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We’d left Abt Associates with the understanding that we’d be gone not longer than two years, which would have finished out the original term of the folks’ mission. Harvard cheerfully granted me a leave of absence for the academic years 1968/69 and 1969/70.

Clark and Peter and I had talked about setting up some sort of resident Abt Associates presence, and I had a couple of meetings with folks from Metra International in Paris (meeting Ovadia Salama, who would later come to Cambridge), but nothing had really happened before November, when it became clear that our assignment in Paris would last months, not years.

I was already fishing around for a hook on which to hang my doctoral thesis at Harvard and had entertained sugarplum visions1 that these international connections might provide it. So, I wrote (telegraphed, I think) to Clark and got this response:


1Actually, as will appear later, these hopes were not as unrealistic as one might think: two years later, HGSE would accept my thesis (and declare it the year’s best) based in some measure on an Abt Associates subcontract to Metra which took me to Ireland the very next year.

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