Physics is Fun Memoires of Richard Wilson Version of September 25th 2009

ée comes to Kuwait with me
In 1983 I was invited to visit Kuwait again by the Dean of Graduate Studies, Sabeekah Abdul Razzak, a geologist who is the wife of Kazem Behbehani. She had taken over from Hisham Naquib. Sabeekah was also a suffragette. She wanted votes for women in Kuwait, and went to the polling booth. When she was denied the right to vote, this was shown in front of the TV cameras. When women finally were able to vote in 2006, I commented to Sabeekah that she had managed this without even having to chain herself to the palace gates. Andrée came too We took advantage of a “special” frequent flyer trip on TWA. Two first class tickets to Kuwait, with a return from Tel Aviv. We went on December 28th. When we arrived, Sabeekah was in Riyadh for the formal opening of the new buildings of the King Saud University. All the Deans and heads of Arab Universities had been invited. “Suffragette” Sabeekah accepted but insisted that she would arrive dressed as usual; in western dress. The whole schedule was rearranged to suit her with all banquets in private houses so that her dress would not cause a scandal. Kazem showed us his uncle’s house, where he had played as a boy before 1945; the museum of Islamic art directed by Mrs Qaddumi, wife of Hani Qaddumi. But Andrée fell sick. As we know now she had fibromyalgia, and stayed in the hotel by herself for a couple of days. I went by myself to two New Years Eve parties. One party was of Palestinian refugees (expatriates) and the other was of Iraqi expatriates. Then we flew to Amman.
I think it was the Jordanian Academy of Sciences who hosted us in Amman I lectured at the University. Another day we were driven up to Irbid, near the Syrian border, where I lectured again. At that University were three Palestinian brothers. Two as Professors, the other visiting from the University of Illinois where he was a Professor of Electrical Engineering. Another day we were driven south, past a couple of Crusader Castles at Karak and Tafila to Petra. We stayed the night at the tourist hotel in Petra so that we could enter at sunrise and see the sun on the temple carved into the rock. We walked on more than most tourists and climbed to a point where we could look over the Wadi Araba to Israel on the other side. We decided not to climb up to the hill to what, we were told, was Joshua’s tomb. Petra is, of course, a fascinating tourist place. The residents still live in the caves, but many have Mercedes cars which they drive to work in Aqaba. One tall lady was selling trinkets and was jokingly introduced to us as a true Nabatean. She was from New Zealand, married to a Jordanian. Then we were driven back to Amman On the way we were stuck behind a slow “convoy” of 40 trucks, taking goods from Aqaba to Baghdad, since the port of Basra was closed. This lasted an hour till the convoy turned to the right to El-Azraq to cross the desert. Another day we rented a car and set off to a Roman ruin at Dibbeh I believe, then around by Jarash and Mafrak to Zarqa and back to Amman.

We had arranged to go on to the West Bank part of Palestine. But we did not know how to get approval from the Israeli occupying authorities. The US Embassy could not, or would not, help us directly. But they knew how it was done. The Embassy staff recommended a travel agent in Amman. He sent an urgent FAX to his brother in Texas who received it at 4 am. “My customers Mr and Mrs Richard Wilson are going to Jerusalem. Can you please make arrangements for them?” The response came in 15 minutes. I am not sure what the agent did, but we got an Israeli visa. We took the bus to the Jordan river at the King Hussein bridge, formerly the Allenby bridge. After a search and so on, we took a taxi to Bir Zeit University. I met the faculty there; talked to the physics department and gave a lecture. In the garden of the University we met a group of students, and we asked them what their aims were. The leader was I believe Marwin Barghouti. He described their aims to us. If the Israelis would withdraw their army to the Green Line he would be at peace with them. One evening we spent with Peter Hillman. He was a South African and a PhD student of Norman Ramsey at the Harvard Cyclotron in 1952 or so. He had come to AERE Harwell in 1953, and then migrated to Israel. Peter took us to dinner at a little restaurant in East Jerusalem jointly owned by an Israeli and a Palestinian. It was therefore a target for extremists on both sides and two Israeli soldiers sat outside to prevent trouble. Peter’s wife’s family had lived in the area since about 1920. She seemed very reasonable but then was concerned why any Palestinian would want to learn physics, and understand radiation, unless it was to make an atomic bomb. That the misunderstanding between Palestinians and Israelis existed was obvious, but I had not expected to find it here. It became clear that it would be a long time before the two sides could come together.

Kamal Araj called at the hotel and insisted that we come and stay with his father’s family in Beit Jala which we did. Dr. Gabra Araj, who died on 2007, was a physician with one son and three daughters who spoiled the son. They came from an old Greek Orthodox family who can trace their origins back 1,200 years. Gabra had just got married in 1948, and had a small medical practice in Jerusalem when Israel was created. Their house was 100 feet west of the green line and they lost it. After 1967, Gabra went back to the house, broke bread with the Israeli family then living there and told them he had no claim on the house any more. He wanted peace. He told the Israeli President at a meeting that the Israelis know how to reign, but not how to rule. This is, indeed, an interesting summary of the problem. We were given a tour of the city by a friend who was a professional guide. Then we were invited to dinner in the Old City of Jerusalem by Kamal’s brother in law, Dr. Manuel Hassassian, at the house of his father Mr Hassassian, of Armenian origin who had fled Istanbul in 1920. Dr Manuel, who had married Samira Araj, was at that time Dean at the University of Bethlehem founded by the Holy See in 1973. One evening at dinner in the house of Gabra Araj’s brother, the Mayor of Beit Jala, we found another aspect of the problem. A group of Moslem youths from Hebron had come to Beit Jala looking for a fight. They tried to stop a group of Christian youths drinking in a local café. Mr Araj, the Mayor, was called but his Palestinian police had no powers, and no guns. He called the Israelis who sent a patrol from Jericho that arrived after it was all over. The next day I lectured at the University of Bethlehem. During the lecture there was a loud noise and the Dean rushed out to quell it. He was faced by a youth brandishing a knife who he disarmed. It was a group of Moslem youths, maybe the same ones as the night before, throwing stones at the University students on the University hill. Then an Israeli patrol car came along. The two sides joined forces and pelted the Israeli car with stones! One of the few signs I have ever seen of Arab unity. Manuel is now representative of the Palestinian Authority to Great Britain. The next day we flew from Tel Aviv to Boston. Andrée’s fibromyalgia got worse and we got a wheel chair for her in Boston. But she recovered.
In late 1985 or early 1986 Professor Safran accepted funds from the CIA for running a conference on the future of Islam. He invited people but omitted to state the source of the funds. The source of funds became clear when it was all exposed on the pages of the Boston Globe. On arriving at Boston’s Logan airport, the Egyptian delegate turned round and went home again. “It is more than my life is worth to attend a conference funded by the CIA”. I was asked by a Harvard Crimson reporter about this. I pointed out that I had been asked to collect information from the USSR for the CIA in 1959, and declined, although I regularly sent them a copy of my trip report which they failed to acknowledge and probably ignored. I also noted that in 1984 the CIA had offered to fund a trip for me to Libya in 1983. I had replied that unless the Libyans invited me and paid for the trip, the information I would get would be valueless. In view of the bad international reputation of the CIA, I certainly would declare the source of my funds. That did not satisfy the Crimson reporter or some of my colleagues who accused me of an unfair attack on a Jewish intellectual.
But a year or so later I got a spontaneous apology from one of my critics who had also become disenchanted with Safran by that time.. “You were right.” Like the gangster Al Capone some 50 years before Professor Safran slipped up. Al Capone had not paid income tax on his ill gotten gains. Safran had not paid Harvard overhead on the CIA grant. He resigned, and the Dean accepted the resignation “with reluctance.” The doors to the coffers of the middle east were open again although it was a couple of years before we were actually able to dip therein. A couple of weeks later I was invited, in February 1986 to a celebration in Kuwait of the 25th anniversary of Kuwait independence from the UK and to give a talk there - which I did. It seemed reasonable again for Ed Brooking and myself to aggressively pursue donors. In March 1989 I went again to Kuwait, where Abdlatif gave me a check for $5,000 and I added on a special visit to Jeddah and called on another of AJ Meyer’s friends. Abulhady Hassan Taher, Governor of Petromin, who promptly promised me a check for $100,000. President Bok persuaded Hasib Sabbagh to up his gift from $200,000 to $300,000 and with a little interest and a push from Professor John Dunlop, by 1990 the endowment for the AJ Meyer chair was complete. In 1993 Roger Owen resigned from his position at St. Anthony’s College at Oxford to accept the new chair. He returned the direction of the Center from the “oil wells” direction of AJ to a the more scholarly discussion derived from Sir Hamilton Gibb, the first Director of the Middle East Studies Center, of the historical place of the Middle East in world affairs, with less emphasis on the immediate future. It was some time later, in September 2008, that I again met AJ’s widow, Anne, again at a welcoming party at CMES.
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies was somewhat worn down after that 3 year “period of confusion” under Professor Safran. So I decided in 1987 after my return from sabbatical leave to restart the joint seminar that I had organized with AJ some 14 years before. I had the same format, but ran it every two weeks, instead of every week, on Monday afternoons. I called it the Middle East Development Seminar. I would invite friends from the Gulf and ask them to tell us their dreams for the future to see whether we at Harvard could help. One of the first lecturers was Abdlatif Al-Hamad. He flew to London Sunday night. He saw the Arab Fund Bankers in London Monday morning before taking the Concorde to New York and a small plane to Boston where I collected him from the airport. I parked across from the faculty club at the fire plug. I called it my $50 parking place, which was the amount of the fine if ticketed. Abdlatif gave his talk,. We went to dinner. After a night at the Charles hotel, he flew to Washington, saw bankers there, and took a Concorde back to Kuwait. As far as I know, Abdlatif has kept up this same hectic schedule ever since. At the dinner as dessert was being served, Dr Leonard (Lennie) Hausman turned up from the Kennedy School. He pulled up a chair next to Abdlatif and promptly asked him for money. I had to apologize to Abdlatif later. Lenny ran a program called the Middle Eastern Initiative, or something similar, to bring Palestinian and Israeli scholars together for a year at the Kennedy School. Lennie Hausman was an excellent fund raiser. I wish that I were even 1/10 as successful. But the Palestinians in particular were not taken in. All 12 of the first Palestinian scholars signed a letter to President Bok saying that they had been deceived as to the purpose of the program. Later Lenny was shown up as a cause of trouble by one of Peter Rogers’ graduate students working on water in the Gaza strip. Lenny had been misusing funds for personal purposes, and was in deficit by $250,000. Harvard asked him to resign, but many donors asked for their money back - which Harvard provided. I understand that the whole procedure cost Harvard $1,000,000.
The crowning talk of my seminar series was by Fadhel Jamali who I had invited from Tunis, as described in a special section later. By 1993 Roger Owen had become the A.J.Meyer Professor of Middle Eastern History. After a couple of years I left the task of running a seminar up to him - a task he has carried out well.
In 1991 I went around the world in eight days. Somewhat faster than Philias Fogg in Jules Verne’s novel. The reason was the start of the study of reactor safety for the Taiwan government, described in another section. We had a brief meeting in Paris airport with Paul Lochak and the Director of Framatome, the French company which was the builder of the French nuclear power plants. That afternoon I spent with my step mother Winnie in Banbury and Woodstock, I went to Bahrein and called on Abdlatif Al Hamad who had taken the Arab Fund there in exile from Kuwait which had been occupied by Saddam’s army. Then I went on to Taiwan where there was a conference on the Taiwan nuclear power program and back home.

The Kuwait Oil Fires and Water in the Arab World

When I was with Abdlatif in Bahrein he had an immediate worry. What was the effect of the Kuwait Oil Fires on public health? Th sky was somewhat overcast at midday which was unusual in April. It was the smoke coming from Kuwait. Abdulatic asked if Harvard could do arrange a conference to study the problem. So on Wednesday I spent a couple of hours writing a proposal. On Saturday, by which time I was in Taiwan, Abdlatif presented it to his board. On Monday I was back in Harvard, visiting the School of Public Health, explaining to my friends; “I have committed you.!” John Evans at once said: “I want to do it.” So in August John ran the highly successful oil fires conference and later on the Harvard - Kuwait public health program.
When Abdlatif al Hamad gave his lecture at our newly instituted seminar in1987, he emphasized the importance of water in the Arab World. Water is more important than oil. Water costs more than oil and is essential for life. Water is more important to the Arab world than Palestine, because if the Arab world cannot cope with finding homes for 3 million Palestinians, how can they cope with the 3 million increase in the Egyptian population in 5 years? I had already had met Professor Peter Rogers in Harvard’s Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS) so I suggested to Abdlatif that Peter might be able to help.

The conference on “Water in the Arab World” was postponed two years while we started a study of the Kuaiti Oil Fires. Peter suggested athat the conference be a closed, conference of 30 or so experts. I did not demur. I wanted it to be formally a part of the Middle Eastern Studies program to give CMES added visibility. But this may well have been a mistake. We got into trouble. A visiting Israeli who considers himself a water expert, Hillel Shuval, wanted to be a part of the conference. Peter and his colleagues, including professor Myron Fiering who was a Jewish American, had experience with Hillel before and considered him to be a blow hard. So he was not invited. But then Hillel put pressure on the Dean of the Faculty of arts and Sciences (FAS), Henry Rossovsky, and the Director of CMES, and Bill Graham, to allow Hillel to be a participant. For Rossovsky it was (incorrectly) a supposed “Arab lover” denying rights to an Israeli. For Peter Rogers it an issue of the right of a faculty member to choose participants according to his own unfettered judgement. I discussed this by telephone with Abdlatif and we came to a resolution that was agreed by Peter Rogers. Hillel was allowed to be present at the meetings and listen but not participate. Abdlatif was also present and was also going to be careful not to participate. That worked out fine. There was a much smaller concern. Both I and Abdlatif had suggested that the program only allow for discussion of the River Jordan in the last half hour of a three day meeting, because once it was mentioned, then no one would discuss anything else. The River Jordan in its upper reaches had almost all the water taken away, and by the time it reached the neighborhood of Jericho was only a trickle. Barely enough to wash John the Baptist. The Euphrates and the Nile are far more important rivers and Saudi Arabia was mining water at three times the water flow of the Nile. But someone mentioned the Jordan 3 hours before the end of the meeting, and as I had anticipated we discussed nothing else thereafter.

These various interactions, with Bogden Magic, with Safran, with Lenny Hausman and Hillel Shuval all had a common feature. They were “con men” . They took advantage of a controversial arena, the modern Arab-Israeli disagreements, to work somewhat insulated from criticism from either side. If opposed, they would call their oppose “anti-Semitic” or “anti-Islamic”. Who wants to fight such epithets which merely make it difficult to get anything done? Most people run away from such confrontations and that, of course, is what many con men wish. Rightly or wrongly it tends to get my adrenalin flowing. When I have been accused directly of being ant-Semitic, as I have been by Professor Larry Summers when he was President of Harvard, I reply, if I am allowed to, that “the only evidence you have for that statement is that I am willing to talk to more Semites than you are”. That reference is to the fact that Jews were not the only Semites. Most Arabs are semites also. That response has always silenced the critic, but critics probably go underground as Henry Kendall did when we had a quarrel about high energy physics.
That was not the end of my peregrinations east of the Mediterranean. In summer 1991 I was asked by a Syrian, Dr Abdul Aziz who was working for UNESCO to join him on a review team to review the science programs in the University of Muscat. He was a different Abdul Aziz from my friend the Iraqi Abdul Aziz Al-Wattari, But that coincided with my invitation to be Chairman of a special reactor safety review in Taiwan, described elsewhere. But I got a second such invitation in 1994 to be on a team reviewing the program at the University of the Emirates at El-Ain, and again in 1999 at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dharhan, Saudi Arabia.
Arab Fund Committee

Nor was it the end of my visits to Kuwait. Two separate reasons have taken me there over the last 15 years. In the late 1990s, Abdlatif Al-Hamad persuaded the Arab Fund to set up a fellowship program for mid-career Arab scholars to visit the best Universities and institutions in America and the west - and we included Japan in that list. I have had the honor of being on the fellowship planning and selection committee from the start. At the committee meetings I meet Professor Waterbury, President of the American University of Beirut, Professor Bakreba, from King Fahd University in Dharhan who I had first met when we presented the review group’s report in 1994, and Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian American who is Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Center at Columbia University. The Arab Fund get about 50 applications yearly of which they send 20 to us for careful review and finally accept about 10. We don’t vote on it but forward our recommendations to Abdlatif’s staff. I take this task very seriously. Sometimes I know the University, Department, or even the Professor who is expected to be the host. On other occasions I call around to find out. For example, I was able to argue that although the Center for Disease Control is not a University with the reputation of Harvard, it is nonetheless a first rate institution, and for many scholars the best. I was able to explain that I am glad to say that my recommendations are almost always accepted. I have indirectly followed one or two of the awardees. I believe that their experiences have shown the program to be successful. In 2007 there were 30 applicants of high enough quality for Abdlatif’s staff to ask the committee to review them carefully

After the highly successful conference on the Kuwait oil fires in August 1991, and absolutely fantastic elimination of the last of the 610 or so fires by November 1991, we heard little from the Kuwaitis. But ten years later, about the year 2000, Kuwaitis decided that they wanted to add the medical effects of the fires to the list of damages caused by the 1990 -1991 invasion and occupation, from which they were asking damages from Saddam Hussein and Iraq. After a lot of discussion, and behind the scenes elucidation, a proposal from the Harvard University School of Public Health was accepted by the Kuwait Public Authority for Compensation. (PACC). John Evans, merely a Senior Lecturer, was the leader in this. He had run the successful oil fires conference in 1991. I have given John all the support that I believe I can usefully give, and visited Kuwait three times for the project. Indeed I had developed a reputation of knowing everyone in Kuwait. When, in 2003 I walked into the Kuwait Sheraton Hotel to meet people for dinner, I was immediately greeted by Mahmoud Yousef Abdul Rahman with a warm embrace. He was there for another conference - on how to help Iraq. When the visiting Harvard group was taken to see Abadlatif’s beautiful office building, we met Dr Ikhlas Abdullah, a Sudanese lady working there. I had met Ikhlas and her physicist husband Mahomed Abdulkarim Ahmed before, and Iklass immediately recognized me. Jokingly my colleagues said that I know all the beautiful ladies in Kuwait.
In 1991 I had made an estimate of the effects on health of the particulate emission from the burning oil fires. I estimated a total of 50,000 deaths. But I was wrong. The more careful calculation is a hundred times less, a 500 or so. The reasons became clear within a year. By 1992, at a special conference at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva the reasons were itemized. Satellite pictures, made available in summer 1991, showed that on many days the sky over Kuwait itself was completely clear. The prevailing wind, from NW to SE, took the plume mainly over sparsely inhabited areas, until Dharhan. Although these winds were expected to, and did, change in November 1991, by that time the fires were out. But most importantly, I had not allowed sufficiently for the plume rise caused by the hot fumes as the oil burnt. I had assumed that the Kuwaitis would be living within the plume as I did in the London fogs of the 1930s. No. On all but a dozen or so days, the plume lifter 300 feet or so with 100 to 1000 times reduction in ground level pollution. Interestingly the best detailed computer models from Livermore, although improved since the time of Chernobyl by adding the effects of rainfall, still were completely unable to predict the day to day variations. But the general statements from fundamental physical principles survived. On average, one is able to describe what is happening. In this, the scientists in Saudi Aramco were much clearer than the modelers who reported at WMO. The more detailed work of the Harvard SPH Kuwait program 15 years later confirmed this. But the Harvard Kuwait program did find a result which for me is fascinating and understated. They found a big increase in the group of ailments lumped into the general category Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.(PTSO). PTSO has been known for centuries. It used to be called Battle Fatigue. It is hard to study for two reasons. The diagnosis tends to be subjective, based upon a patient’s reporting, rather than objective. Moreover it is usually hard to find the unique stress. The Occupation of Kuwait was a unique and well defined stress, and there were good statistics both before and after.
John Dunlop was never completely happy with the change in the focus of the Middle Eastern Study Center from oil and its economic impact and the failure to rebuild along AJ’s lines. So in October 1996 we arranged a special dinner for Hisham Nazer, just retired as oil Minister of Saudi Arabia on whose advisory committee John had sat for 25 years. The idea was to get a major influx of money to restart the “oil wells” program or something similar. I had to leave early to catch the last plane to Florida. I had to go to Cape Canaveral to see the launch of the Cassini spacecraft. Professor Kastenburg of Berkeley and I had written the final report to the President of the United States on the safety of this mission, summarized in a paper (879) published as Cassini reached Saturn 7 years later, and it seemed wise and honest for me to put my life where we said it was safe. Andrée and I saw the launch. It was indeed spectacular. I also have in my office a spectacular photograph of Saturn and its rings given to me for my service on the final safety recommendation. It hangs beside a photograph of the earth taken by Bill Anders on his trip 25 years before as an astronaut..
It was the next spring, 1997, that I was asked to be on the review committee for the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, so on the way home I made a detour to call on Hisham. As he commented to me, he turned the tables on me. Although he had his car meeting me at the steps of the airplane, he was not there. He had been summoned to meet the King. But Hisham and his family were characteristically courteous. His son in law, Zuhair Fayez, invited me to a family party on the Sabbath. There were 30 men, and a number of women I did not see, at Raz Hazibah, 20 miles north of Jeddah. I was taken by a son to the family house in old Jeddah, which had been offered, and used, by King Saud and his party when the city surrendered to him in, I believe, 1933. Hisham and his wife entertained me for dinner and met his granddaughter and her husband. But no check for Harvard. Zuhair Fayez is an architect and head of a partnership with connections throughout the middle east and Indian continent. He showed me around his office and his proposed computer system whereby one should be able to keep tack of all the crucial systems, water, electricity, sewage, etc in a community. He, Zuhair, later gave me $6,000 for the program to help the Bangladeshis cope with their arsenic pollution.. Abdulhady Taher gave me $50,000 which got us started and Khaled Al-Turki later gave me $35,000. I describe the arsenic program in a later section.
Iraq
In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq. Of course I wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein. But to enter a country without a single one of its’ neighbors wanting us to do so seemed preposterous. Ideally, we would have got most or all of the neighboring countries on board and the first troops across the border would have been joint from Iran on the east, Turkey on the north, Syria and Jordan on the west, and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait from the south. Although we had logistic support from Kuwait, for which we paid, and even some from Jordan, we and a small group of allies we were on our own. The elder Bush had waited to fight Iraq until he had full support in the US congress, support in the UN security council and support of a majority of Arab countries if not support of a majority of Arab peoples. I was informed then, and I believe it to be so, that the Arab leaders had told the President that if some progress could be made toward peace between Israel and Palestine, hopefully along the lines of the March 2002 peace proposal of Prince Abdullah, then the public opinion in their countries would allow them to support America openly in getting rid of Saddam, who was hated by them much more than by Americans. Dubya was too impatient. He did not wait for any of this. I was visiting Los Alamos for the winter and talked to many people. Los Alamos was, of course, a den of hawks, but everyone seemed to agree that Iraq could not possibly have nuclear weapons. I have outlined the evidence on this both before and since in published papers, numbers 295, 472, 487, 885 and 896 in my publication list. At Los Alamos I watched the news on NPR. In February I was appalled that one of my colleagues at Harvard, Michael Ignatieff, Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights, stated that he thought that Saddam had nuclear weapons. He gave no evidence or reference for this belief. He clearly had not bothered to walk across Harvard Square and ask someone who knew. I wrote Michael a personal letter about this but got no answer. This was a clear example of the saying that Harvard University is big enough that you are sure to find someone on the wrong side of every issue. We were less sure about biological and chemical weapons, but the quantity was much (ten thousand times) smaller than the 15,000 tons of nerve gases in storage at that time at Umatilla, Oregon, alone. But the administration was not listening let alone reading.
But once the US forces had invaded Iraq, my opposition changed. It seemed to me to be vital that we should be successful and I so told my Arab friends, and in particular Adnan Shihab-Eldin who agreed with me. At Harvard I argued that whatever one’s views about the war, that the future of Iraq and to some extent the whole middle east depended upon the young men and women in the universities, and of course, in particular, the University of Baghdad, which I had visited in early 1983. Henry Rossovsky, a former Dean and now a member of Harvard Corporation was thinking likewise and I went to a meeting in his office in June 2003. We needed some money to bring some scholars over. Initially the established ones, but after that the youngsters who had never seen life outside of Saddam. I expected Henry, who has Dean had a lot of experience in such matters, to do the fund raising. When nothing had happened by October I searched for funds myself. After sending requests to 20 foundations that had said “No!” I got a call from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation who asked me to submit a brief proposal by e mail that afternoon for presentation to the board. The board approved and $50,000 came from the Lounsbery Foundation and $25,000 from the Sloane foundation. My invitation to Professor al-Musawe, the President of the University of Baghdad went out at once.
The USA has a huge embassy and a dozen or so military bases in Iraq but no consulates. We should have no military bases and a dozen consulates. To get a visa to the USA an Iraqi must travel to Amman in Jordan along a 600 mile road. My experience with US consular services prepared me for trouble, but not as much as I got. But one visit to the consulate was not enough. Firstly a visit to be interviewed and provide information, all of which would be provided to “Washington” who in due course would decide whether or not to issue a visa. After enquiries, it appeared that one person could take all the information for the party of 15 or so that was to be headed by the President of the University of Baghdad, Dr Musawe. That one person was to be Anis Al-Rawi, Dean of the women’s college who went there at the beginning of March. Then, hopefully the visa could be issued the day after the rest of the party came . But I decided that I would try to ensure that there were no problems. I had met the Ambassador to Jordan, Skip Gnehm, when he was Ambassador to Kuwait where Kazem and Sabeekhah had invited him to dinner to meet us in 1983 I wrote to him and asked his help to over come any administrative hurdles. I also asked that Muhammed Al-Sabah, Foreign Minister of Kuwait who also knew Skip Gnehm, to make an appeal for efficiency. I had arranged a busy schedule for the party in Cambridge and Boston for the 2 week visit. There was an invitation to a joint meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Boston Athenaum. I had arranged special dinners with interested faculty. I had organized meetings with Deans and the President. There were to be TV appearances. I had arranged an excursion to a mansion on the North Shore. Everyone in Harvard, MIT and BU was anxious to help. I had arranged that they were to get a computer loaded with all of MIT’s computer based course instructions. Bearing in mind the tremendous importance in modern teaching, and scholarship, of computer access I arranged for each and every visitor to have a laptop computer with wireless access to Harvard, and to the internet through the hotel computer system. They were to 2 days before the party was to leave Baghdad, I got a personal telephone call from the vice-consul in Amman. “We will not be able to issue visas at once to your guests when they come in 2 days. We must interview them, send the results to Washington, and wait for a response.” Had the rules changed? Or had we misunderstood? Had I stimulated excessive attention by my attempts the get help? I did not and do not know what, if anything I had done wrong and what I could have done better, But I broke down at my desk and wept. But only for a moment: I soon recovered and spent the rest of the day canceling appointments and parties.
One Iraqi, Professor Saad El Toufiq, from the technical University of Baghdad went to Amman and stayed 2 months until in May he got his visa. I was in Erice, Sicily, so I rapidly, with 2 days notice and with frantic E mails, rearranged a visit in mid-May. The Universities were closing for the summer, and many arrangements were not possible. But Saad was received warmly. He went on to visit his sister in Ohio afterwards. Interestingly a French newspaper, 3 years later, claimed that a CIA agent had made a secret visit in 1995 to visit Saad in Baghdad to gather information about the Iraqi bomb program - as described elsewhere in these memoires. But CIA chose to believe less reliable intelligence. Then in August I got a call from West Point. We all know that the USA is completely run by civilians and the military have no especial privileges. But when West Point University sent an invitation to the Dean of Science, Dr Abdus Taleb, it was sheer luck that the US military in Baghdad were able to arrange visas. They came in August 2004. I was just departing for Erice, Sicily for the umpteenth seminar on Planetary Emergencies, but he came up to visit me with a military driver. I was the only Professor in Harvard Physics around! But contact was made.
In December 2004 the Dean of Women, Anis Al-Rawi sent an e mail. His visa was ready and could he come? Of course the answer was yes, but when? I also got a call from West Point again. President Al Musawe was coming to a conference on higher education in Atlanta in March and could they visit Harvard immediately thereafter? West Point would arrange visas. I told Anis Al-Rawi that the should wait until then. Again I arranged a major schedule, although my colleagues were less enthusiastic than before. But they did not turn up at Atlanta. Even the army had trouble in getting visas! Dean Anis Al-Rawi came by himself, in April 2005, and the rest of the party came at the end of June 2005. That was a bad time, but at least some of the Harvard, MIT and BU faculty were around. Neverthess the meeting was a great success. The leader of the Iraqi group was a geologist, Dr. Beriwan Khailani, Deputy Minister of Science. President Musawe came. The Deans of Science, and Engineering. And the Chairman of the Geology department all came. We were then set for the next steps in our proposed interaction with the University of Baghdad. We wanted to invite young, 30 year old, scholars who had never seen life without Saddam These are the future. I got another $75,000. Dean Taleb and President Mosawe nominated 20 people I passed around their CVs and four colleagues agreed to mentor a visitor to make sure that his or her time was well spent. I arranged their travel and met each one at Logan airport in January or February 2006. The visit was for 6 months and they were due to return in July or August 2006. We extended two of them. Ms Amal Fahad was working with Professor Zickler in the Computer Science Department and testing out a simple roof top wireless system. For $1,000 equipment attached to a computer which had internet access, all other computrs in the line of sight could have wireless access to the internet. She was proposing to develop this a bit further and take it to Baghdad in September or October.
But in August 2006, even the University of Baghdad was in deep trouble as violence broke out. Anyone who had a connection with the wicked American occupiers was in danger - or at least they thought so. I understand that only 6% of students turned up for classes in September. Amal was warned not to go home by her family and her department chairman. As of summer 2007, she is going to graduate school at the University of Rochester with a fully paid scholarship to get a PhD. Firas Seddeq, another computer scientist is in limbo. Executive Dean Fawwaz Habbal (himself born in Syria) found him a position for a couple of years in the “information technology” group. He married a Syrian born Canadian and hopefully matters will work out. Raied Jamal Kamal was very much liked by the research group in which he worked, headed by Eric Mazur, who was willing to keep him around a few more months. But a father’s duty is to be at home twice a year - when the baby is conceived and when he or she is born. His wife needed him back and he went back to Baghdad in August. Eric and his group are willing to have him and his family back to study for a PhD degree but, alas, neither the physics department nor DEAS are willing to accept him because of what they consider to be inadequately low qualifications. Worse still, it took 4 months for this bureaucratic refusal to become clear.
Accepting Raied would involve more work on everyone’s part, but his obvious willingness to work hard, and Eric Mazur’s willingness to go further than usual to help, convinced me. But I am no longer a formal member of the department; only a guest at meetings. Maybe in 2003 or 2004 the department would have been more willing to help, but Americans have a short attention span. I did what I knew how to help further. I had introduced some important Iraqi academics to academics in the Cambridge area. I had hoped that the project would “take off”. But everyone is busy at Harvard and people are not willing to continue to spend their time, apparently without limit. But now I am bewildered about what might be done next. But someone must help in the many issues such as this if America is to regain the international approval of 1945. As I write this in summer 2008, Amal Fahad took advantage of a lull in fighting around Baghdad and went home to visit her parents. She found funds and installed the rooftop wireless system as planned 2 years before. She sent an e mail to her many American friends from the middle of the science quadrangle. She is a lady of courage and persistence. There should be many such people. I maintain a weak connection with CMES to this day.