| National Research Council Report Recommends Easing Security Restrictions on University Research |
A report from the National Research Council of the National Academies recommends that security restrictions imposed on university research by the government since 2001 should be eased in order to enhance the nation’s economic and strategic competitiveness.
The report, Science and Security in a Post 9/11 World, concludes that “to keep the country secure and to maintain our freedoms, we must strive to keep U.S. universities open—welcoming students and scholars from around the world and participating in international research—while limiting access when warranted and placing appropriate restrictions on narrow and well-defined high-risk areas.”
The committee that issued the report considered government concerns that terrorists posed as students could gain access to and use advanced technologies to harm U.S. citizens or to aid other countries in benefiting militarily from access to scientific or technical information available in the university environment. Foreign countries could try to penetrate American universities to obtain early access to technologies in order to supplant U.S. capabilities and gain economically.
The report concludes that “these concerns do not justify the use of extreme measures that could serve to significantly disrupt the openness that has characterized the U.S. scientific and technology enterprises . . . because some policies that would aim to minimize the threats described earlier also could pose significant risks to the nation’s ability to remain economically and militarily secure.”
Recent changes have eroded protections afforded by the National Security Decision Directive 189 (NSDD-189). The directive stipulates that “it is the policy of the U.S. government to not restrict . . . the products of unclassified fundamental research.” The report notes that “the problem for universities is that federal agencies sometimes impose restrictions on publications or foreign nationals in their research contracts to universities when the research complies with the requirements of NSDD-189.” Even though research may be unclassified and protected under NSDD-189, government agencies are using the vague term of “sensitive but unclassified” to label projects that they wish to control. The report also notes that federal agencies award research contracts to industrial firms without the fundamental research exclusion but do not consider that these contracts are often subcontracted to a university for which the restrictions are not appropriate.
The report recommends that federal agencies ensure that grants and contracts for fundamental research awarded to universities abide by the principles of NSDD-189 and that agencies make clear to industrial awardees that the restrictive publication and foreign national clauses placed in government awards that would not apply to universities should not be passed down to subcontracting universities conducting fundamental research.
To read a summary of the report and the committee’s 14 recommendations, click here.