A Seminar with Dr. Jeffrey G. Karam on "The Inevitability of Intelligence Failures: America's Experience in the Middle East"

About

This new weekly seminar will bring current and former practitioners from the intelligence community together with Harvard students to discuss various intelligence-related topics in an informal setting. The discussion will be led by a different expert each week, who will address topics such as "Whistle Blowers, Traitors, and Spies in the Digital World," "Women in Intelligence," "The Ethics of Intelligence," and other themes relating to both the operational and practical aspects of intelligence, as well as it's role in national and international policy and decision making. 

The lunch will take place in the third floor conference room at One Brattle Square (OB-350), from 12:00-1:15 PM and is open to all Harvard faculty, fellow, students, and staff who are interested in expanding their knowledge and awareness of intelligence issues. No RSVP required. Bring your own lunch! 

This Week's Topic: 

What are intelligence failures and can states prevent them? What causes intelligence failures and should intelligence analysts be solely blamed for failing to predict looming threats on the horizon? This seminar focuses on the topic of intelligence failures and strategic surprises by exploring existing scholarship in the fields of Security Studies, Intelligence Studies, and Political Psychology. It analyzes how poor collection methods and faculty analysis, as well as policymaker pressure on intelligence officials and diplomats are the most decisive factors to explain why intelligence fails. In addition to a scholarly discussion of why intelligence fails, the seminar focuses on U.S. intelligence activities in the Middle East during the Cold War and at a time marked by wars, revolutions, and coups. One of the case studies that will be discussed during the seminar is the American intelligence failure in Iraq in 1958. Drawing on multilingual sources and American declassified intelligence and diplomatic records, the seminar explains why U.S. officials failed to understand that a prerevolutionary atmosphere had swept Iraq months before the military coup and later revolution.

This Week's Intelligence Expert

Dr. Jeffrey G. Karam is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Karam also teaches courses on International Relations, Security Studies, Politics of the Middle East, and Wars, Revolutions, and Coups in the Middle East and North Africa at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Trained as an interdisciplinary Political Scientist in Lebanon and the United States, Dr. Karam relies extensively on primary documents in multiple languages and builds on existing International Relations and Security Studies theories to analyze historical and contemporary case studies of American Intelligence and Foreign Policy in the Middle East.

Dr. Karam is currently completing a book manuscript on the relationship between American intelligence and foreign policy in the Middle East during the Cold War. His book draws on hundreds of recently declassified and untapped American and British intelligence records, diplomatic cables, and memoranda of conversations from the U.S. National Archives, the Eisenhower Presidential Library, the Library of Congress, the U.K. National Archives, and the British Library. Fluent in Arabic and French, Dr. Karam has also conducted fieldwork throughout the Middle East and extensive archival research in multilingual documents at different archives, libraries, and organizations in Lebanon and Jordan. Dr. Karam has likewise interviewed dozens of Arab intelligence officials, military officers, diplomats, politicians, and scholars in the Middle East. His research has been supported by several organizations including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Recently, Dr. Karam’s article “Missing Revolution: The American Intelligence Failure in Iraq, 1958” was published in Intelligence and National Security. He has also published book chapters and reviews of recent scholarly works in the field of intelligence studies and security studies in several leading peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Karam has organized and been invited to serve as chair and discussant on panels focused on topics in intelligence studies at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, International Studies Association, and Middle East Studies Association.

Dr. Karam holds a Ph.D. in Politics from Brandeis University, an M.A. in Political Studies from the American University of Beirut, and a dual B.A. in International Affairs and Diplomacy from the Notre Dame University, Louaize. To know more about his work, please visit Dr. Karam’s LinkedIn page and follow him on Twitter @JGKaram.