Harvard Faculty members are not being drawn away. But the Harvard magnetism has lost its attractive force for many academics at other universities. Fifty years ago, perhaps, middle-aged professors sat around and waited for the call to Harvard. These days, the call often goes unheard. The 1968 Dunlop Report noted that in the previous decade, about half of Harvard's offers to professors at other universities were refused. The report concluded that "once a man is settled and reasonably successful, it is hard to move him either to or away from Harvard."

If that is true, Harvard should be grooming its junior Faculty members for tenured positions. Instead, Harvard is an export factory which supplies the nation's universities with many of their brightest young professors. As its budding scholars fall off the vine, Harvard goes on looking for "the best man available anywhere in the world" to fill each opening. That is why this year, for instance, the History Department failed to renew the contracts of three junior Faculty members and extended futile offers to distinguished European historians who replied that they like it where they are.

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Dear Miss Getachair,

Why be modest? I am a bright young historian of modern Europe. For several years I have been working on a brilliant book which, alas, is still in manuscript. Now my contract is up for renewal and my department informs me that it wants a book, not a manuscript. The chairman keeps adumbrating something called the Graustein formula which, coupled with the implications of the Dunlop Report, means (or so he says) that there is no longer a place for me at Harvard. Is he telling the truth? What is this Graustein formula, and what does it want from me?   UNAPPRECIATED

Dear Unappreciated,

The Graustein formula is a rule. Harvard has many rules. When they don't want to give you something, they cite a rule. When they want to give you something, they find a way to bypass the rule. You wanted something that they didn't want to give you.

NAMED AFTER the Harvard mathematician who did the statistical work, the Graustein formula was given to Harvard by the influential Committee of Eight in 1938. Professor Graustein estimated that the average tenured Faculty member stays at Harvard for 34 years. He then computed the number of annual appointments each department must make to remain at its current size. That figure--"the Graustein number"--more or less determines the frequency of appointments in each department. For example, if a department had 17 tenured members in 1938, it would be entitled to appoint a new member every other year.

Because new departments and new fields within departments have developed since 1938, and because life in general does not always conform to written rules, the Dean of the Faculty must, in his words, apply the Graustein formula "flexibly." If a department has a chance to pick up a hotshot professor, it can borrow ahead on its Graustein number and get him while he's available, even if the next scheduled appointment in the department is several months or years hence. If a patron donates endowed chairs to a specific department, or if a particular field grows rapidly, the Dean has two options. He can bring in new professors "above the line," and change the department's Graustein number. Or he can make "below the line" appointments, hiring a few extra people and post-poning the decision to replace them until the time of their retirement.

"It's a useful managerial tool," Dean Dunlop commented last week. He said that the formula has three major advantages: it works to prevent retiring professors from hand-picking their successors; it enables departments to adjust to changing fields of study; and, if handled properly, it creates an even age distribution in the Faculty.

The Graustein number is also a good figure for a department chairman to have ready when a disappointed assistant professor asks why he was not rehired. But this institutionalized mystification fools no one. "The Graustein is simply a clothesline to hang appointments on," quipped one assistant professor.

One assistant professor of History whose appointment was hanged this year is Charles S. Maier '60. Maier was appointed an instructor in Spring 1967. In Fall 1969, after the enactment of the Dunlop Report's recommendation to phase out the position of instructor, Maier became an assistant professor. Under the provisions of the changeover period, he opted for a four-year term. His contract came up for renewal this year, one year before its fourth and final year, 1972-3.

MAIER HOPED to be promoted to the tenured rank of professor. Because he had already taught for more than five years, he was not eligible for a three-year term appointment. Before the Dunlop Report, the scholar shinnying up the Harvard Great Chain of Being served five years as an instructor and then, if his contract was renewed, another three years as an assistant professor. A regulation of the American Association of University Professors requires universities to grant tenure to academics who have taught at the school for eight years. So, after serving his initial eight years, the assistant professor in the pre-Dunlop era would, if promoted, receive tenure and the title of associate professor.

Under the new, post-Dunlop system, a person begins as an assistant professor with a five-year contract. After those five years are up, he is promoted (if he is lucky) to associate professor, which is now a non-tenured position. When that three-year contract expires, he is ready to become a tenured full professor.

When should an assistant professor be made an associate professor? The Dunlop Report is deliberately vague on that point. "Appointments to this rank should be limited to those who merit serious consideration for promotion to tenure," the Dunlop Report recommended. Elaborating on this point, Dunlop said last week, "There are two requirements. First, a person must be of a quality, given a further period of development, likely to show the kind of quality we are looking for in tenure appointments. Second, there must be reasonable prospects of a permanency."