When Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies finds the limelight, it's usually the gentle glow of scholarly achievement. For a while last spring, however, the Center found itself the unaccustomed subject of seering international scrutiny.

"The phone just wouldn't stop ringing," says an official who remembers the weeks which followed the news that the Center's director, Nadav Safran, had used more than $150,000 of the CIA's money to fund academic work. "From Voice of America, from Kuwait, Iran, Iraq--from all over the world--they wanted to know about our work for the CIA."

Now, almost four months later, the New York Times no longer editorializes about Safran and the "serious trouble which arises when the CIA's involvement in scholarly endeavor is kept quiet." Safran, the Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, is slated to give up the Center's helm at the end of the month. But no one connected with the center believes its problems will end with his directorship.

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.

Months ago, it was widely speculated that Princeton Professor Roy Mottehedah would be a solid choice to provide such leadership. Although the University has lured Mottehada from Princeton with a lifetime post, sources close to the decision say the expert on medieval Islam does not want to assume a major administrative position for at least two years while he fulfills obligations to Princeton.

Recent statements by Dean Spence that he is looking for someone to head the Center "for a relatively short time" have given rise to speculation he hopes Mottehedah will eventually take over the center. "It would look like the hope or the plan is that Mottehedah would take it over after several years," says Professor of the History of Arabic Science Ibrahim A. Sabra.

But in the face of such speculation, some scholars wonder how well the Center, which according to a respected national rating has fallen relative to similar institutions, can maintain even its tarnished reputation during years of interim leadership.

Many experts on the Middle East say a resounding signal of the Center's lose of stature will come next year, when a prestigious association of Middle East scholars will hold their yearly meeting in Boston but minimize their use of the Center, which formerly was scheduled to host the event.

"What the Center really needs is a strong director with a sense of leadership," says John L. Esposito, a professor of religious studies at Holy Cross. He says an acting director is "not in a position to do what needs to be done."

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.

"Any involvement with the CIA lessens our credibility as a scholarly and academic institution and makes us look like an arm of the U.S. government," Yalman said.

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.

But one scholar who did his doctoral work at the Center cautions against exaggerating the effect of a specific CIA contract on academics working in the Middle East. "These days, anyone with an American connection is going to be questioned," says University of New Hampshire Professor John O. Voll.

Voll and other professionals say evocative episodes like Zaki's detention obscure more pressing forces at work on the Center--forces which they say are making national intelligence agency funding increasingly attractive to Centers like Harvard's.