Easy Out

AFTER WAITING AND waiting--like the business executive in the TV and who didn't use Federal Express--we have finally been rewarded with Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence's authoritative report on the dicey little matter of Middle Eastern Studies Center Director Nadav Safran and his more than $150,000 in Central Intelligence Agency grants.

Now, almost three months after the controversy broke, we are still waiting. The Spence report, a six-page document that meticulously and agonizingly recounts and then parcels out blame for Safran's acceptance and handling of two CIA contracts, fails to tackle almost all the ethical questions that, if left unanswered, may leave Harvard with no credibility in Middle East studies.

The report specifically discusses Safran's handling of a $45,700 grant from the CIA to sponsor an October conference on Islamic politics and a $107,430 CIA grant Safran accepted in 1982 for work on Saudi Arabia. In the first instance, Safran did not tell conference participants or the University that the conference was CIA-backed. In the second instance, Safran consciously avoided mentioning CIA funding in a book whose research was conducted largely with agency funds. And in the contract for the book, he granted the CIA censorship rights over his work and agreed to keep the funding secret.

Such actions leave Safran virtually alone among American Middle East specialists, and make him possibly the only Harvard Middle East scholar to accept CIA funding in two decades. CIA funding for Middle Eastern studies is problematic at best; but the professor took a possible problem and made it into a certain breach of ethics by attempting to cover up his actions.

Safran has resigned in the wake of these revelations, but his resignation represented the bare minimum punishment he deserved for his actions. In fact, the report is careful to avoid giving even a hint that Safran's departure was a punishment at all. Beyond any nitpicking question of administrative correctness, the fact remains that in two instances Safran deceived the University and the academic community at large.

FOR ALL THE time that Spence left in question the reputation of Safran and Harvard's center, one would have expected the report to agressively attack a wide array of concerns raised within the University and the Middle East studies community in the wake of the disclosures. Spence's report should also have prepared for the future health of the center by making clear that the University will not stand for activities that violate is critical standards of academic freedom. That the report did neither of these things bodes ill for the future credibility of the center, Safran, and Harvard as a whole.

Scholars have questioned whether Safran should have accepted CIA funds at all, in light of the effect any perceived connection with the agency could have on academic work in a region of the world that can safely be described as a political powderkeg.

A number of scholars, invited to the October conference at Harvard's Faculty Club, were also outraged that Safran did not tell them the conference was CIA-backed. Others questioned the ethics of a world-renowned scholar who would blithely circumvent guidelines for the preservation of academic freedom after Harvard had led a national fight in Washington, D.C. last year to preserve just those rights. Still others wondered how Safran could have violated an unwritten rule of ethics and allowed his book, "Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security," published last fall by Harvard University Press, to go to print without noting the CIA sponsorship.

Spence does not adequately answer any of these concerns. Instead, the dean offers a fuller account of his October report on Safran's conference contract, concluding in muted tones that there were "problems" with his failure to inform the participants of the CIA funding, his failure to tell the University of the funding as required, and his failure to pay Harvard a negotiated fee for overhead costs.

A good example of the report's weakness comes from its most galling passage, in which three professors are attacked who had the courage to publicly call for Safran to step down from his post. Did Spence seriously expect scholars deeply involved in this mess to keep quiet while he dragged his heels on the issue?

We are left with the sour feeling that Harvard was much more concerned with finding an easy way out of a sticky controversy than it was with tackling the real problems raised by Safran's actions.