In case you were away, or were here more in body than in mind, here is a recap in no particular order of the most important stories of the past semester:

INQUIRY INTO CIA FUNDING

Nadav Safran, director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, announced he would resign his post at the end of the academic year following a three month investigation into his handling of two Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) grants totalling more than $150,000.

A six-page report issued in January by Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences A. Michael Spence dealt specifically with Safran's handling of a 45,700 CIA grant for an October 1985 conference on Islam politics at the Harvard Faculty Club and his acceptance of a $107,430 CIA research contract in 1982 that granted the agency censorship rights over a book and compelled him to keep the fact of agency sponsorship secret.

Spence's report reserved its harshest criticism for members of the now-disbanded committee governing the Center, which attacked Safran's handling of the grants. The report was generally conciliatory in tone, faulting Harvard as much as Safran. It did little to diffuse the national controversy.

Meanwhile, officials at Harvard University Press, which published a book by Safran without mention of the CIA sponsorship, conceded that the publishing house was at fault for not disclosing the funding source.

Safran will retain his lifetime post as Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies in the Government Department.

ALCOHOL POLICY

As the state raised its minimun drinking age to 21, the College moved to ban underage drinking despite student cries that social life would languish.

Before October 31, students under 21 could drink at house functions, but under the new rules, only students with proper identification are served liquor at parties.

The Undergraduate Council passed a resolution calling on the College to establish a special fund to give houses more money to throw more elaborate parties. The resolution also asked that house committees be allowed to apply for temporary liquor licenses enabling them to charge students attending parties.

A student-faculty committee still continues the debate on the council's recommendations, while the rest of the College is settling into a routine of more private parties and master's sherrys without the sherry.

HARVARD PEACEMAKERS

The 1985 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to an antinuclear organization founded by a Harvard professor and a Soviet doctor. The Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway announced that the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a worldwide consortium of doctors committed to banning nuclear weapons, won the gold medal and its $225,000 cash prize.

"We need a politics of human survival, and this is what we doctors speak for," said prize-winner Dr. Bernard Lown, an associate professor at the School of Public Health. Lown became the 29th Harvard professor to snag a Nobel since 1914.