Confirming individuals’ affiliations with the University is routine, Rollins said. But she said this case is unusual because the vague reports did not say what school Bowers supposedly taught at or the rank Bowers was supposed to have held.

“It’s been kind of a frustrating experience,” she said.

At Boston University, Bowers finished his course work in an interdisciplinary program known as the University Professors, but he never completed his dissertation, said BU spokesperson Bob Zalisk.

A woman who answered the telephone in the University Professors office yesterday would say only that Bowers had finished his course work sometime “in the ’90s” but had not finished his dissertation.

“That’s the only information I can give you,” she said before hanging up.

Further details were not forthcoming—even to Zalisk himself. In fact, the first time he called the University Professors office looking for information about Bowers, the person who answered the phone wouldn’t even give him the name of Bowers’ adviser, Zalisk said.

A subsequent phone call confirmed only the fact that Bowers was once enrolled in the program, Zalisk added, but Bowers’ adviser offered no details and pointedly refused to speak with the media.

At some point Bowers had submitted a working title for his research called “Zeitgeist, Ideology and Foreign Policy.” But Zalisk said that title became outdated and he did not know what new research subject Bowers had taken up. Bowers was last listed as an active student in 1998 and Zalisk said he does not know what happened since then—whether Bowers never finished the dissertation or whether he simply left to do field work.

“The trail runs dry after that,” he said.

—Material from the Associated Press was used in the compilation of this story.

—Staff writer Andrew S. Holbrook can be reached at holbr@fas.harvard.edu.