. Last week M.I.T. chose Wiesner, 55, to become its new president.

The choice reflects M.I.T.'s slow transition from dependence on military research to greater independence in harnessing technology for social needs. In his five years as provost, Wiesner has played a leading role in helping M.I.T.'s outgoing President Howard W. Johnson begin that transition--an agonizing process in the midst of inflation and shrinking Government research funds.

Wrong Priorities. A brilliant electrical engineer with degrees from the University of Michigan. Wiesner did basic work that helped develop the long-range radar of the DEW line. He favors pure research, which sometimes has potential military applications. "How else can we decide whether to build these things?" he asks. By contrast, he opposes university work on weapons hardware and complains, "It is very hard for us to look to Government for support in areas like urban problems and educational research. The Government doesn't have the right priorities."

Wiesner's liberal views were one factor that helped deny him the M.I.T. presidency five years ago when the trustees passed him up in favor of the less controversial Johnson, an economist and expert on industrial relations. Johnson promptly made Wiesner his chief academic officer. Together they handled student disruptions with great skill. They also began moving the university with such innovations as environmental studies and a center for visual arts.

Wrong Stereotype. Johnson, now 48, soon found that the pressures were frustrating his yen for long-range thinking. "For too many college presidents the long run is next Monday," he said last September as he announced his impending retirement. Johnson will replace James R. Killian Jr. (Eisenhower's science adviser) in the part-time post of chairman of the M.I.T. Corporation. Under an understanding becoming common between college presidents and their boards, Wiesner himself expects to serve as president for only five years.

A usually affable man, Wiesner has a streak of impatience that makes him walk out of boring meetings. He relaxes aboard a yet unchristened 23-ft. sailboat with a dinghy named Neutron. But he usually puts in two hours of early morning reading at his home in nearby Watertown before cooking breakfast for his family and churning off to the M.I.T. campus for his daily blitz of telephone calls and meetings. His abiding interest in education has led him to campaign successfully for election to the Watertown school board.

Wiesner irks M.I.T. radicals because his antiwar credentials make it hard to stereotype him. The school's radical linguist Noam Chomsky, in fact, calls Wiesner "the best choice." More conservative faculty members agree, if only because during student demonstrations Wiesner can usually be found out front, arguing with the leaders. Until the nation's official priorities catch up with his own, Wiesner is likely to continue arguing with political leaders as well.

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