Scientific Dissent

When the Soviet government last week banished dissident Andrei D. Sakharov to a city closed to Westerners, they put him out of sight but not out of the minds of scientists and university officials in the United States.

President Bok and four other university presidents sent a cable of protest Thursday afternoon to Soviet Premier Leonid I. Brezhnev, Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin, and Anatoly P. Alexandrov, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Calling the Nobel prize-winning physicist "a distinguished scientist who has dedicated his life for the past ten years to the cause of human freedom and justice," the cable urged the Soviets to "reconsider your harsh treatment against one of the world's greatest human beings."

Earlier in the week, 29 physicists from Harvard and 56 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent a telegram to Alexandrov warning that Sakharov's banishment, if not reversed, "will inevitably lead to a serious deterioration" in scientific exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union.

That deterioration has begun already, scientists and government officials said yesterday.

W. Murray Todd, executive director of the National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) commission on international relations, said yesterday the NAS is deferring "all high level and group activities that are already scheduled" between the United States and Russia.

But he added that the academy is "neither encouraging or discouraging" individual scientists from carrying through previously-made plans to go to the Soviet Union.

The U.S. government has made "substantial cutbacks" in scientific and technological exchange programs, a State Department official said yesterday.

He added that while the Soviets expected the U.S. government to respond strongly, they "look more seriously" at protests and appeals from scientists.

One of those scientists, Sheldon L. Glashow, professor of Physics and 1979 Nobel Laureate, said yesterday the "highly destructive continuation of outrageous behavior by a hooligan government" will "put an extreme damper on (scientific) exchanges."

Bertrand I. Halperin, professor of Physics, agreed, saying, "There will be many scientists who will refuse to participate in existing programs."