Business-Government Center Names Publisher As Director

A prominent publisher and economist will be the first director of a new Kennedy School of Government center to study the interplay of business and government, the school announced yesterday.

The new top official of the K-School's Business and Government Center is Winthrop Knowlton '53, the former chief executive of the publishing company Harper and Row and an assistant secretary of the treasury during the Johnson administaration.

The center was conceived five years ago to improve relations between corporate and government executives.

"We will be training students on the intersection between business and government, but just as important, we will be bringing public and private sector people here to work out a better understanding of each other's predicaments," Knowlton explained yesterday.

The center represents an unusual link between the K-School and the Business School, borrowing faculty from the B-School and offering programs to business students.

No other University project links business and government as the center does, Knowlton said.

Extensive Plans

With an initial endowment of about $4 million, the center will create several new faculty positions, a library, regular seminars for business and government executives, and research grants.

Currently occupying temporary space in the K-School, the center will move into the school's planned Eliot St. extension. Construction in the annex is scheduled to begin next month, and its opening is slated for December 1983.

K-School Associate Dean Ira A. Jackson '70 yesterday cited Knowlton's varied background to explain his selection as the center's director. "We were looking for someone who had experience and credibility in both the public and private sectors," Jackson said, calling Knowlton "a perfect choice."

Research Plans

Topics on the center's initial research agenda include regulatory reform, improving the American economy's international com- petitiveness, and examining the impact of public policy on private investors.

The center grew out of a 1977 symposium on business and public policy chaired by President Bok.

Knowlton is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and a former president of Helsinki Watch, an international human-rights monitoring group. He is also the author of three books on finance and his first novel will be published next year.

Although he has moved to Cambridge, Knowlton said he will remain Harper and Row's chairman of the board, a part-time post, because both he and the K-School want him to keep a link to the business community