Research for Whom?
KINTNER, WILLIAM R.
THINKING ALOUD Research for Whom? By William R. Kintner During the past year the role o?? the university in the conduct of classified research for the Federal government has been the center of...
...Although the contributions in some fields are being made increasingly under classified contracts, the charge that classification prevents private dissemination and use of the findings is often true only over the short run...
...Stanford University normally bars research which limits publication rights, though in certain cases it permits security review...
...Should the scholar not retain the freedom to withold the findines from publication...
...As the environment around the university undergoes a profound transformation, so the university itself is also changing...
...Thus McGeorge Bundy said in 1955 when he was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University: "An atmosphere of intellectual freedom is the native air of literature and science...
...Often this access is possible only for research under government contract...
...In their understandable desire to reduce international tensions, they wish to suppress the activities of their colleaeues which, in their estimation, heighten tensions...
...The conduct of government sponsored research, especially research projects limiting open publication, is a relatively new issue and there are many legitimate points of view which deserve a hearing and dispassionate consideration...
...The role of the University in military work can be shown successfully, and the work done for the war effort can be seriously hampered and delayed by such costly things as having the operation move off the campus and deeper underground...
...In its statement of policy, the Princeton faculty declared that: "The general environment, the internal mental disciplines, the coming and going of scholars and students, and the principles of academic freedom are some of the characteristics of a university which are at variance with the principles of classified information and security regulations...
...It becomes increasingly difficult, too, for specialists concerned with disarmament and arms control to contribute effectively to the advancement of knowledge in these areas of national security without access to classified materials...
...Throughout our history, universities have supported local, state and Federal government in many ways, and these governments have fostered and protected them...
...Roscoe Drummond's phrase "illiberal liberals" might well describe them in their wish to prevent colleagues from pursuing research of their choice...
...After an examination of this problem, Princeton University adopted a policy differing from Harvard's...
...Ironically, in other circumstances these subject-matter censors are among the most vocal proponents of academic freedom...
...The heresy of today may become the orthodoxy of tomorrow...
...Although the university must devote the bulk of its resources to the free exchange of ideas and the conduct of open research, it is also obliged to aid the defense of the system which makes academic freedom possible...
...Exposure makes it harder for the university to get people to work on the 'dirty' projects...
...Opponents of classified research often fail to recognize that a university does not exist apart from society...
...But in 1963-64 the University of Michigan had 99 classified projects, totaling $9.5 million or 24 per cent of its sponsored research...
...The strength of the research and development programs of the major governmental agencies, and hence their ability to meet national needs, depends heavily upon the total strength of our universities...
...As President Johnson suggested in his address at Princeton on May 11, the university "cannot stand as a lonelv citadel isolated from the rest of the community...
...To deny the nation access to the universities' intellectual resources, or to force off the campus the scholar who would serve the nation, is to deprive both the government and the university of an important source of knowledge...
...Claiming that the advancement of knowledge is a duty, Harnwell added that, "there has been no time in history in which man would have been better off had he been more ignorant that he was.' Many of the objections against classified research result from its presumed infringement upon academic freedom...
...In some fields-in engineering, for instance, perhaps even more than in the social sciences-the inability of scholars to obtain classified contracts may make it virtually impossible for them to engage in their chosen pursuit of truth...
...One fundamental problem is the supposed obligation of a faculty member to make fully available the significant research results he has achieved...
...Research supported to further agency missions should be administered not only with a view to producing specific results, but also with a view to strengthening academic institutions and increasing the number of institutions capable of performing research of hieh quality...
...the university in the conduct of classified research for the Federal government has been the center of controversy at many institutions of higher learning, including the University of Pennsylvania...
...Whether the advances derived from classified research would have been registered in other circumstances is problematical...
...The Philadelphia Area Committee to End the War in Vietnam, for example, waging a year-long campaign against the University's Institute of Cooperative Research, explained in a pamphlet this past spring entitled "Germ Warfare Research for Vietnam": "It has been shown that the campus is a good place to look around for ways to expose the Johnson Administration on the Vietnam war...
...Behind the question of academic freedom and classified research lurk other issues...
...In the modern world, this nation's needs are continuous and pressing...
...The idea of freedom, in its broadest sense, implies that the individual retains the choice not to do, as well as to do, something...
...Research must precede emergencies, not wait upon them...
...The University of Chicago's peacetime policy, with few exceptions, is to shun classified work...
...In recent years, the term "multiversity" has come into use-connoting the proliferation of roles and responsibilities which the contemporary university is called upon to perform...
...Its policy is to "avoid the hampering and restrictive impact of immersion in secret work" except in wartime...
...These faculty members, he observed, "are uneasy lest the work of some of their colleagues, though freely chosen by men as humane as they are themselves, may possibly lead to some even greater form of inhumanity to man...
...Throughout the history of this nation, universities have made important contributions to its cultural, economic, and political life...
...It is not surprising, therefore, that new controversies are arising over its proper functions...
...Yet Harvard's Cambridge neighbor, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has long engaged in work of this kind...
...To contend, however, that classified research has no place at all at the university is to assert, in effect, that the university must limit substantially its contribution to the political and social order which nurures and supports it...
...But, he went on, "How or when or where new knowledge will find application, and whether it be deemed for good or ill, extends far beyond either the judgment of universities or the men who compose them...
...To wait for a "national emergency" before undertaking classified research is to jeopardize the national security of the United States...
...Moreover, the effort of some faculty members to prevent the university from accepting contracts for classified research may place considerable limitations upon other scholars' academic freedom...
...William R. Kintner has for some time been deputy director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute...
...In turn, the Federal government has found it necessary to protect some of its research activities from disclosure to adversaries...
...Much of the controversy here was sparked by faculty members and students who chose to attack such projects as an indirect means of attacking United States involvement in Vietnam...
...The Princeton resolution conceded, however, that "by forbidding research which involves classified information, a substantial bar to creative research basically appropriate to the university could be imposed...
...The digital computer, now used in businesses across the country, was conceived in the course of classified research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania...
...The Smythe Report made public much of the work of the Manhattan Project in less than a year after the end of World War II...
...He said that government-sponsored research tends to create a feeling of uneasiness among "sensitive members of any university faculty who feel a sincere revulsion to man's long history of belligerency and violence...
...This essential atmosphere of a university can be contaminated, in our view, by classified research contracts...
...Whatever the motives of those who raised the issue, it perhaps deserves more careful scrutiny than it has received...
...But is this not a distortion of the concept of academic freedom...
...The University of Pennsylvania's President, Gaylord P. Harnwell, stated before an alumni group in Washington last February that scholarly research should be pursued despite the possibility that its findings may eventually be used in combat...
...Some scholars oppose classified research apparently because they object to the subject matter-particularly when it is related to national security policy...
...There is no uniform policy among American universities on this matter...
...Harvard refuses to engage in classified research unless the country is engaged in an all-out war...
...Academic freedom means a free search for truth regardless how unpopular the subject chosen or how distasteful the findings...
...By participating in classified research, university faculty and staff legitimately fulfill an obligation as citizens...
...The quality of the faculty of a great university may also be affected adversely if its members cannot participate in classified research...
Vol. 49 • October 1966 • No. 20
