William B. Quandt

Dr. William B. Quandt, a 40-year-old Middle East specialist with an intriguingly varied background in government and academia, has now established himself as one of the more visible and accessible members of Washington's "think-tank" community.

"He has genuine expertise, and he doesn't try to hide it behind the proverbial bushel," says a friend.

Anyone who had a chance to watch him in action for a day or two at the Brookings Institution, where he hangs his hat as a Senior Fellow, would have to agree.

Dr. Quandt always has a current project going on at the Institution—at the present time he is doing a paper on Saudi oil policy, as a follow-up to a recently published book on Saudi Arabia—but he finds time not only to attend seminars and appear on TV discussion shows, but to share his knowledge with a wide variety of callers.

On a recent afternoon, when he received a journalist for an interview in his office, Dr. Quandt had just said goodby to a Pakistani who had come for advice on a book he was doing on Camp David. During the interview, Dr. Quandt excused himself twice to pick up the telephone—first to answer a California newspaperman who wanted some information on Saudi oil, and next to talk with a German student at Harvard on the subject of U.S.-West European relations. That evening, Dr. Quandt was scheduled to sit in on a conference at another think-tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and was looking forward to having a visit the next morning from a group of students of the University of Pennsylvania.

Sometimes he ranges further afield. He has gone to the West coast to give testimony on oil supplies to the California State Energy Commission, and has commuted to MIT, in Massachusetts, to teach a course.

"It's all part of the job," Dr. Quandt says, cheerily. "We have a mission to inform people." But he also emphasizes that a lot of his time with people is spent learning, not just teaching.

Life on The "Inside"

Dr. Quandt joined Brookings in 1979, and holds the title of Program Director, Energy and National Security Studies. His major completed project for Brookings has been the authorship of a book Saudi Arabia in the 1980s: Foreign Policy, Security and Oil, which was published last December. He had already written three other books: on U.S. policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict (1977); on Palestine nationalism (1973) and on the revolution and political leadership of Algeria (1969).

A distinctive aspect of his career, which began with the completion of a Ph.D. dissertation for MIT on Algerian nationalism, is that he has on two occasions served as a staff member for the Middle East on the National Security Council once from 1972 to 1974, and again, as Senior Staff Member for the Middle East, from 1977 to 1979. Dr. Quandt says he found the government experience broadening.

"It's an advantage to an analyst to have been on the inside," he says. "You obviously have a clearer idea of how the government works, and of what is possible." But he believes it would be just as advantageous for bureaucrats to get on the outside once in a while. "When you're inside," he says, "it's hard to find time to expand your knowledge-read the books, talk to all kinds of people. As a bureaucrat, you have to keep drawing down on your intellectual capital."

Dr. Quandt still has many friends in government, and calls himself "an outsider who gets a peek through the window from time to time."

Advice To The President

Asked what he would suggest to the President if he were a White House Middle East advisor right now, Dr. Quandt says:

"I would tell him, firstly, that he needs to become more personally identified with U.S. positions, if they are going to be taken seriously in the area.

"Secondly, he should stop being so timid, get out more in front on the issues, and not simply react to the latest crisis.

"In this connection, he should know that the risks of not doing certain things can be substantial. We have already damaged ourselves by our timidity on the Arab-Israeli issues. We don't raise our voices when we see things like the progressive annexation of the West Bank, which goes against U.N. Resolution 242. This apparent lack of concern makes Israeli hardliners think they can get away with doing whatever they want, and demoralizes the Arabs."

Dr. Quandt was born in Los Angeles, got a B.A. in international relations at Stanford, where he was Phi Beta Kappa, and a Ph.D. in Political Science at MIT. He worked at the Rand Corporation for four years, and has taught not only at MIT but at UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an Associate Professor for two years. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and in 1976 served as chairman of the Joint Committee on Middle East of the Social Science Research Council.