Getting ahold of Burton S. Dreben '49 is like playing a shell game.

You might try his Emerson Hall office, where he works as Pierce Professor of Philosophy. You could call University Hall, where Dreben serves as special assistant to the Dean of the Faculty. Or you could drop by 78 Mt. Aubum St., headquarters of the prestigious Society of Fellows, of which Dreben is in charge.

But the chances are you won't find him anywhere Dreben, one of the Faculty's busiest members, seems to travel from role to role in a blur that rarely materializes in any one office.

Elusiveness suits Dreben fine. "He is not a person who seeks the limelight. If he had a choice, he would rather be, as the Japanese say, behind the screen," says Dreben's administrative boss and close friend. Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky

Dreben's behind-the-screen activities have led to his reputation as one of the most powerful members of the Faculty, a reputation even he is hard pressed to dismiss. "I am constantly aware that someone in my position could seem to have some kind of undue influence," Dreben says. "Over the past 11 years I have played the role of being a serious advisor to the dean one of several," he adds.

Rosovsky simply calls Dreben "a powerful voice in the dean's office"

Ad Hoc Committees

The chief source of Dreben's power is his role of assembling scholars to sit on Harvard's ad hoc committees. These are groups composed of both inside and outside professors, which review every departmental tenure nomination and make a recommendation to President Bok

The committees are very influential and each year habitually help Bok to decide to turn down three or four of the approximately 20 nominations advanced by the departments for the lifetime positions. They are supposed to be independent sources of counsel designed to guard against departmental "insidership" in pushing a particular candidate.

But professors acknowledge that Dreben's unusual task of drawing up these committees and serving on them ex officio gives him unusual influence in batting down a department's nomination.

"There is no room for him to be kingmaker. There is room for him to be a destroyer of excessive ambitions," says John D. Montgomery, chairman of the Government Department, who deals periodically with Dreben on appointment matters.

For his part, Dreben says, "I know at times I have been criticized for perhaps showing bias. But--and I don't want to sound Pollyannish--all of us engaged in the process try very hard to get as strong an independent committee as we can."

"If a department really wants to fool the president and dean, it can do it," Dreben adds. "I don't sit there like some intelligence officer."

Dreben, in general, likens his administrative duties to those of "a glorified clerk." His appearance seems to bear out this characterization. Short and balding at 56 years of age. Dreben sits behind a huge desk in his Emerson Hall office, surrounded by swarms of paper, manuscripts and envelopes--many of them stamped "Confidential."

But behind Dreben's unprepossessing appearance is a mind described as sharp, broadminded--and unconventional And his influence is by no means limited to tenure matters