Secret Research at Penn

Should a university, which by definition is dedicated to the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge, engage in secret research for the U.S. Department of Defense? Faced with growing faculty restiveness over its studies in chemical and biological warfare, the University of Pennsylvania last week answered no--but added some important qualifications.

The fact that Penn's Institute for Cooperative Research was engaged in studying the potential effectiveness of crop-killing agents and man-disabling chemicals was not much of a secret on the Philadelphia campus. File cabinets in the institute's offices have impressive combination locks, but the institute's annual reports outline the scope of the work in general terms, and such code names for specific projects as "Summit" and "Spicerack" are commonly heard on campus. The university has also been candid about the fact that roughly one-fourth of its annual $100 million in operating funds comes from research contracts and grants, although it says that only 19 out of nearly 900 specific projects include limitations on publishing the findings, and only twelve of these are military.

Professional or Political? Mainly to meet faculty objections, Penn President Gaylord P. Harnwell announced that he will abolish the institute, which had coordinated all defense contracts, although existing contracts will be completed. In the future, the university will push for the right to publish all contracted research and, under a faculty proposal that has administration backing, whenever agreement cannot be reached, Harnwell will seek the advice of an eight-man faculty advisory committee on whether to proceed on a contract. Penn Provost David R. Goddard explained, however, that the university will accept secret work during a national emergency and will never divulge information endangering national security. University scientists, he noted, rightly published nothing on nuclear fission while Nazi Germany was trying to create an atomic bomb.

While secret-weapons research in peacetime may present ethical problems for a profession devoted to the broadest possible advancement of knowledge, the fuss at Penn seems more political than professional. The protest was originally raised by the Philadelphia Committee to End the War in Viet Nam.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.