Living a life of quiet adventure
AQUIET and humble professor, Bill Harris occasionally lived like a war correspondent.
Emeritus Prof Harris once interviewed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat while his headquarters were being bombed, was held captive by Syrian intelligence and visited the front near Mosul in northern Iraq in the months after the city was taken by Isis.
Prof Harris, a leading international scholar on the Middle East, died last month aged 71. He had been based at the University of Otago since 1990.
He combined the skills of a geographer, a historian and a political scientist, and he believed in research rooted in ontheground understanding.
His successor teaching Middle Eastern politics at Otago, Leon Goldsmith, said Prof Harris believed in the value of empirical research, seeing things for yourself. This supplemented his diligent and dedicated document and archival study.
‘‘That required being there in the field, observing the human and the physical geography and, crucially, acquiring a command of languages.
‘‘He personally met and knew some of the giants of the modern Middle East.
‘‘He was unscrupulously fair and evenhanded in a discipline known for tendentiousness. This is so rare and precious in Levant politics.’’
Dr Goldsmith said that Prof Harris, having been detained by Syrian intelligence himself in the late 1980s in Damascus, understood the seriousness when he was held by the same regime in 2011.
‘‘In my phone call to him, he first reassured me and, since he was in the middle of one of his rugbywatching evenings, he put every single person on the phone.
‘‘He later told me the point was to confuse the Syrians, who he assumed were listening, and let them know many people knew about my situation.
‘‘His insistence I learn Levantine Arabic was also crucial in helping me get out of that situation.’’
Prof Harris was born in Timaru, moving at age 2 to Te Kuiti where his father, Douglas, an electrical engineer, was the head of the local power board.
The family moved to Rangiora when Prof Harris was a teenager. His mother, Dorothy, became the borough’s mayor.
Prof Harris boarded at King’s College, Auckland, for two years and was a day pupil at Christ’s College for three. At the University of Canterbury, he completed his master’s in geography, which was an analysis of the origins and evolution of the New Zealand national park movement.
From childhood, Prof Harris was endlessly curious about both the natural world and international affairs. As a boy, he once tried to teach one of his younger sisters the capital cities of every country in the world. Aged 11 or 12, he won a year’s supply of chocolate in a Woman’s Weekly competition for his cartoon drawings about volcanoes.
Prof Harris’ fondness for science fiction continued all his life as the likes of Star Trek movies captured his imagination. He maintained his interest in scientific matters, including astrophysics. His office was decorated with posters of planets, much to the surprise of students.
He won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Durham University, where he completed a PhD, ‘‘Refugees and Settlers: Geographical Implications of the ArabIsraeli Conflict 19671978’’.
Characteristically, he spent time in the field in Israel, interviewing key figures and surveying nearly 1000 refugees.
He worked at Exeter University and George Washington University (Washington DC) and then at Haigazian University College, Beirut, for more than a year.
Subsequently, he spent much of the mid to late 1980s in Lebanon through John Hopkins University, Exeter and the Australian Defence Force Academy, University of New South Wales, while he was based in Canberra.
He also taught at Massey University, Palmerston North before coming to the geography department at Otago. It once received a large package addressed to him. Given his experiences, his colleagues feared it was a bomb.
Prof Harris later transferred to the political studies department.
While unobtrusive and thoughtful, he was also not afraid to place himself in danger as he sought out ontheground information, notably during the 1980s Lebanon civil war.
He was unafraid, as well, to take unpopular positions, even if those caused problems.
His obvious decency, his endearing nature and evenhandedness softened potential antagonism. It was never about taking sides.
His careerlong fascination with Lebanon and interest in the Middle East deepened.
And it was in Beirut he met his future wife, Afife (nee Skafi), at the Beirut YMCA office where she was the personal assistant to the chief executive.
Prof Harris was from a practising Anglican family and she is a Shi'ite Muslim from a southern Lebanon town where her grandfather was at one time the mayor.
Both Prof and Mrs Harris were accepting of different beliefs, faiths and cultures.
A dynamic and wholehearted woman, Mrs Harris established herself in the Opoho and
Dunedin communities. She was awarded the QSM in last year’s New Year’s Honours, primarily for her work with migrant communities and refugees.
Prof Harris took quiet pride when being introduced around the city as Afife Harris’ husband.
Mrs Harris ran a popular Lebanese food stall at the Otago Farmers Market, and she opened the family home and the Harris’ hospitality to students and visitors.
These included diplomats, United Nations officials, migrants and refugees. Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff consulted Prof Harris on Middle Eastern affairs.
The New Zealand media sometimes sought his views. He wrote several articles for the Wall Street Journal and a few for the Otago Daily Times.
Eduardo Wassim Aboultaif, now an academic in Lebanon, described Prof Harris, his PhD supervisor, as not only a brilliant scholar but a caring and ethical teacher who made him feel at home in Dunedin.
‘‘He had the habit of dancing with danger. He witnessed many battles during the [Lebanese] Civil War. He crossed fronts like a warrior.
‘‘He even interviewed Yasser Arafat once when his headquarters were being bombed by the Syrians.
‘‘In 2014, he travelled to Iraq and visited near Mosul at a time when the city had been taken over by Isis. He was probably one of the few Westerners who were on the front lines facing Isis.’’
Prof Harris also went to southern Turkey and found a way to visit the north of Syria from there.
This provided background and intelligence for his 2018 book Quicksilver War: Syria, Iraq and the Spiral of Conflict.
Prof Harris’ eldest son, Chris, said his father told him and his brothers to think for themselves and make their decisions regardless of what others thought.
‘‘He taught us to be independent of thought and to respect the freedom of others.
‘‘He taught us never to take anything or anyone at face value but always to dig all the way to the centre.’’
Prof Harris, not always known for decisiveness in practical spheres, once demonstrated quick and critical action.
He was with Chris, who was then aged 7, in Lebanon near a lineup of tanks. Chris picked up a rock to throw at one of the tanks.
Prof Harris responded with alacrity, immediately grabbing his son’s arm to prevent a potential calamity.
His second son, Adam, said the family travelled to all sorts of places on the back of Prof Harris’ university sabbaticals, including New York, Turkey and Argentina.
‘‘When we lived in Turkey, our dad made sure we travelled all across the entire country and exposed us to different people, cultures and the history of different places.
Adam said he remembered as a small boy his father going out of his way to help a woman who had fallen at the supermarket, teaching him that helping one another should always be our first reaction.
Prof Harris soleauthored four books on the Middle East. His
Faces of Lebanon: Sects, Wars and Global Extensions was published in 1997. His Levant: A Fractured Mosaic (2003 and 2005) won an Outstanding Academic Title award and was reprinted several times. It was followed by
Lebanon: A History, 6002011, for Oxford University Press (2012) and Quicksilver War.
An occasional jogger for decades, Prof Harris took on longdistance running late in 2018, the year before he retired. In 2019 he completed the Naseby 50km ultramarathon and took part in the 60km Kepler Challenge near Te Anau.
A bout of bowel cancer in 2021 put these efforts off course, and he was also diagnosed with Parkinson’s about the same time.
At his funeral, Prof Harris was described as both a reserved and unassuming professor and, at the same time, a giant of Middle Eastern political studies.
He is survived by his wife, Afife, and his sons, Chris, Adam and Hadi. — Philip Somerville