The Professors and Qaddafi's Extreme Makeover

What was lost when some of America's finest scholars got paid to buff the Libyan dictator's image?

Photo Illustration by Maayan Pearl; Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images

ByPaul M. Barrett

In 2006 and 2007, a dozen Western intellectuals traveled to the NorthAfrican desert for intimate conversations with the man who likes to callhimself the Brother Leader. Muammar Qaddafi received his visitors in acarpeted Bedouin-style tent, where they sat on plastic chairs and sippedtea while discussing the dictator's thoughts on economics and politics.

The meetings were arranged by the Monitor Group, a Cambridge (Mass.)consulting firm co-founded in 1983 by Michael Porter, the HarvardBusiness School management expert. As Politico first reported on Feb.21, the Qaddafi regime paid Monitor a fee of $3 million a year, plusexpenses, to run what the firm called "a sustained, long-term program toenhance international understanding and appreciation of Libya."Monitor, which has 1,500 employees worldwide, organized roundtables andproduced thick studies on stimulating business in the isolated oilstate. It provided research for a PhD thesis Qaddafi's son Saif al-Islamsubmitted to the London School of Economics.

At one point, the firm proposed a mass-circulation book—for anadditional price of $2.45 million—that according to a Monitor memo would"allow the reader to hear Qaddafi elaborate, in his own words and in conversation with renownedinternational experts, his core ideas on individual freedom, directdemocracy vs. representative democracy, [and] the role of state andreligion."

The book never materialized, but Monitor succeeded in generating plenty of positive press for Libya. In an interview with Businessweekin February 2007, Porter said Saif Qaddafi had helped arrange Monitor'sengagement with Libya. "I have gotten to know Saif quite well," Portersaid. "He was a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics,where he studied with some of the best professors. He's very muchoriented toward making Libya a member of the modern world community."

Monitor brought Benjamin R. Barber, then a professor at the Universityof Maryland, to Libya for three visits. On Aug. 15, 2007, Barberpublished an opinion article in The Washington Post entitled "Qaddafi's Libya: An Ally for America?" Although "written off not long ago as an implacable despot,"Qaddafi "is a complex and adaptive thinker," Barber asserted, "as wellas an efficient, if laid-back autocrat." Joseph Nye, a professor atHarvard's Kennedy School of Government, also met Qaddafi. In December2007 he published an essay in The New Republic in which hedescribed the ruler of Libya since 1969 as "an autocrat" and a past"sponsor of terrorism," but also a man of ideas, "actively seeking a newstrategy" and interested in "direct democracy."

Now that Qaddafi has vowed to hunt down and kill every last dissident inLibya, Monitor's image-buffing campaign has received probing coveragein The Boston Globe and Mother Jones, and thefirm has issued an online apologia. "Given the terrible spectacle ofColonel Qaddafi using force on his own people, it may be difficult toimagine that just a few years ago many saw a period of promise inLibya," the firm said on Mar. 24. "Colonel Qaddafi had renounced terror,forfeited nuclear and chemical weapons and programs, and declaredhimself ready to rejoin the community of nations."

An idea in the abstract may thrill its creator, but an idea that hasbeen tested by reality—and survives intact—can change the world. That'swhy academics who descend from the ivory tower and subject theirtheories to the complications of modern life deserve applause. Provided,of course, that their motivations remain pure. Recent history suggeststhat's a tricky line to walk.

A generation of Ivy League economists was enjoying both professionalesteem and financial industry paychecks until the Wall Street crisis of2008 made them look pretty dumb, if not venal. The Academy Award-winning documentary Inside Joboffered a bipartisan parade of these men—for example, at Harvard, LarrySummers, a Democrat who opposed more oversight of derivatives, alsocollected generous speaking fees from investment banks, while FredericMishkin, a George W. Bush appointee to the Federal Reserve who teachesat Columbia, was paid to co-author a 2006 report praising the Icelandicfinancial system, which subsequently collapsed.

The same could be said for the academics who journeyed to Libya. It'strue that between 2006 and 2008, when Monitor said it did the bulk ofits work, the country's trajectory seemed positive. The U.N. had liftedsanctions in 2003, and the U.S. had resumed full diplomatic relations in2006. The families of victims of the Libyan-engineered Pan Am-Lockerbiebombing of 1988 were paid hundreds of millions of dollars insettlements.

None of that excuses the use of august academic reputations andaffiliations to promote the Qaddafis. Monitor partner Eamonn Kelly saidin an e-mail to Bloomberg Businessweek that the firmregrets "our research in support" of Saif Qaddafi's doctoral thesis. "Wealso regret the proposal submitted to write a book under ColonelQaddafi's name. Although this work was not completed, the very idea was amistake." Kelly said he is leading an internal investigation thatincludes whether Monitor engaged in lobbying without having registeredto represent Libya.

What Monitor did is no different from what K Street "public affairs"shops do every day of the week for dubious foreign governments. Still,the Libya episode leaves a distinctive odor, one that emanates from thecorruption of academic reputation. Harry Lewis, a computer scienceprofessor at Harvard, doesn't like the smell. During a faculty meetingon Apr. 5, he asked the university's president, Drew Faust, "Shouldn'tHarvard acknowledge embarrassment, and might you remind us that when weparlay our status as Harvard professors for personal profit, we can hurtboth the university and all of its members?" Faust responded that shesupports such expressions of concern but also endorses "the widediscretion of all of you in this room … to pursue the directions ofacademic inquiry you choose, and the outside activities and engagementsyou choose."

Harvard's Nye rejects suggestions that he, for one, ought to apologizefor anything. Now a university distinguished service professor, thedefense-policy expert explains in an interview that he visited Tripoliin hopes of nudging Qaddafi toward moderation and encouraging Libyanreformers. The New Republic essay was his idea, notMonitor's, he says, and he disclosed to the magazine that he had beenhired by the consulting firm. Nye won't say what he was paid, citing aconfidentiality clause. "I am confident that I did not cross any ethicalred line," he adds. "I have never supported Qaddafi, and I'm on recordsupporting President Obama's actions to try to push him out."

Professors of Nye's rank do not have to schlep to Tripoli to collect aconsultant's fee. He says he does about a half-dozen paid outside gigs ayear, mostly for management-consulting firms and corporations. Beyondthe extra money, it's got to be flattering to have a head of state—evenan erratic tyrant—show curiosity about your work. Nye wrote that when hevisited Qaddafi's tent, the dictator had five of the professor's bookson hand, including Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.Qaddafi, he wrote, "seems to have become interested in soft power—theart of projecting influence through attraction rather than coercion." Indue time, Qaddafi would demonstrate his abiding attachment to coercion.

Fascination with Nye's theories spilled over to the next generation ofQaddafis. Saif wrote about soft power in his PhD thesis, which wasaccepted by the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2008. In hisacknowledgments, the younger Qaddafi thanked Nye for his advice,according to an online copy of the dissertation.

Nye says he read and commented on only one chapter, something he says heroutinely does for those who write about his theories. The LSE said inMarch it is investigating whether Saif plagiarized parts of his thesis—acontroversy Nye says he knows nothing about. In 2009, after awardingSaif his doctorate in philosophy, the LSE accepted a pledge for a £1.5million ($2.5 million) donation from a charity run by the Qaddafi son,as well as another £1.5 million as part of a contract to train futureLibyan leaders. Howard Davies resigned last month as director of theLSE, admitting that the arrangements with Libya had hurt the school'sreputation.

Porter canceled an interview with Businessweek, citingclass-preparation duties. Barber, now a distinguished senior fellow atDemos, a New York think tank, did not respond to requests for comment.

At least one Monitor superstar confesses to chagrin about Libya. RobertD. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, spent several hourswith the colonel in January 2007. "My hosts were willing to pay mystandard consulting fee, and to be honest, I was curious," Putnam wrotein The Wall Street Journal on Feb. 26. Accompanied by hiswife, Rosemary, Putnam spoke with Qaddafi about "how the development ofcivil society might be applied to democratic reform in Libya." Still,Putnam couldn't tell: "Was this a serious conversation or an elaboratefarce?"

"I came away thinking—hoping—that I had managed to sway Colonel Qaddafiin some small way, but my wife was skeptical," Putnam says. Two monthslater, he was invited back to Tripoli. "But by then," he wrote, "I hadconcluded that the whole exercise was a public-relations stunt, and Ideclined."

One lesson from the Monitor fiasco is that the scholar is wise wholistens to his wife. Another is that, whatever its financial appeal,flattery for hire has no place on the CV of a serious academic.

Barrett is an assistant managing editor at Bloomberg Businessweek.