History Dept. Hopes to Conclude Search for Middle East Scholar

The History Department will try to recommend a tenured specialist in Middle Eastern studies this semester, a position it has not filled for nearly 20 years.

A recommendation would bring to an end a search that has already resulted in one rejected offer, and which one observer says has been highly politicized.

Department Chairman John Womack Jr. '59 said yesterday the search committee for the vacancy submitted its candidates at the end of September. The department may vote on them at its November 17 or December 14 meetings, he added.

"I certainly hope that some time this fall, we can decide to make a strong and positive recommendation," Womack said.

In order to receive tenure at Harvard, a scholar must be recommended by a majority of a department's full professors, and then approved by President Bok.

Harvard is the only American university with a major program in Middle Eastern studies but no tenured historian in the area, specialists said.

Roy W.P. Mottahedeh '60, a full professor in Princeton's Department of Near Eastern studies, turned down an offer of tenure last spring, several professors said yesterday. Mottahedeh could not be reached yesterday to explain his decision.

Departments generally have difficulty making tenured appointments soon after a rejected offer. A search committee usually considers every leading specialist in the field the first time around. If the second round follows immediately, a department might be forced to accept a scholar it had initially rejected.

An outside Middle Eastern historian who asked not to be identified said yesterday. "It was clear that last year's search was politicized, highly divided internally, and not being conducted entirely on academic criteria."

Middle East specialists from other Harvard departments, some of whom sat on the search committee, were eager to find a scholar whose political views of the Middle East mesbed with their own, the historian asserted.

"Who a university has as its voice on the Middle East is pretty important these days," he said, explaining that the current unrest in the area has prompted journalists to elicit regular opinions from academic specialists.

"Harvard's major figures in the Middle East would either like to have an ally or a bish, but they don't want someone else to have an ally," he said.

The leading Middle Eastern scholars at Harvard include Nadav Safran, professor of Government and reportedly a search committee member. A. J. Meyer, professor of Middle Eastern Studies and a lecturer on Economics: and Oleg Grabar '50, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art. All three were out of the country yesterday.

But Edward L. Keenan Jr. '57, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and chairman of the search committee, denied yesterday that politics entered into the committee's discussions.

"The History Department doesn't deal with contemporary problems. I don't think there were any great problems on that score," said Keenan, a specialist in Russian history and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Since the 1964 retirement of Sir H. A. R. Gibb, British scholar, the History Department's instruction in the Middle East has come from junior faculty, visiting professors, and professors with joint appointments.

The department currently offers four courses in Middle Eastern history, all taught by Thomas Philipp, who has a year-long appointment as lecturer.

Keenan attributed the department's long period without a senior Middle Eastern specialist to the difficulty of finding a replacement for Gibb in what he called a "somewhat exotic field.