An Imperfect Union

THE CIA and the K-School are two very different institutions with one thing in common. Although both were founded with noble aims in mind, both have since been sullied by wrongful actions incompatible with their initial missions. This is not to compare the murders of foreign heads of state and overthrows of regimes with the too often too cozy relationship between the K-School, Big Government and Big Donors. But it is cause for concern when the CIA and K-School link up, as it was announced last week they would under the auspices of a new program to be funded by the agency and administered by the K-School.

This relationship raises questions not only because ties between secretive government agencies and academia are inherently troubling, but also because this union is between organizations with checkered pasts. Harvard and the Kennedy School should not have forgotten their liberal natures once again by making an institutional link with a body as reprehensible as the CIA. Under the terms of the agreement, the CIA will fund a $1.2 million, three-year Kennedy School study assessing the use to which policymakers put the agency's intelligence information. The funding also will pay for special two-week "executive training sessions," presumably modeled after other "executive training sessions" for government officials ranging from bureacrats in the Education Department to Air Force colonels, that the K-School will hold once a year for senior CIA analysts.

After the deception and secrecy surrounding CIA funding of research projects by Harvard professors Nadav Safran and Samuel P. Huntington, the unprecedented openness of the new program would seem to justify a suspension of the skepticism that should accompany activities involving the CIA. The CIA is acknowledging itself as the source of funding for a study and has agreed to let the results be published. But by that action the CIA meets only the bare minimum of requirements necessary for any liberal institution.

Doubts must still linger. A CIA analyst will be part of the K-School research team, and his role is as yet undefined. How will he aid such eminent scholars as Professors Richard Neustadt, Ernest May and Gregory Treverton? Given the inherent tension between a highly secretive, intelligence-gathering branch of the government and a private research institution, the role of this analyst needs to be spelled out so as to prevent abuses of academic freedom that might benefit only the CIA.

The greatest concern must be expressed over the implications of an institutional link between the CIA and Harvard. The CIA, with its secretive nature and its history of undermining the foreign policy aims of our nation's elected representatives--as well as basic international law--should not receive the legitimacy of associating itelf with one of the world's leading institutions of liberal education. The recent Iran-contra affair patently showed how the CIA can corrupt U.S. foreign policy.

Harvard most likely could get the money elsewhere if this study is worthwhile. According to spokesmen, the CIA is not giving the researchers any special access. It is unfortunate that the University in its efforts to achieve a small victory for openness linked itself with a body that in its penchant for secrecy has corrupted its noble aim of helping to advance the interests of democracy.