Word: cfia
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...weeks after the American hostages touched down in Algiers, Elizabeth Ann Swift '62 accepted an offer to come to Harvard as a fellow at the Center for International Affairs (CFIA). There Swift has spent a quiet year, intentionally avoiding the flurry of publication and publicity that has surrounded some of her fellow hostages. Last fall, when Swift shopped for Kennedy School textbooks, her name-emblazoned clipboard turned a few heads in the Coop, but for the most part she has managed to escape attention...
Within the CFIA, however. Swift has won unusual friendship and esteem from her colleagues One of the best liked fellows at the center. Swifts described variously as "warm and outgoing," "energetic" and "extremely intelligent," and one administrator called her "a spark plug member of the group...
...adjective is stressed more vigorously or repeated more frequently than "honesty." "She's a very courageous person with a lot of integrity," one CFIA fellow says, and another adds. "She's one of the most honest women I've ever taet...
This year has been a period of reflection for Swift a period of, as she puts it, "getting back to normal." Although Swift has been reluctant to discuss her experiences publicly--she has repeatedly turned down interviews and on-the-record speaking engagements--her colleagues at the CFIA say she is not hesitant to talk about her captivity in private settings. Says one CFIA fellow, "she takes her experience as part of her life--it is something she could occasionally even make jokes about...
Politically, too, the experience appears to have had a significant impact. Since she has chosen to remain in the foreign service. Swift refuses to discuss publicly her political perspectives, but CFIA colleagues say her experience as a hostage left her deeply disillusioned with some aspects of American foreign policy. Reportedly, Swift's guards showed her documents captured in the embassy which she never knew existed and which seemed to run counter to some of the policies she was working to uphold. "She was deceived, double-crossed," one colleague says. "She has lost a few of her illusions...