Academic science in certain disciplines and the military have had a curious quasi partnership for more than forty years. While the operators of this partnership share elements of a scientific ethos, their institutional frameworks are radically different. A number of controversies related to the relationship between the military and the university that have affected the universities, the science programs of the military departments, and the conditions of research are explored. Still the partnership persists.
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References
1.
1. ONR was established by act of Congress in 1946, the Army Research Office in 1951, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 1952, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1958.
2.
2. Don K. Price, Government and Science (New York: New York University Press, 1954), p. 57.
3.
3. There is a dispute, or at least discussion, about the notions of an ethos of science, but there seems to be agreement that scientists do adhere to some general principles, one way or another. Cf. William W. Lowrance, Modern Science and Human Values (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 46-47.
4.
Scientists' elitist position has been interpreted as harmonious with the military search for a degree of political autonomy. See David Dickson, The New Politics of Science (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p. 115.
5.
Daniel J. Kevles , The Physicists (New York: Knopf, 1977, 1978).
6.
6. Within the Office of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDIO) there is a division of Innovative Science and Technology that sponsors university research. As an element of the SDIO, it is by budgetary definition engaged in development (budget category 6.3+) work, but much of the activity, at least as far as university performers are concerned, is clearly basic research. The National Security Agency sponsors basic research in mathematics.
7.
R. A. Levine , The Arms Debate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). Levine is writing a review of the same issues, 25 years later, with the title “Still the Arms Debate.”
8.
8. Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, pp. 343-355. In fact, the debate started in the late 1950s but failed to attract much public attention even though the scientific community was doubtful about and, for the most part, opposed to the deployment of antiballistic missiles from the start. Secretary of Defense McNamara was skeptical. His proposal of the system was very much the result of political pressure from the military and congressional friends.
9.
9. Hans A. Bethe and Richard Garwin, “Anti Ballistic Missile System,”Scientific American, Mar. 1968.
10.
10. “ABM: Scientists' Loyal Opposition Finds a Forum,”Science, 21 Mar. 1969, pp. 1309-1311. The Nixon administration changed the proposed system to the defense of intercontinental ballistic missiles instead of cities, which removed the argument that the system was strategically destabilizing.
11.
11. Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, pp. 351-355.
12.
12. See Joel Primack and Frank von Hippel, Advice and Dissent: Scientists in the Political Arena (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 59-73, 178-195.
13.
13. “Address to the Nation on the Strategic Defense Initiative,” 23 Mar. 1983.
14.
14. Scientific American, Oct. 1984, pp. 39-49.
15.
15. “SDI: The Last, Best Hope,” reprinted from Insight in Strategic Defense Initiative, ed. P. Edward Haley and Jack Merritt (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986).
17. John Kogut and Michael Weissman, “Taking the Pledge against Star Wars,”Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jan. 1986, pp. 27-30.
18.
18. The proponents initially sought to enlist the names of institutions by the creation of putative consortia of universities when faculty investigators were working on SDI contracts. After complaints from university presidents, this practice was abandoned.
19.
19. Clark Kerr, then president of the University of California, published his 1963 Godkin lectures as The Uses of the University (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), in which he discussed in one lecture “the realities of the federal grant university.” In it he pointed out that 75 percent of all university expenditure on research was federally funded, of which 32 percent was from the DoD. He made a number of observations about the consequences for internal cohesion and control of this situation.
20.
20. Agency for International Development programs in South Vietnam and Thailand, the interest of Project Jason in counterinsurgency in Southeast Asia, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency's extension of its programs into the social sciences were particularly notable instances of programs involving universities and faculty that precipitated impassioned protests during the latter part of the 1960s. See, for example, Seymour J. Deitchman, The Best-Laid Schemes: A Tale of Social Research and Bureaucracy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976).
21.
21. Harold Orlans, Contracting for Knowledge (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1973), pp. 15-80.
22.
22. See Carl Kaysen, “Can Universities Cooperate with the Defense Establishment?” this issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
23.
23. Immanuel Wallerstein and Paul Starr, The University Crisis Reader (New York: Random House, 1971), 1:208-209.
24.
24. Ibid., pp. 262-91.
25.
on analogous issues in the USSR, see Julian Cooper, “The Military and Higher Education in the USSR,” ibid.
26.
26. Science, 14 Mar. 1969, pp. 1175-1178.
27.
27. While work sponsored by military agencies was under scrutiny and attack, research and service contracts from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Agency for International Development, and other agencies were also significant.
28.
28. At MIT the radicals organized the Science Action Coordinating Committee while the liberals established the Union of Concerned Scientists;
29.
29. California, Johns Hopkins, and Rochester all kept relationships with military laboratories.
30.
30. Wallerstein and Starr, University Crisis Reader, pp. 221-237.
31.
31. The move to regulate secrecy on campus was an early example of a line of regulatory requirements for the conditions of research generated by both university and government concerns. Others of importance are the use of human subjects, the use of live animal subjects, biological safety, conflict of interest, and, often, standards of appropriateness for the academic community.
32.
32. Dorothy Nelkin, The University and Military Research (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 88.
33.
Irving Louis Horowitz , The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot, rev. ed. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974).
34.
34. Speech at Denison University, 18 Apr. 1969, reprinted in part in Wallerstein and Starr, University Crisis Reader, pp. 237-238.
35.
35. Pub. L. 91-121, 203.
36.
36. Rodney W. Nichols, “Mission-Oriented R&D,”Science, 2 Apr. 1971, pp. 29-37. In the authorization for 1971, the language was changed to the much less restrictive “in the opinion of the Secretary of Defense, a potential relationship [to a military function or operation].” The congressional motive for this provision was surely mixed, but the effect was to require the department to review its research program and reflect upon its relationship to the agency's mission, which is itself rather complex, to say the least.
37.
37. The defense establishment conceptualizes the process of research and development as a continuous movement from fundamental knowledge to a working prototype ready for production. The subcategories of the DoD R&D budget reify that conceptual scheme as follows: 6.1, research; 6.2, exploratory development; 6.3, advanced development; 6.4, engineering development; 6.5, management and support; and 6.6, operational systems development. About 10 percent of the R&D budget, which includes research (6.1), exploratory development (6.2), and concept feasibility (6.3a), comprises the so-called technology base. University-based programs are overwhelmingly within the technology-base area.
38.
38. U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, RDT&E: Acquisition Management Guide, 10th ed., Jan. 1987, pp. 2.7-2.8. Some hint of the problem of coupling is to be found in the following from a news story by Grace Shinamoto of the Ottaway News Service, published in the Sentinel (Santa Cruz, CA), 20 Mar. 1988: “The Office of Naval Research, founded in 1946 to carry on the scientific and technological progress fueled by defense needs during World War II, is spending nearly $1.17 million in Santa Cruz this year. “ `They sponsor research without knowing what will come out of it because the better they know their environment, the better they 'll know how to operate in it,' said Theodore Foster, a UCSC marine sciences professor who is using a $66,498 ONR contract to study circulation of ocean waters. “But the ONR spokesmen say the office funds projects it anticipates will yield technology useful to the fleet, usually within five to 10 years. “ `We are the Navy after all. We're part of the Defense Department,' said ONR spokesman Marc Whetstone.” Who is right?
39.
39. U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research, Guide to Programs, July 1987, pp. 10, 28.
40.
40. U.S. Department of Defense, The Department of Defense Report on the Merit Review Process for Competitive Selection of University Research Projects and an Analysis of the Potential of Expanding the Geographical Distribution of Research, prepared for U.S. Congress, Committees on Appropriations, Apr. 1987, p. 5.
41.
41. Stanton A. Glantz and Norm V. Albers, “Department of Defense R&D in the University,”Science, 22 Nov. 1974, pp. 706-711.
42.
42. Department of Defense, Report on the Merit Review Process, p. 5.
43.
43. Glantz and Albers reported that in the early 1970s there were from 4 to 10 proposals submitted for each funded. Glantz and Albers, “Department of Defense R&D.”
44.
44. John Holdren and F. Bailey Green, “Military Spending, the SDI, and Government Support of Research and Development: Effects on the Economy and the Health of American Science,”FAS Public Interest Report, Sept. 1986.
45.
45. “Playing the Education Game to Win,”Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 1987, vol. 18, pt. 1, pp. 55-88.
46.
46. Ibid., pp. 87-88.
47.
47. “Behind Quantum Electronics: National Security as a Basis for Physical Research in the United States, 1940-1960,”Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 1987, vol. 18, pt. 1, pp. 149-229, particularly p. 200 ff.
48.
Edward Gerjuoy and Elizabeth Urey Baranger, “The Physical Sciences and Mathematics,” ibid.
49.
49. Within advisory committees to the DoD, the issue of discipline support is occasionally considered.
50.
50. Matt. 13:12. The principle, first identified by Robert K. Merton (The Sociology of Science, ed. Norman Storer, [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973], pp. 445-447), can be roughly framed as, “Them that has, gets.”
51.
Daniel S. Greenberg , “It Was a Great Year for Pork Barrel R&D Funding,”Science and Government Report, 1 Feb. 1988, p. 3.
52.
52. For the most part, exports are controlled by two statutes: the Export Administration Act and the Arms Export Control Act. The latter is specific to “military articles,” that is, weapons, while the former controls all other commodities, including “dual-use” technologies, that is, technology that has both civilian and military applications. The administrative processes of the two acts are different and are administered by different agencies, but they both require licensing of exports. While the law gives the DoD a strong role in this activity, the DoD administers neither act. It includes itself by providing advice to the administering agencies and adding requirements to contracts with suppliers of “sensitive” technologies and materials.
53.
David A. Wilson , “Federal Control of Information in Academic Science,”Jurimetrics, 27:283-296 (Spring 1987).
54.
For a somewhat less sanguine view of this matter and related issues, see John Shattuck and Muriel Morisey Spence, “When Government Controls Information,”Technology Review, Apr. 1988, pp. 62-73.
55.
55. See the quotation from Price at the beginning of this article.
