During recent years, economic and political conditions in the Middle East and the falling profits of American oil companies have dried a once brimming well of private funds for Middle Eastern studies.

"The usual sources, the foundations and the oil companies don't have the funds, explains Holy Cross's Esposito. "In this Administration, who has the money? The Defense Department and the CIA."

For several years Exxon, traditionally a major source of funding for Middle East-related research, has reduced its support for Centers like Harvard's, according to Exxon spokesman Donald L. Snook. Spokesmen for Chevron and for other "petrodollar" companies say their companies have made similar funding cuts. They say such reductions will continue for the foreseeable future.

A source close to the Center says that several years ago when oil companies were enjoying unprecedented returns on investments in the Middle East, the Center received about $300,000 from the firms each year. Now, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, that sum has decreased by almost 80 percent.

Although he declines to put a dollar value on his company's aid to Harvard, Exxon's Snook says that aid will diminish by between 30 and 40 percent next year. Snook says Exxon's significant cuts in grants to Harvard did not come in response to the CIA controversy and that they are in line with cuts in funding for similar centers across the country. The CIA controversy probably would have caused Exxon to reduce grants to Harvard if thouroughgoing cuts were not necessary anyway, Snook adds.

According to some people familiar with the Center, the financial stress there is more serious than at other similar institutions, constituting what several call a "financial crisis" brought about by mismanagement and poor planning.

"One of the things that leaked out from a guy on the committee is that in addition to everything else, we have to deal with a financial crisis," says a source who spoke on condition that he not be identified. The source referred to the six-man committee which oversees the center.

Center officials refuse to comment on the statements or to release information regarding the Center's financial health.

"We're in a transition situation, and the global fundraising situation is being studied by the standing committee, and until they've completed their study, it would be inapropriate for me to give you any information," says Amy Meyer, a Center administrator. "This is not something that I think you want to be investigating."

But Burbank Professor of Political Economy Dwight H. Perkins, who heads that committee, says he doesn't know anything about an investigation, adding that it would not be appropriate for his committee to conduct a study. "The standing committee on Middle Eastern studies' role is not to run the Center. Its role is basically what is sometimes called gatekeeping."

Although Perkins refuses to characterize the finances of the Center in "any way," the remarks of others familiar with the committee suggest financial difficulties do exist. "Crisis is not the word I'd use," says Robert D. Putnam, another member of the CMES executive committee, before declining to comment further on the Center's finances.

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences A. Michael Spence says the Center has had a "financial setback" and directs specific inquires about that setback to the committee.

The suspicion, secrecy and high emotions obvious in many conversations with individuals close to the Center may cloud their assessments of its finances. The tenor of those conversations--interviews which professors and accomplished scholars angrily sprinkle with profanities--underscores another legacy of the last several years that observers say will tax any administrator who takes over the Center's direction.

Many Middle Eastern studies centers reflect the factionalization and suspicion endemic to the region they study. As battle lines have been drawn around the director of Harvard's center, however, observers say rivalries there have heated up, possibly becoming entrenched enough to handicap the Center in the future.

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.