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UH must reject
UARC secrecy

Behind the scenes this summer a special committee of the Manoa Faculty Senate has been assembling a cost-vs.-benefits scorecard on whether the University of Hawaii's Board of Regents should approve establishing a Navy University Affiliated Research Center (UARC).

Shortly after the new school year begins, the Manoa Faculty Senate is expected to weigh the committee report, deliberate and then make its recommendation that will be forwarded to President David McClain and by October to the Board of Regents.

The Pentagon already has approved such a center under which UH researchers would become so-called "trusted agents of the government" -- in effect, government employees with military security clearances. And the Pentagon has promised up to $50 million over five years in contracts for "tasks" needed by the military, rather than for projects initiated by UH faculty and researchers. But UH also would have to spend up to $2 million annually for five years to fund the operation. Not until the fourth or fifth year of the Navy's five-year contract would the UARC become self-sufficient, members of the Board of Regents were told, according to the minutes of their meeting of Nov. 18-19 last year.

The Manoa Faculty Senate should strongly oppose the establishment of this Navy UARC and explain cogent reasons for doing so to UH's administration, students and staff, to the Board of Regents and to the community that it needs and nurtures.

The public interest is served by some secrecy at certain times and under certain conditions, which are well defined in our nation's constitutional and statutory provisions. However, especially in the university setting, secrecy is the knot that binds power and knowledge, as Professor Sue Curry Jansen has established. At this critical juncture, UH needs to beware of the secrecy imposed by the UARC on the type of knowledge generated at UH-Manoa and the purposes for which it is generated.

The over-arching danger posed by establishing a Navy UARC at UH is because of the many adverse facets of secrecy that undergird its practice and philosophy. The Faculty Senate last academic year expressed a resolution touching on one key aspect of secrecy when it reaffirmed its support for timely publication of research results. But these research results are the end of the process; secrecy corrodes the process from the very beginning. Thus, other reasons besides publication releases also need to be considered and explained.

» First, some UARC research would be classified, meaning secret, with a loss of institutional integrity to decide whom the researchers will be. Those privileged to conduct such research would be decided by the military through its mandatory security classification system. All international faculty may be denied such necessary clearances; many other qualified faculty and staff may be denied the proper clearances because of sexual orientation, persons against whom the military acknowledges it discriminates.

Moreover, graduate and undergraduate students would probably not be granted such clearances and even if they were their classified work could not be reviewed openly as scholarship for their theses, dissertations or class assignments.

Thus, secrecy requirements could be discriminatory, a violation of UH's and Hawaii's stated policies, and secrecy could lead to abdicating academic and local control over the quality of UH researchers and over the integrity of the research enterprise generally.

» Second, the secrecy requirements and conflict-of-interest constraints imposed on those privileged researchers as trusted agents of the government who have had access to classified and privileged information impede economic development and innovation that the state and UH have been touting.

Such secrecy may also adversely affect UH's licensing and patenting revenues and crimp attempts to partner with businesses and nonprofits. Thus, the Navy UARC at UH impedes Hawaii's economic development and training of future scientists, innovators and other students, a central mission to all.

» Third, where the classified research will be conducted off campus will be secret, judging from the difficulty I and others are having in obtaining timely release of recent classified research at UH.

Such secrecy will facilitate the sparking and spreading of rumors, suspicion and distrust in the communities, as communication research conducted as far back as World War II has shown. In fact, some research on the disastrous results of such rumors were those that befell Honolulu itself shortly before and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Such distrust and suspicion is hardly a well-advised way for UH to contemplate celebrating its centennial in 2007.

» Finally, at the strategic policy level, the secrecy surrounding the UARC undermines -- rather than boosts -- national security. Distributed to the Manoa Faculty Senate last year was a self-study report that is well worth noting. It was produced at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, President McClain's alma mater, and is titled "In The Public Interest," June 12, 2002 report of the ad hoc Faculty Committee.

Reaffirming its mission for an open intellectual environment, the committee in its report stated:

"National security, the health of our nation, and the strength of our economy depend heavily on the advancement of science and technology and on the education of future generations."

Conversely, it noted, "The well-being of our nation will ultimately be damaged if education, science and technology suffer as a result of any practices that indiscriminately discourage or limit the open exchange of ideas."

Moreover, the report notes: "Peer evaluation of research methods and findings, an outcome of open sharing and debate within the scientific community, is a crucial mechanism to insure the continued quality and progress of science."

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology already has experienced the inability of its faculty committee, composed of members with classified research clearances, to investigate allegations of fraud at Lincoln Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center over which MIT has supervisory responsibility. MIT was blocked by the Missile Defense Agency's classifying reports about allegations of falsification of results of the first test flight in 1997 of the so-called "Star Wars" system now being tested above and in the Pacific.

The Boston Globe has called upon MIT to insist that "the Pentagon allow a panel of independent, qualified people to examine the records and decide whether a scientific fraud has been committed involving a system that is supposed to protect Americans from a nuclear warhead."

Thus, any oversight committee that UH seeks to establish as a guarantee on the quality or the nature of the research conducted under its auspices may be at best wishful thinking and at worst deceptive. In addition, the quality of secret research that is not subjected to peer review and vigorous deliberation diminishes over time and can lead to allegations of wrongdoing. Secrecy often leads to less security, rather than more.

Moreover, a Navy contract that specifies that no research of weapons of mass destruction will be conducted at UH-Manoa is insufficient. Many other potentially catastrophic kinds of research can be -- and might well be -- conducted at UH as the U.S. government develops a new kind of plutonium, more deadly than the original one with a radioactive existence of 500,000 years. That new kind of plutonium will be used to fuel underwater surveillance vessels, which could well be manned by future UH researchers.

Instead of such a dangerous and self-destructive research framework with secrecy embedded throughout, UH should investigate the alternative avenues of non-secret funding that UH faculty and others have advocated. For the sake of UH's institutional integrity and reputation, of UH students and of the economic, intellectual and environmental health of Hawaii, the Navy UARC should be abandoned. UH should launch a new beginning by refocusing its time, energies and priorities.

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