GSAS Alumni Head Resigns; Questions New Mid-East Chair

The chairman of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) alumni group resigned last month, protesting the unusual research appointment of a former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) affiliate which he charges was made as a condition of a Saudi businessman's $1 million gift to Harvard.

Arnold M. Soloway, who served this past year as chairman of the Graduate Society Council, the GSAS's alumni organization, criticized last spring's appointment of Walid Khalidi--a former aide to PLO head Yasser Arafat--to an open-ended research post at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, calling it a "moral failing" on Harvard's part.

Charging that the anonymous gift was conditional on Khalidi's appointment. Soloway said in an interview yesterday that "the University allowed outside forces to determine an appointment--that's corruption."

Soloway first questioned the University's actions in April one year after Khalidi was appointed when he discovered that there had been no search committee for the new chair.

Soloway said that he was speaking since others could not.

"There are other members of the faculty that objected too but they remained quiet," he added.

GSAS Dean Edward L. Keenan and the nine members of the committee for Middle Eastern Studies were unavailable for comment yesterday, and several Harvard officials, including Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky, declined to make a statement on either Khalidi's appointment or Soloway's resignation.

When the new chair was established last spring. Rosovsky said that the gift reached from a search by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies for funds to support Khalidi's work, and that upon the Palestinian's retirement a new professorship would be established.

Khalidi is an expert in Mideast politics and has held academic posts all over the world. He had served as a visiting professor at Harvard for four years until his appointment as a half-time research fellow last February

In his letter of resignation. Soloway, who had only a month before his one year term ended, expressed deep regret that Harvard "made its good and revered name available for the price of $1 million."

He added that although the University cannot be said to have sold its honor" because the length of Khalidi's appointment is limited to no more than 10 years, "the University merely refused its honor for five to seven years in return for the million dollars from Saudi Arabia "He said yesterday" if appointments are going to be determined in that way then the University is being demgrated...that is the kind of thing that makes me bristle"

The reason for his resignation. Soloway said, was that he could not continue to raise money for the GSAS--one of his chief responsibilities as chairman "if this is the kind of moral climate that prevails in this institution." Soloway said

But Soloway said that he does not intend to sever all times with the University "I love Harvard. I think [my resignation] is a conscience raising exercise. I don't think Harvard is corrupt--anybody makes mistakes," he said, adding. "I don't feel this is characteristic, but should not be repeated.