Former Middle East Center Director Dies

Nadav Safran, an expert in Arab politics and controversial former director of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies who resigned his post after accepting grants from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), died Saturday in State College, Pa. of cancer. He was 77.

Safran was the Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies. Gurney Professor of History Roy P. Mottahedeh ’60, who directed the center after Safran’s resignation, called him an expert in the politics of the modern middle east and the Arab-Israeli conflict. He was “one of the luminaries of the field” of modern Middle Eastern politics, Mottahedeh said.

In 1982, Safran agreed to a $107,430 book contract with the CIA that granted the agency the right to censor the book and required that Safran not reveal the CIA funding.

The book, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security, was published in 1985 by Harvard University Press.

Safran did properly disclose this to then Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky, according to a three-month investigation in 1985 by Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence. Rovosky made “administrative errors” in failing to review the terms of the contract and not responding to Safran’s disclosure, Spence determined.

Spence found Safran at fault for failing to report a $45,700 grant from the CIA for an October 1985 conference on Islam politics. Safran resigned as director of the center following Spence’s investigation, retaining his professorship.

Still, Spence’s report praised Safran, saying that “his erudition and objectivity as a scholar have not been questioned and are not in question despite the recent controversy.” Spence said he accepted the resignation with “sadness and deep reservation.”

Safran was born in Cairo in 1925 and was of oriental Jewish heritage. He fought in the war for Israeli independence, Mottahedeh said. But he “remained very sentimentally attached to Egypt” and was very moved when he went back in the middle of his life.

He attended Brandeis University, graduating in 1954, and received his doctorate from Harvard in 1958.

Mottahedeh described Safran as a “very affable” man who was “very good at handling people who had strong pro-Arab or pro-Israeli views.”

He taught for a few more years after his resignation as director of the center and was disappointed that the controversy followed him.

Later in life, he was interested in painting, according to Mottahedeh.

He is survived by three daughters—Abigail of Montclair, N.J., Nina of Lemont, Pa. and Elizabeth of Portland, Ore.—several siblings in Israel, two grandchildren and ex-wife Anita Safran.

—Rafe H. Kinsey contributed to the reporting of this story.