Word: safran
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Scholars at the Center as well as specialists across the country agree the CIA affair has deflected attention away from significant challenges facing the Center. The scholars say Safran's CIA ties and style of leadership leave a legacy of suspicion and factionalization which will plague the Center in the years to come. But they also say financing Middle Eastern studies at a time when revenue from petroleum production has plummetted and the Center's own "tired blood" will present its most difficult tests...
Observers of the Center agree that the Center needs a strong director to quell the feuding there, put its fundraising on track, and ensure that research and teaching are not ignored. Several say such leadership is essential to reestablishing what they call the invigorated atmosphere that Safran brought about during his first years there...
During the weeks when scholars began discussing Safran's links to the CIA, Professor of Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies Nur O. Yalman warned that a perceived connection between the University and the CIA would make Harvard scholars working in the Middle East inviting targets for anti-American sentiment...
According to a source familiar with the center, Yalman's prediction proved true several weeks ago when Egyptian security officers detained and questioned an Egyptologist with ties to the University. Although the Egyptologist, Bassim Zaki, could not be reached for comment, the source says his interrogation focused on Safran's CIA contracts...
Amid the controversy over his use of CIA money, Safran and some of his supporters asserted that attacks on the Egyptian-born Jew had more to do with his religion and sympathies to Israel than with any purported wrongdoing...