Professor Under Fire

In the mid-1970s, a congressional investigation discovered that the Central Intelligence Agency was covertly funding hundreds of academic research projects—notably books—in the United States and abroad in order to counter Soviet propaganda efforts.

This discovery led to a change in regulations at Harvard, which, out of concern for academic independence, issued a set of guidelines in 1977 that required professors to report to the University if they were being funded by the CIA or other intelligence agencies.

According to this new policy, if the grants compromised academic freedom, the scholars would not be allowed to make use of the funds.

The regulatory change provided the backdrop for a scandal in 1985, when then-Professor of Middle Eastern Studies Nadav Safran was discovered to have received more than $150,000 of confidential CIA grants for academic purposes.

On October 10, 1985, then-Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence announced an investigation into Safran’s funding sources, discovering that he had received $45,700 from the CIA to fund a conference on Islamic fundamentalism without notifying the University.

The conference, which was scheduled to be held on October 15 and 16, 1985, at the Faculty Club, went on as usual. But many faculty members were “very unhappy” to learn about the questionable grants that funded the conference, according to then-Assistant History Professor Zachary Lockman, who is now a professor at New York University.

“We thought that [it raised] issues for scholars in general,” Lockman said, adding that “it needs to be clear that it’s not acceptable to take undisclosed funding from an intelligence agency.”

Thirteen of the 25 scheduled speakers boycotted the conference after hearing of the confidential funding. In fact, one of the professors returned to Cairo immediately after arriving in Cambridge.

Upon learning of the CIA funding, a participant of the conference, David Lelyveld, expressed his concerns over the confidential funding with regard to its potential impact on academic independence in a letter to Safran and The Crimson in 1985.

“The principle of the autonomy of academic inquiry is, I believe, seriously compromised by entangling it with the gathering of intelligence,” Lelyveld wrote.

At a time when the United States government supported then-Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who was described by The Economist as a “fundamentalist Sunni dictator,” it is even more important to be clear about academic independence, Lelyveld added in his letter.

But this controversy was not the end of Safran’s run-ins with other faculty.

Immediately after the disclosure of the funds Safran used for his conference, it was revealed that he also received $107,430 in April 1982 for another research project, which turned into a book in 1985. The book, “Saudi Arabia, The Ceaseless Quest for Security,” also neglected to mention the CIA funding.

Safran’s 1982 contract with the CIA said that the intelligence agency had the right to review and approve the book before its publication, and that its role in funding the book would not be disclosed.

Although Lockman said that he found the book to be unbiased, secretly taking funds from a government agency compromised the academic impartiality of Safran’s work.

However, a three-month investigation by Spence revealed that Safran did report his CIA funding to the FAS Dean serving before Spence, Henry Rosovsky.

Spence found the former Dean at fault for failing to respond to Safran’s disclosure. The Harvard University Press, which published Safran’s book, also found itself at fault since it did not call attention to the CIA funding when Safran informed the Press of this sponsorship.

Although Safran was in the end not reprimanded for receiving CIA funding for his book, the University found him responsible for failing to disclose his funding sources for the conference.

Subsequently, Safran resigned as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies but retained professorship after the investigation, a position he held before retiring a year prior to his death in 2003.

According to Lockman, universities have not adequately addressed their links to government funding to this day, adding that educational institutions have to be careful about encouraging scholars to receive state funding and avoid any research agenda set by government agencies.

Today, government agencies are an important source of funding for professors at the Kennedy School, according to Kennedy School Associate Professor Matthew Bunn, who received funding from the government for his research on nuclear terrorism.

But currently, the University now has an extra layer of scrutiny and review, according to Kennedy School Professor Leonard D.B. Herman.

Acceptance of funding from government intelligence agencies now requires “aggressive disclosure” to the Dean, Herman added.

Further, the University has a contractual agreement with government agencies requiring the latter to respect the academic independence of scholars, according to Ashton B. Carter, professor of science and international affairs.

The agreement stipulates that government agencies have the right to preview the research and make suggestions before its publication, but they do not have the right to either suppress or modify the research. Moreover, the University considers the suggestions of agencies, but it does not make itself obligated to conform to them.

According to Carter, he has received more than two dozen grants from the government. Only once did a government agency try to pressure him into changing a manuscript, he said, because the agency did not approve of one chapter of Carter's report. Carter added that he reminded the agency of the University’s policy of academic independence. Eventually the report was publishedunmodified in the mid-1990s.

It is legitimate to receive funding from the government as long as government agencies openly support unclassified research, another Kennedy School professor, Joseph S. Nye, said.

—Staff writer Sirui Li can be reached at sli@college.harvard.edu.