Reading just those quotes alone, or skimming the article and searching for “CIA”, can give an incorrect impression that Sharp’s affiliation with the Central Intelligence Agency was more overt than it actually was.

Just to clarify: the “CIA at Harvard” it’s referring to is actually an [independent, totally-not-CIA™, founded by Henry Kissinger] organization which was then called the Center for International Affairs at Harvard (which was originally actually abbreviated “CIA”, according to Howard J. Wiarda’s book about it, but later was called “CFIA” and today is the WCFIA).

Here is the paragraph where it is first introduced in the article:

In the mid-1960s, Thomas Schelling, a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear theorist, recruited 29-year-old Sharp to join the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, bastion of the high Cold War defense, intelligence, and security establishment. Leading the so-called “CIA at Harvard” were Henry Kissinger, future National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and future CIA chief Robert Bowie. Sharp held this appointment for thirty years. There, with Department of Defense funds, he developed his core theory of nonviolent action: a method of warfare capable of collapsing states through theatrical social movements designed to dissolve the common will that buttresses governments, all without firing any shots. From his post at the CIA at Harvard, Sharp would urge U.S. and NATO defense leadership to use his methods against the Soviet Union.