THE CIA AT HARVARD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100020035-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2010
• Sequence Number: 35
• Publication Date: December 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100020035-0
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ON PAG BOSTON GLOBE
3 December 1985
The CIA at Harvard
The case of a Harvard professor who took
money from the CIA raises. grave questions
about scholarly integrity and about the proper
relations between universities and intelli-
gence agencies.
Nadav Safran, the director of Harvard's
Center for Middle Eastern Studies, received
$100,000 from the CIA to write a book about
Saudi Arabia and $45,000 to fund a confer-:
ence on Islamic fundamentalism at the Har-
vard center. Safran did not disclose the CIA
funding until the Harvard administration
made him disclose it.
Safran seems to have violated Harvard's
rules on the arrangements a faculty member
should make when taking money from the
CIA. Harvard requires that all contracts go
through the university and that they be overt.
Some of Safran's colleagues have asked
him to resign, and the university has conduct-
ed a review of the matter. What Harvard de-
cides to do in the egregious case of Safran is
primarily an internal matter. A larger and
more crucial issue was raised in a letter writ-
ten by 20 graduate students at the center who
want Harvard to change its policy.
Rather than having the university enforce
its guidelines more carefully or change its pro-
cedures for channeling CIA. funds, they want
the center to cease taking money from intelli-
gence agencies altogether.
Their proposal makes sense, and should be
applied not only to the Harvard Center for
Middle Eastern Studies, but to all scholars
and academic Institutions.
In the case of the center, the harm done by
Safran's behavior is clear and explicit. For-
eign scholars attending the conference on
Islamic fundamentalism were shocked and
compromised by the disclosure of CIA fund-
ing. One, an Egyptian, disembarked from a
long plane trip, learned of the scandal, and
immediately booked a return flight to Cairo.
Graduate students at the center risk having
their research projects abroad canceled. In a
broader sense, anyone associated with the
center. or with Harvard itself, has come under
a cloud of suspicion.
These consequences are bad enough, yet
they are only the inconveniences of a tainted
reputation. The worst damage done to schol-
ars and students when a university permits
them to sign contracts with an intelligence
service is a mutation of their professional pur-
pose.
In totalitarian societies, scholars and Intel-
lectuals are not allowed to pursue truth for its
own sake; they are expected, and coerced, to
work for the state. In an open society, schol-
ars. teachers and intellectuals should be able
to think freely - and this means being free of
service to the state. The scholar who works for
a government intelligence agency ceases to be
an Independent spirit, a true scholar.
This is not a matter of appearances, but of,
essence.
Approved For Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100020035-0