NADAV SAFRAN: A Case Study

Disclosures that a Harvard professor last year accepted money from the Central Intelligence Agency without notifying the University opened up a Pandora's Box of issues surrounding government-funded research. University professors and administrators across the country began questioning whether the federal government's ties with scholars threaten academic integrity.

Here is a brief recap of the case surrounding Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies Nadav Safran, the Harvard faculty member who prompted the recent debate:

.October 10, 1985--Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences A. Michael Spence says he is conducting an investigation into Safran's use of a $50,000 grant from the CIA to fund an academic conference. Spence expresses concern that Safran may not have reported the funding to the University.

.October 11, 1985--It is revealed that Safran took a second CIA grant for more than $100,000 to fund a book on Saudi Arabia without revealing the grant's source in the Harvard University Press publication.

.October 12, 1985--A copy of Safran's contract with CIA reveals that the professor gave the spy agency the right to pre-publication review of his book.

.October 15, 1985--Three members of the faculty committee that oversees the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, which Safran directs, call on the professor to resign. In the wake of revelations that the CIA will fund a conference on Islamic fundamentalism, many scholars, including several from the Middle East, withdraw from the two-day event.

.October 16, 1985--The conference goes on at the Faculty Club despite the fact that 13 participants withdrew; Dean Spence announces he will investigate the incident.

.October 21, 1985--Several professors ask Dean Spence to produce guidlines as to how the Center for Middle Eastern Studies can use grants from agencies like the CIA.

.January 6, 1986--Spence issues a report which faults Safran for misreporting the conference grant, but clears him of any wrongdoing in the contract with his CIA-funded book.