Absence of Intelligence

When the Harvard faculty voted 385-25 to kick ROTC off campus in 1969, Psychology Professor Jerome S. Bruner noted that "times have changed, and the role of the military in the university is in need of reexamination." The intent of the students taking over Mass Hall that year was to force this reexamination.

Well, times have changed. So much so that when the Kennedy School of Government began to train CIA agents this semester, it failed to provoke any student or faculty reaction at all--much less a reexamination of the CIA's role at Harvard.

The three-year program, paid for by a $400,000 annual grant from the CIA, will help senior CIA officers develop case studies on the link between intelligence and policy-making. These case studies will be used by the CIA to teach officers about how their information-gathering influences government policy decisions. Senior CIA official Bill Klein, currently the program's only participant, is taking classes at the Kennedy School.

In an interview last week Steve Singer, spokesman for the Kennedy School, described the purpose behind the program: CIA men "may understand the intricacies of how decisions are made in Bulgaria, but not at all in Washington D.C."

The CIA's arrival on campus was the most remarkable non-event of the year. An occurence that should have provoked student outrage, defensive statements by the Kennedy School, nasty letters to the Crimson, and high-minded remarks from professors on academic freedom, was completely ignored.

The University of California at Santa Barbara reacted differently. When the CIA announced its "officer-in-residence" program there this fall, students took to the streets, struck, and protested for longer than a month--until the political science department scaled back the program. Granted, Harvard's program is far less insidious than Santa Barbara's. There a CIA official with no academic credentials was invited to teach a political science course and take part in faculty seminars.

However, after the scandal two years ago involving professors' links to the CIA, one would expect the Harvard community, too, to be concerned with the role of the CIA on campus. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies Nadav Safran was commissioned by the CIA to write a book and hold a conference--without disclosing his CIA involvement. In the wake of these revelations, Safran was forced to resign from his post as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and President Bok issued guidlines about disclosing CIA funding for academic research.

Unfortunately, the scandal failed to rivet Harvard's attention to the role of the CIA on campus for more than a passing moment. What is wrong with the Harvard community that it can let such a seminal academic issue pass without comment, much less examination? President Bok, who was so concerned with academic freedom last semester, did not issue any public statement on the CIA-training program.

And where were the student activists? Who is going to ask the important ethical questions at Harvard if not this rag-tag bunch of annoying protesters? Where was the faculty? Obviously, some of the most respected Kennedy School faculty members approve of--and are--teaching the CIA. The rest?

The only possible explanation is that the Harvard community considers CIA training so unobjectionable, or at least so comparatively unobjectionable, that it will swallow it without protest.

According to the Kennedy School, we should be happy that CIA agents are getting a Harvard education. Singer describes the benefits of CIA training, by drawing a comparison between the fall of the Shah in Iran and the fall of Marcos in the Philippines. The U.S. government never acted on its knowledge that the Shah was weak, but the government put information to good use in formulating policy towards the Philippines when deciding when to back away from Marcos and support Aquino.

Of course, Singer is right. More intelligent use of information--in the right hands--can improve U.S. foreign policy. However, the beauty of methodological knowledge is that it is value-neutral--and can serve both good or evil ends. After all, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite to build train tunnels.

The Kennedy School is training the CIA to use its intelligence more effectively. Who's to say the CIA won't use this training to push through more operations like the Iran-contra scam? Singer claims that this reasoning is a "redherring." But the salient issue in CIA training is that the CIA often pursues unsavory foreign policy initiatives, like the Iran-contra scam and the overthrow of Allende in Chile in 1973. The CIA is not just another government agency--it deserves extremely close scrutiny.

Although the CIA subverted academic freedom at Harvard as recently as two years ago, theCIA now claims its role is completely above-ground. No classified information will be discussed in the program, and the case studies developed will be available to the public. But the Harvard community should realize that CIA training poses questions of institutional integrity as well as freedom. Will Harvard become a training ground for any government agency, regardless of its ethics? The Business School just made ethics training part of its program of study. The Kennedy School should make such ethical calculations part of its course of action.