THE PENTAGON IN THE IVORY TOWER

...Anxious to counter what it sees as a dangerous erosion of its technological capacity, the Defense Department, like a well-scrubbed freshman, has arrived on campus eager to make a good impression on the faculty...

...In 1973, in the wake of student protests, the lab was moved off campus and rechristened "ERIM"—the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, a private firm...

...But what we do has a lot of applications...

...For several years the Pentagon, with University of Michigan approval, has been funding Dr...

...Sifting through contract records and correspondence, as well as interviewing individual professors, can take months...

...By these and other means, the Pentagon is re-establishing full access to the nation's brainpower, determined to protect what it regards as "its most valuable asset—its relationship with the scientific community and the resulting ability to tap the innovative minds of new scientists and engineers...

...the university from extensive Pentagon work...

...Military research at colleges and universities has increased a full 70 per cent in dollar volume in the last three years: It has now become the fastest growing and most reliable source of outside income for many institutions of higher learning...

...Pierre praised Noble for his "outstanding scientific contributions" to mathematics and said he had made the Math Research Center more responsive to the Army's needs...

...But where does the policy leave such professors as J. A. Ni-cholls of the University's Department of Aerospace Engineering...

...Sometimes the device is semantic...

...The following organizations may be helpful: 11 NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America) 75/ West 19th Street New York, NY 10011 —for a complete guide to researching the military ($2...

...Budgetary hearings of Congressional committees—particularly the House and Senate appropriations and armed services committees— describe trends in research and are full of Pentagon testimony...

...But the ban on "classified research" applies only to the generation of classified information on campus, not to the use of it...

...These and other colleges and universities—no less than shipyards, munitions plants, and aerospace factories—are feeling the surge of the military buildup that began soon after the last American forces left Vietnam in the mid-1970s and is now headed for new heights in the renewed Cold War...

...And sometimes the University Research Board relies on simple deception...

...Says Columbia University's Seymour Melman, a longtime student of the impact of military spending on the economy, "We've got a steel industry without any research and development...

...For background on individual professors consult American Men and Women of Science and other directories, available in the reference section of most libraries...

...And academia seems more than ready to return the embrace...

...20550, will send free of charge reports such as Federal Support to Universities, Colleges, and Selected Nonprofit Institutions...

...In R&D spending, the Pentagon outstrips its closest Federal competitor, the Department of Energy (itself heavily involved in military research), by more than three to one...

...The Pentagon's Directorate for Information Operations and Reports (DIOR) publishes an annual list of the top 500 contractors and other documents...

...It could lead to a better understanding of grain elevator and coal mine explosions...

...Benjamin Noble, the MRC's director from 1975 to 1979, recalls that two decades ago, when computers were going into use, the Center's orientation lecture program was devoted largely to upgrading the level of mathematical expertise throughout the Army...

...It is the kind of work that could have a variety of applications...

...Thus, a recent Air Force contract involving ICBM nose-cone improvements was described (and approved) as an investigation into "high-speed airflow at three times the speed of sound over the tip of an ogive-cylinder...

...George Gamota, the Pentagon's research director, explaining that one of the purposes of military research spending is to raise the general caliber of scientific education in the United States...

...H The University of Washington's *- Applied Physics Laboratory— potentially a major center for research into fisheries, oceanography, and related subjects of interest to marine scientists—has instead become virtually a wholly-owned subsidiary of the U.S...

...Installation of a Steve Burkholder is a free-lance writer in Madison, Wisconsin, and a former research fellow with the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service in Washington, D. C. simple mechanical device rendered the project risk-free in Madison, Wisconsin—but what about the risk to those against whom Weinman's research may some day be deployed...

...Box to render advice to the Army on electronic warfare equipment...

...A reporter for the newspaper Forerunner checked the Princeton University Security Department and was told that burning paper in a wastebasket is "certainly, without a doubt" in violation of University fire regulations...

...The National Science Foundation, by contrast, receives less than $1 billion...

...The military services no longer need the universities to teach them how to make flame throwers or neutron bombs...

...And what are the Army's math needs for the 1980s...

...Or it could aid development of a new Army/Air Force weapon called SLUFAE (Surface Launch Unit Fuel Air Explosive), in which fuel-laden clouds of vapor, scattered from a rocket or bomb, explode and engulf a wide area in flame...

...There's a new population out there," one more appreciative of the Pentagon's support for research, says Dr...

...One such device is the "multi-disciplinary, multi-investigator program," where researchers from different fields and different institutions work on small parts of a large project...

...The Reagan Administration is asking for $20 billion in military research and development for the fiscal year starting this October—about half the total of all Federally sponsored research and development...

...H At the University of Wisconsin, authorities have shortened the name of the Army Mathematics Research Center, which was demolished by a bomb at the height of the antiwar protests eleven years ago...

...The Pentagon's public information office supplies, free of charge, reports and press releases on individual weapons and information on bases...

...The professor, James A. Weinman, had a problem: "In the process of conducting our research," he wrote, "we have been firing our laser over Madison...

...What they are after now is the scientific brainpower with which to conquer new military frontiers...

...That leaves university personnel free to consult off-campus...

...Today, the sixty-odd staff members of the "Math Research Center," less conspicuously lodged in another part of the campus, are working their way through a $13,489,000 multi-year Army contract "in support of interdisciplinary research in the mathematical sciences...

...They've supported us in basic research for years...

...Like other major universities, Princeton has its own Pentagon contract number and is a participant in the Qualitative Requirements Information Program, which alerts all potential bidders to the Pentagon's research and development needs...

...As for Princeton's ban on research aimed principally at "product development," military grant recipients have found a variety of ingenious ways to make their work look like basic research...

...Where the lure of long-term grants has not been sufficient to overcome lingering reservations about the morality of military research, the Pentagon has done what it can to make it easier for scholars to accept its beneficence...

...The projects they find themselves working on are not always readily identifiable as ways of killing or maiming people...

...Some universities draw the line against research having an anti-social purpose...

...Thus, the University of Michigan will approve no research "the clearly forseeable and probable result of which, the direct application of which, or any specific purpose of which is to destroy human life or to incapacitate human beings...

...ERIM's current "environmental research" includes some $5 million a year in Defense Department contracts for work on optics, lasers, electronic detection instruments, and a guidance system for the cruise missile...

...Motions Which Perturb States of Rest of Viscoelastic Solids," by Professor Daniel D. Joseph of the University of Minnesota...

...While the military's vast network of in-house labs received a piece of the basic research pie roughly equal to higher education's a few years ago, the schools' share of such funding now surpasses the Pentagon's own labs' by almost $50 million...

...Nicholls's research on such topics as "Detonation Characteristics of Some Dusts" and "Structure and Characteristics of Heterogeneous Detonation...

...Accompanying the names of such' 'scientific liaisons" or "project monitors" are the titles of their home lab or military base, which may reveal much about the potential uses of the research...

...We don't solicit...

...Still another device is to route research of great military significance through non-military agencies such as the Department of Energy (nuclear weapons) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (missiles, satellites, and the space shuttle...

...In fact, I don't want to know too much about them...

...The chopping up of the learning experience into specialist bits tends to produce scientists who do not question the premises underlying their work," says Brian Martin, a mathematician at an Australian university...

...Only a small fraction of the Pentagon's research budget goes to colleges and universities, but the amount is increasing rapidly, and it bulks larger year by year as the economic recession chokes off education funding from state and private sources...

...The universities participate because of their interest, not ours...

...From 1979 to 1980 (the most recent years for which complete figures are available), higher education's share of the military R&D budget rose from $574 million to $652 million...

...The National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C...

...While we usually observe the sky into which we aim our laser, a small but finite probability exists that we may hit someone in an airplane...

...They have laboratories of their own for that...

...Mathematical Modeling of Some Aspects of Penetration of Plates," by Professor Werner Goldsmith of the University of California at Berkeley...

...Thus, in approving a 1979 Navy-sponsored contract for research into the feasibility of nuclear-powered aircraft, the board eliminated such explicit phrasing as "ballistic, or cruise missile" and "particle beam weapons to attack incoming missiles...

...And in the last three years, the universities' share of what the Pentagon calls "6.1," or basic research funding, rose from $196.3 million to $282.3 million...

...Asked how the application of his work jibes with Michigan's policy against harmful research, Nicholls replied: "I don't know much about the military applications...

...Weinman's research into "lidar" (for "light detection and ranging"—a way of measuring wind speed and the distance and chemical composition of a target) is sponsored by the Army for the benefit of its chemical and biological warfare laboratories and its ballistic missile commands...

...Having learned how to solve routine math problems, the Army is looking to the University of Wisconsin's Math Research Center for services of a more intellectual nature...

...They are suggested by some of the titles of papers presented at the twenty-fifth Conference of Army Mathematicians at the Johns Hopkins University in 1979: "The Mechanics of Non-Newtonian Physics," by Professor R. S. Rivlin of Lehigh University...

...Sometimes the problem is solved by judicious editing by Princeton's University Research Board, which reviews all university research contracts...

...The record shows that the Army quickly approved the radar attachment to Professor Weinman's equipment, permitting research to continue without further hazard to air traffic over Wisconsin's capital city...

...At Berkeley, the NSF has helped open doors for some electronics research in which the Defense Department is keenly interested...

...Now that the campuses are calmer—and poorer—the Pentagon is quietly repairing its ties with such leading research universities as Michigan, Wisconsin, and California at Berkeley—all hotbeds of antiwar protest a decade ago...

...Military researchers at Princeton University are less squeamish about the applications...

...Navy...

...The chilling implications of the military presence are suggested by the language of a Princeton manual called Standard Practice Procedure for Safeguarding Classified Information, which warns of "a moral and legal obligation for employes to report to the [University's] Security Supervisor, without delay, all security violations and any instances, actual or suspected, of subversive activity, espionage, sabotage, loss or compromise of classified information, material, or work here at Princeton University or outside this facility...

...Projects for which the lab would be suited, if funds were available, include solar energy studies, ocean thermal energy conversion systems, ultrasound devices for the blind, and ultrasound medical diagnostic technologyFor a nation which already employs an estimated one-third of its scientists and engineers in military research and development, the heightening of that trend by the impending budget shuffling has the makings of an economic catastrophe...

...For the latest in military technology, see Aviation Week and Space Technology, National Defense, and Army Research Development and Acquisition (Army RD&A) magazines...

...11 Nuclear Weapons Facilities Project/Midwest 2206 Fox Avenue Madison, Wisconsin 53711 —for information about other groups investigating military research on campuses...

...The law is still in effect, but two years ago Defense Secretary Harold A. Brown softened the language with a policy memo requiring only that a "potential relationship" be shown...

...Some universities, such as Wisconsin, allow public access to individual contract files...

...Nicholls did admit, however, that several years ago he witnessed explosion tests of a nascent weapon— presumably the result of his research— at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida...

...The Pentagon offers lucrative post-doctoral fellowships at its military laboratories, and "we'll see more of that as we go down the pike," says Gamota...

...There you will find a report (often a computerized printout) of all externally sponsored research contracts...

...Applicants no longer need demonstrate how their proposed research would meet a military need...

...Others, such as Michigan, insist that you utilize the Freedom of Information Act, a time-consuming and often frustrating method...

...they also fail the larger society, which needs that knowledge more than ever—far more than it needs instruments of war...

...When university policies expressly forbid classified research on campus or prohibit contracts that control publication of research findings, as at the University of Wisconsin, professors engaged in classified work simply step off campus or consult on projects from which they have no expectation of publishing an article...

...From there, using account numbers that are also included, go to the files of individual contracts...

...The professors are in a receptive mood—not just because of the money, but also because the Pentagon has found ways to make military research more palatable to them...

...The radar is available as excess property and we hereby request your permission to obtain it...

...ERIM is located just off campus in Ann Arbor...

...Such a list, usually updated quarterly, itemizes contract sponsors (in the case of the Defense Department, individual branches of the armed services), contract amounts, a timetable for completion of research, the name and department of the professor doing the work, and a short title of the research...

...Participants seldom know how their basic research is being used or how it connects to other work...

...Says Seymour M. Bogdonoff, head of Princeton's Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, which is close to being an extension of the Pentagon: "We don't work on applications...

...It is a testament to the ever-increasing technological sophistication of modern weapons that the Conference of Army Mathematicians also produced a paean to the MRC's Benjamin Noble, from Percy A. Pierre, at that time Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Development...

...Much of the Pentagon's research work is now open and accessible to all...

...nor does such work usually run afoul of academic strictures against secret research...

...When I do military research, I go to another location and generate classified material there," a Princeton professor told a reporter from Forerunner, a campus alternative newspaper...

...While these are generally financial files, they also should include the professor's original research proposal and correspondence with Pentagon scientists...

...Its telephone number is (202) 695-0192...

...The main point is that the Defense Department now exempts all scientists from grappling with the key moral issue of the uses to which their research will be put," comments Stan Glantz, long a critic of the Pentagon's research program and a leader of a 1971 investigation of military connections at his alma mater, Stanford University...

...In shaping the direction of university research, the Pentagon also exerts a subtle but profound effect on public policy in the United States...

...Another Pentagon practice is the joint sponsorship of research with more politically acceptable agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Agriculture...

...This clause, of course, presents no problem to Michigan professors consulting with ERIM, where two-thirds of the revenue is from secret military work...

...I like working for the Department of Defense—and you can write that if you like...

...We've got buses that fall apart...

...But it is worth the effort...

...Today, he says, the needs are quite different: "Now that the Army audiences are much more sophisticated mathematically, the thrust of the orientation lectures has changed to topics where MRC expertise can match an Army need and a lack of readily available information in the right form...

...For a catalog of DIOR publications, call (202) 695-6815...

...For part of the last decade, academic ardor for military research was cooled somewhat by the terms of a 1970 law (the so-called Mansfield Amendment) which restricted Pentagon funding to projects having a "direct and apparent relationship to a military function...

...At the University of Washington, for example, as a study by the Washington Public Interest Research Group has made clear, the Navy's domination of the school's Applied Physics Lab—for antisubmarine warfare research—has denied others the benefit of a valuable research tool...

...One of the principal places they do this is the Communications Research Division of the Institute for Defense Analysis, which was forced off campus during the Vietnam war and now does business in town...

...The Pentagon is on campus in a big way, and most universities, hungry for the money they disdained a decade ago, are doing what they can to make the Pentagon feel at home...

...the other specifies that a primary goal of any research at Princeton should be "a significant contribution to knowledge rather than product development...

...But the incident exemplifies the presence on the nation's campuses of kindred problems that are not so readily resolved...

...Princeton has two regulations that would seem at first glance to disqualify How to check on research at your university If you want to investigate military research on your campus, you must first be prepared to spend a great deal of time...

...While valuable enough to the Army to be worth paying for, the properties of viscoelastic solids and similar mathematical intelligence are not the kind of stuff that ignites political protest...

...One place to begin is at your university's office of research administration...

...University research administration offices can also supply such useful information as travel vouchers of professors (an aid in investigating their consultations) and policies on classified research...

...However alluringly it may be packaged, the re-emergenee of the national security ethic on the nation's campuses cannot fail to have an impact on academic freedom, on the free exchange of ideas, and on the unrestrained pursuit of truth...

...I At Princeton University, which has long proclaimed itself a center for the free exchange of knowledge and ideas, the volume of research has reached such proportions that more than 160 of its employes—including the president and the provost—now hold security clearances enabling them to make use of classified information...

...We are breeding scientific illiterates," complains Dr...

...Army Research Office in Durham, North Carolina...

...The opportunity costs are colossal...

...In selling their souls to the military, universities not only damage their own integrity as institutions devoted to the unfettered and peaceful pursuit of knowledge...

...One bars "classified research" except in extraordinary circumstances...

...A recent semi-annual report of the Math Research Center, for example, details a trip by Professor David L. Russell to the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey and telephone consultations by Russell and Professor George E.P...

...There are many areas of research going neglected...

...The newspaper noted that while official research reports must be unclassified at Princeton, "there is nothing to stop the researcher from sending to the sponsor, under separate cover, a letter giving classified details of the research...

...To the torch From a Princeton University manual, Emergency Procedure for the Protection of Classified Material in the Event of Disaster or Civil Disorder: "If it appears from the attitude of the dissenters that the classified material might be seized or otherwise compromised—then attempt to destroy document(s) by burning in a wastebasket or in any other way you see fit under the circumstances...

...In order to avoid such an accident, especially at night, we would like to attach a small E-34 radar to our lidar system...

...II At the University of Michigan, an academic think-tank called Willow Run once developed sophisticated surveillance systems and other tools of counterinsurgency for the Vietnam war...

...In approving an Army contract with two Princeton professors for a study of "Small Grain Propellant Burning Rate Measurements," the board systematically deleted all references to the fact that the substance to be studied was a cannon propellant (or the explosive charge that sends a shell out of a large gun...

...S.B...

...We don't do anything unless we think there are important applications...

...WARMIG (National Action/ Research on the Military Industrial Complex) , 1501 Cherry Street Philadelphia, PA 19102 —for a variety of publications including access to DMS Contract Quarterly reports, which tracks DOD contracts by recipient institutions...

...Gamota, the Defense Department's research director...