A recent executive order on foreign intelligence allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to enter into contracts with universities will have little effect on Harvard, Judith O. Semper, assistant director of the Office for Research and Contracts, said yesterday.

The order, issued by President Ford on February 18, stipulates that the CIA may enter into contracts with universities only if "CIA sponsorship is known to the appropriate senior officials of the academic institutions and to senior project officials."

A CIA spokesman said yesterday that under the new order the CIA may still enter into contracts with universities involving classified material, but he would not comment on the number of such universities involved in such contracts.

Criteria for Harvard's acceptance of sponsored research, published in December, 1970, state that the University may not "accept research which carries security classification, requires security clearance of University personnel, or otherwise precludes general publication of results."

Semper said the most recent contract with the CIA ran from 1967 to 1968 and called for a study of three dimensional computer display.