THE PROFESSORS AND THE PENTAGON

...Not only do these professionals suffer, but so does the institution itself...

...Wallis...

...Science and defense," according to the Harvard report, "have brought government and the educational community together to such an extent that twenty per cent of the total expenditures in higher education in the United States now comes from Federal sources...

...Bethe notes that when he first came to Cornell, half of the graduate students studied on their own money...

...Universities tend to charge as "indirect costs" many items they would have to pay for anyway—such as libraries, the school president's staff, and other facilities —even if the research contract were not available...

...mystique...

...The physicists and engineers command higher salaries, are paid on a twelve-month rather than nine-month basis, are permitted to earn large sums as consultants to industry or government agencies, and, in the words of Dr...

...Such distorted support produces its chain reactions...

...Its regular school budget is only about one-quarter that amount...

...If you say it loudly, you can get a million...

...On the other hand, "we have no interest in making grants for the study of archeology or mineral resources...

...E. J. Sparling, president of Roosevelt University, becomes a serious problem...

...He points out that the university does not have to take the money...

...It is needed for computers, for space and physics research...

...The question is not whether there shall be Federal expenditures for higher education, but what kind, and how they shall be distributed...

...One scientist told me, only half jokingly: "Just mention the word 'space' today and you get $100,000...

...It is not uncommon, says Dr...

...Allison is a nationally known physicist, and he need give ground to no one...

...But we do have an ulterior motive for our support," he said...

...They receive it in the form of R&D grants or contracts, loans to students through the National Defense Education Act, grants from the National Science Foundation, pyramiding support from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to medical schools in particular, and similar sources...

...Can institutions or men which depend so strongly on Federal support really be independent...

...Bent-ley Glass, professor of biology at Johns Hopkins, writes that as a result of consulting assignments and other opportunities, individuals in science "who are in considerable demand can more than double their university salaries...

...On the negative side, however, it insisted that "if outside financing of university research and graduate education, particularly in the natural sciences, continues to follow present patterns [emphasis added], it will inevitably lead to a very serious erosion of university control of university activities...

...Since then the figure has increased greatly...

...The individual researcher can usually probe as he pleases, but R&D as a whole, and teaching as a whole, are being molded into a framework which outlines the needs and wishes of the Pentagon...

...This year the schools raised $1 billion in contributions from alumni, friends, foundations, corporations, and religious denominations...

...Physicists can get whatever funds they need...

...Jerome B. Wiesner, President Kennedy's Director of the Office of Science and Technology, reported to Congress earlier this month that the Federal government will put more money into research and development this fiscal year than it spent for this purpose "in the entire interval from the American Revolution through and including World War II...

...All, it seems, had a stake in the misfortune that had befallen the Middle West generally, and its principal metropolis in particular...

...At one such school in 1959 there were 151 professors whose full pay was charged to the government...

...Shall the government grant its funds to those fields of learning in which the government is interested—mainly science and engineering—to buttress the military effort, or shall it allocate a specific portion of its budget for the schools and let them decide what to do with it...

...Government funds, he says, tend to "erode" freedom...

...The American Civil Liberties Union briefly examined the danger several years ago...

...This fiscal year the government will pour $12.3 billion into R&D— twice as much as will be appropriated for this purpose by all of industry, universities, and private foundations combined...

...The Massachusetts Institute of Technology receives about $80 million a year from the Pentagon...

...But is the development of military hardware a proper and prime function of an institution of higher education...

...But by last year it had skidded precipitously down to a mere two per cent...

...Life for the physics or engineering student is so plush that he often gets a research job while an undergraduate, and has his tuition paid by some industrial firm or foundation...

...Glass, "for a young man just receiving his Ph.D...

...To maintain a balance, a university must make a special effort to provide support from private sources for other fields of knowledge...

...Higher education will soon be confronted with costs two and a half times greater than at present...

...These and hundreds of other items are not produced at the school proper but at a research laboratory connected with the school...

...Professor I. I. Rabi, the celebrated Columbia University scientist, defines academic freedom as "the right to knowledge and the free use thereof...

...A request to the Department of Defense for $250,000 to study unilateral initiatives that might mitigate the arms race was rejected...

...Now the project is being "phased out," and 300 to 400 employes, including the scientists without tenure, must look elsewhere...

...The quest for knowledge should be a balanced one, in each branch of learning and among branches of learning...

...Anything that warps the quest or use of knowledge is obviously a threat to that purpose...

...The Harvard report says: "The quantity of Federal funds for research has...

...At any rate, there is no doubt that government is taking an even more liberal attitude on reimbursing the universities...

...He was involved in rockets and missiles, and he was thinking only rockets and missiles, rather than social and political problems...

...Can a university maintain academic freedom and autonomy if it integrates its long-run programs with the short-range goals of the Defense Department, or the government generally...

...In fact, it hailed this development as a "tremendous contribution" to American scholarship...

...David Inglis, of Argonne Laboratories, told me of a Ph.D...

...We ask ourselves: Is this research in a field that has some potential to the job we have to do...

...Federal aid to educational programs has its brighter side—hundreds of millions of dollars for medical research, large sums for equipment that universities themselves could not possibly afford, thousands of loans to students under the National Defense Education Act, $77 million a year in non-military grants by the National Science Foundation, and other benefits...

...Samuel Allison of the Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago told me that there is "remarkably little infringement" by the Navy and other sections of the Pentagon in what he does...

...Defense," says Gilpatric, "must seek its needs where capability exists...

...In interviewing scientists and educators in preparation of these articles for The Progressive, I heard these criticisms over and over again...

...I am confident no one can convincingly argue against Federal aid to colleges and universities—it is an absolute necessity under present circumstances...

...They become "government scientists," following the moods and trends of government research...

...Many an educator is deeply disturbed about this growing problem...

...Twenty years ago planes and tanks were relatively simple affairs, which almost any good manufacturer could produce...

...Others are not so fortunate or so free...

...In contrast, California, Massachusetts, and Texas were booming...

...Some 40,000 graduate students, according to the Bureau of the Budget, are employed as research assistants...

...There is considerable argument in the academic world on this score...

...Unfortunately, "once we have become dependent on it, declining to accept more may involve a great deal of trauma...

...degree to step into a position carrying a considerably higher income than the associate professor, or even full professor, who trained him...

...student ran for president of his class on a program that sharply criticized the M.I.T...

...Though the number of teacher graduates is the second largest of any category, research in education involves less than $10 million a year...

...The ACLU seemed to have no basic quarrel with the fact that such large sums are flowing from Washington to the universities...

...The temptation is very great to use short-term Federal funds to keep at Harvard scientists for whom there is no prospect of a permanent position being available...

...Massachusetts, Texas, Colorado, and Florida—though their share is much smaller—similarly were on the arms upswing...

...M.I.T...

...The Pentagon wants research and devel-" opment in certain specific fields, the best schools are more and more tempted to oblige, even though this creates imbalances in their operations, and the more they oblige the more imperative it is they continue to get grants and contracts from the Federal government...

...We have moved swiftly," according to Cilpatric, "from mass production into research, development, and small quantity prochiction...

...It is not always easy for them to view national needs as a whole...

...From the point of view of a university, however, there are serious problems involved...

...Wallis is far from alone in holding this view...

...Pirating" of the best men, according to Dr...

...When nearly three-quarters of the research and development in colleges and universities is Federally-financed, and when eighty-five per cent of R&D costs in engineering and ninety per cent in the physical sciences come out of Uncle Sam's pocket, a university can no longer be sure it is in control of its own destiny...

...What these figures imply, and what Gilpatric has pointed out to innumerable Congressmen and local officials, is that most defense orders go only where there is smooth collaboration between universities and factories...

...A few years ago the Atomic Energy Commission permitted Associate Universities Inc...

...In the age of push-button warfare, brains and technical skills must be harnessed to the military effort as well as facilities, and it is the job of the Pentagon to forge this unity...

...The "life sciences"—biology, medicine, and agriculture—are gaining ground, but still account for only twenty-nine per cent...

...One of the difficulties," he says, "is that in many cases the government agencies in a position to supply the support have limited missions and therefore limited interests...

...It has "the option of accepting or not accepting support...

...The lure of money is tempting not only for the scientist and the student, but for the university itself...

...The evidence is overwhelming: Route 128, encircling Boston, the industrial complex around San Francisco Bay, that related to the California Institute of Technology and UCLA in the Los Angeles area, and other similar situations are cogent examples of the clustering of industry around centers of learning...

...This man may not be representative of all engineers or all sci-, entists, but he is representative of, enough to cause great concern...

...The ACLU is worried about the security clearance required of so many faculty members and about secrecy in research...

...Spokesmen for the University of Chicago argued that it was costing money for the University to handle government work...

...Though I found that many government agencies, including some in the Pentagon, have leaned over backwards to avoid interference, the effect of military R&D has been subtle, insidious, and far-reaching...

...It also makes it possible to get the best students...

...And he is a miniature reflection of what may be happening to the universities when they have the same preoccupations—a theme I shall explore in the concluding installment of this study in the October issue of The Progressive...

...Today, in the words of one Pentagon official, a plane is a "flying electronics instrument," and the proportion of tanks and similar conventional weapons has declined in just eight years from fifty per cent of the total of military orders to only twelve per cent...

...On the other hand, a scientist at the Stanford Research Institute discounts such claims...

...Federal outlays for physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering —all related to the defense effort— are two-thirds of the R&D total outlay at the universities...

...Dr...

...There has been, according to the Defense Department, a dramatic change in military styles...

...No matter how modern or efficient its plant, it needs research, development, and more research and more development...

...The government contribution may seem small compared to what goes to industry (more than $6 billion), but it is large by university standards...

...But the dark side seems to overshadow the brighter aspects...

...Allison—and thousands like him—are relatively free...

...M.I.T...

...had 4,000 employes...

...intensified the perennial problem that a great many more able scholars are attracted to Harvard by temporary positions than can possibly be given tenure appointments...

...some even say they take a loss...

...Some of the ill effects it sees on the horizon are a growing imbalance between: % The physical sciences and the humanities...

...By contrast, according to Harold Or-lans of Brookings Institution, "the ordinary Ph.D...

...In 1957-58, total income of the higher education institutions from all sources was $4.7 billion...

...Do the needs of the military and those of a university coincide, or are they in conflict...

...One of these dangers is that the emphasis in both teaching and research will be distorted to what the government wants, rather than what is best for education and the university...

...in physics who was paid $13,000 a year by a commercial firm on his first job...

...The demand for physicists and engineers skyrockets...

...f Research and teaching...

...Missiles and other electronically controlled arms have replaced the more familiar weapons, and these new machines require highly refined, precise custom manufacture at the factory site, backed by enormous research and development (R&D, as it is called) in scientific laboratories...

...The Office of Naval Research tells him it wants "good basic physics" and he can usually get whatever amount he needs to conduct whatever project he sees fit...

...Nor was Illinois the only Midwestern state alarmed by the decline in arms orders: Michigan's share of the military booty, for instance, had fallen even more sharply, from 9.5 per cent during the Korean era to only 2.7 per cent now...

...Is this still a school, or is it a business...

...Whether the universities are or are not making a profit out of Federal allotments, they get many benefits that can be translated into both money and prestige—which at a university begets money...

...There has been a "trend away from university autonomy which has occurred, all but unnoticed, in recent years...

...The foundations are attracted to prestige...

...At the University of Chicago there was, until recently, a "think group" doing research on war games for the Air Force...

...The impact of such affluence runs deep, for—in the words of one economics professor—the tendency even of the high school student is to "go where the money is," thus depriving other critical fields of first-class recruits...

...The circle is thus complete...

...W. Allen Wallis, dean of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, expressed grave concern, bordering on alarm, when he said: "Government support exerts a large influence in subtle and indirect ways, and in the long term, the Federal government is the greatest threat to freedom of universities in this country...

...Mayor Daley met with President Kennedy and with Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell L. Gilpatric...

...This is actually a problem at the University of Chicago right now, where a $50 million accelerator is being built for Argonne...

...George W. Beadle, president of the University of Chicago, suggests for his school the establishment of an "independence fund...

...Mathematics, he pointed out, fits that category...

...His Center for Research and Conflict Resolution, which could easily _ absorb and do justice to a half-million dollars a year, subsists on a $30,000 budget...

...The Harvard report on "Harvard and the Federal Government" observes: "An overwhelming proportion of Federal support goes to the sciences...

...Its centers of learning and centers of industry must work closely together to translate basic physics or chemistry into nuclear devices, bomb-sights, and other sophisticated military hardware...

...has some of the top men both in engineering and in humanities and social sciences...

...Our government, which is today militarily oriented, follows the first course, with all the "subtle and indirect" dangers referred to by Dr...

...The number of students in higher education will double this decade—from 3.7 million to 7.3 million—and the cost of educating each student will rise at least twenty-five per cent...

...The yield on endowments is relatively lower than it was forty or fifty years ago when interest rates were higher, and there just are not enough funds available for modern educational purposes...

...to include such expenses as entertainment, housing of guests, and contributions to pension funds as part of "indirect costs...

...The reliance on government becomes ever more significant, and, as one professor told me: "If you work for the Defense Department, you begin to think like the military...

...Hence the area suffers not only industrially, but, according to Robert L. Stead-man, economic adjustment adviser at the Pentagon, it is losing most of its graduate scientists and engineers to firms on the East and West Coasts...

...Quoting favorably a report from a Dallas research center, the Department observed: "Management planners, in considering sites for new or expanded facilities, have found that the availability of trained minds overshadows even such factors as the labor market, water supply, and power resources...

...It's all a matter of fast bookkeeping," he says...

...What happens to such men...

...The large prestige university and the small one...

...To have top-notch scientists on a staff is a distinct asset—it makes it possible to get more contracts and grants, and to lure sizable sums from the foundations...

...In certain fields, such as physics and chemistry, contracts and grants from non-academic sources account for ninety per cent, or even more, of the research budgets of individual departments...

...Are other universities, under similar pressures, also becoming lopsided...

...He emphasized—accurately—the point that no attempt is made to influence the individual scientist who receives a grant or a contract...

...Hans Bethe of Cornell, are becoming "overfed" and "don't think enough...

...Much of the equipment—such as particle accelerators—could not be bought by the institution itself, and if it were not available top physicists might go elsewhere...

...It noted, to begin with, that "as much as two-thirds of the expenditures for all research and development performed by colleges and universities currently comes from the Federal government...

...A survey published by Brookings Institution revealed that one-fourth the scientists at twelve top universities have part of their regular salaries paid from Federal funds...

...With him were other community leaders from groups adversely affected by the drop in armaments orders —the president of the Association of Commerce and Industry, the president of the central <labor body, and, surprisingly, representatives of several universities...

...But science itself, scientific research, and teaching are not quite so free...

...No attempt is made to guide his work from day to day, or to press him to "discover" something...

...Decently, Chicago's troubled May-or Richard J. Daley journeyed to Washington to explore and, if possible, arrest the decline in Chicago's share of military contracts...

...He is the author of a number of books, including The Crisis of American Labor, A World in Revolution, and The Counterfeit Revolution.—The Editors...

...Harvard has been relatively successful in this effort...

...The private college or university, therefore, must turn to the Federal government for help...

...To that extent it is independent of the university...

...The effect on the student is equally pernicious...

...As far as the Defense Department is concerned, this is a logical and inevitable result of inadequate collaboration between universities and industry...

...But the schools themselves are now raising less than a quarter—and the proportion is shrinking rapidly—of their own R&D needs...

...When I tried to discuss disarmament with him, he said frankly he had been too busy to think about it at all...

...Once it concentrates in a special field—such as the physical sciences—it becomes warped...

...Again, other and weaker schools are not so well-fixed they can afford "independence funds...

...By 1961 Federal grants and contracts had risen to $946 million, and by 1962 to $1.2 billion...

...Professor Kenneth Boulding of the University of Michigan, who is doing research on peace, is chronically in need of funds and is turned down frequently...

...But even if we concede' that the scientist himself is not harassed, the same cannot be said for science and learning as such...

...According to one of its spokesmen, NASA has penetrated eighty to one hundred universities for R&D, and this number will soon double...

...Such a migration arises from the industry's need for access to persons with advanced training who can translate the new science into vastly improved or wholly new products...

...Engineering and science students in their early twenties are being offered posts at $7,500 and $9,000 a year...

...If the process continues the university may become a pillar of total orthodoxy, and we shall have taken another step toward the garrison state...

...If one accepts the axioms of military deterrence, this evaluation is unquestionably accurate...

...Lens, labor leader and author, has written for many publications, including The Yale Review, Harper's, Harvard Business Review, Fellowship, Commonweal, The Virginia Quarterly, and, frequently, The Progressive...

...The budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is apparently limitless...

...I recall riding a plane from Chicago to New York with an engineer who works for General Dynamics...

...Ralph Lapp, the eminent physicist, "is being sucked into research and into science...

...He received forty per cent of the vote, indicating the concern some students must feel about concentrating on war work...

...Allison himself points out "there is a lopsided emphasis on the physical sciences...

...In Chicago, according to the Defense Department, this happy union has not yet been achieved...

...Two years ago the military encouraged the doubling of its staff...

...The universities—Chicago, Northwestern, Illinois Institute of Technology—are doing much government-sponsored research, but there is an inadequate emphasis, evidently, on applying it to weaponry...

...But, as one Pentagon official put it to me, "If I were president of M.I.T., I wouldn't sleep nights...

...The cash-short student," says Dr...

...It is for that reason Beadle proposes to keep available "sufficient uncommitted funds to enable us to say no to any proposal for government—or private—support which threatens our independence in an unacceptable way...

...That year the Federal government was paying them $1 in R&D funds for every $1.80 or $1.90 in student fees...

...Back in 1954, the government gave the universities some $280 million for R&D...

...A study made nine years ago indicated that a quarter of those in chemistry and physics, and a third in engineering, had such jobs...

...The universities insist that they make no profit out of Federal contracts and grants...

...In 1960 the University of California was granted a management allowance of $2,150,-000 on the same basis as commercial firms, out of which it was expected to earn a clear profit of $1 million...

...Now he can get as much as he wants...

...Students who will be using their talents for defense industry, he said, ought to discuss alternative activities for those talents, such as technological conversion to peace or projects to develop underdeveloped countries...

...Far down the list are such subjects as education...

...has neglected a basic field of study...

...As things stand now, the government does little to interfere with the "right to knowledge" of the individual scientist...

...Private schools, however, except for a select few, will continue to have trouble...

...But Roosevelt University in Chicago has been unable to secure a small grant for its African studies program, conducted by an admittedly top-notch department in a critical area of foreign affairs...

...California's share of procurement had risen in a few years from one-eighth the national total (13.6 per cent) to 41.3 per cent in fiscal 1961...

...Why should a young man study political science or English literature, where the rewards are so small, when he not only can earn a large salary in industry the moment he graduates, but is assured of financial help while he is going to school...

...The largest share of Federal grants and contracts goes to industry, but $1.2 billion is allotted to universities and the twenty or so research institutes—such as Lincoln, Los Alamos, Argonne, Stanford Research Institute—which are operated by universities...

...f "Team" research and individual research...

...In many instances they become floaters moving from one research institute to another, or to industry...

...the explanation he received has now become a familiar refrain...

...Harold Urey, I am told, was unable to get funds for outer space research...

...Their interest in the university and in teaching is minimal...

...developed the gun-sights for American Sabrejets, and more recently the inertial guidance systems that control rockets and missiles...

...They surrender to the cycle of dependence, imbalance, and orthodoxy...

...But its concern is wider than that...

...At the Pentagon I spoke to an official in the R&D section...

...The community that wants military orders cannot depend on its traditional production capacity...

...A few years ago Dr...

...According to a recent report prepared at Harvard, "at least eighty per cent of the institutions of higher education in the United States now receive Federal funds...

...For the Great Lakes states as a whole, the share of military contracts dropped from 32.4 per cent in World War II to a skimpy 11.8 per cent in fiscal 1961...

...The styles and moods of research are set by government...

...But one source, government R&D, paid them $1.2 billion, twenty per cent more than all their gifts combined...

...In cold figures, this was the situation: During World War II, Illinois had received 6.4 per cent of all prime military contracts...

...The second will appear in the October issue...

...The demand is great not only for professors but for Ph.D's...

...State schools, it is expected, will face relatively less difficulty in meeting this challenge because their monies come from state taxes...

...It is tough on the humanities...

...Does this prove that M.I.T...

...How, I asked him, do you determine what projects to underwrite...

...At one time the Radiation Laboratory at M.I.T...

...Scientist Dr...

...The distinction is important...

...By the time of the Korean conflict this figure had declined moderately to five per cent...

...In the next seven to ten years, the government will be spending $30 to $40 billion on space technology...

...The school feels this should have been done some time ago, because some of its better physicists have fled to the East and the West where such equipment has been available for years...

...the schools themselves raised about $130 million for the same purpose, nearly half the government amount...

...in the humanities still faces a protracted period of poorly paid and often insecure academic employment unknown to his friends in the sciences...

...There is no doubt it is a prime cause of concern...

...Other schools have not...

...As with the corporation, they have a stake in working out more projects, just to keep themselves employed...

...now, "out of 150 graduate students in our department, we may have one or two who study on their own money...

...A few months ago an M.I.T...

...Another aspect of this problem is the emergence of what may be called the "government-professor" or the "government-scientist," the man who must depend on government projects rather than on the university, for his tenure...

...This is $2,000 a year more than full professors average in American universities...