March 2, 2001

Winner of a Bidding War Will Gain a Top Historian; Noted Sociologist Leaves Harvard for Boston College

By SCOTT SMALLWOOD

A cold war in sunny L.A.? Marc Trachtenberg, a University of Pennsylvania history professor and a post-World War II expert who is teaching this year in Southern California, is facing a scholar's dream predicament -- a bidding war.

The University of California at Los Angeles has offered a full professorship to keep him there after his visiting-professor stint is over, but Harvard University is also making a play for the historian. And Penn, his home since 1974, isn't rolling over. Talks