COLLEGES NOW ARE MORE WILLING TO DO CIA RESEARCH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030020-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: February 18, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030020-5
ARVUE A EUED
IN PAG -
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
18 February 1986
Colleges now are more willing
to do CIA research
By Dick Pothier
Inquirer Stall Writer
Professors from Villanova Univer.
sity and Rutgers University have car-
ried out research for the CIA in the
last few years.
Pennsylvania State University is
doing CIA research now - although
university officials won't say exactly
what it is.
'And more than a dozen other area
colleges and universities contacted
recently say they would willingly
accept CIA-funded research today if
it, was unclassified and if it fit into
the institutions' guidelines for schol-
arly, approved academic research.
Even officials at Ivy League uni-
versities, including the University of
Pennsylvania and Princeton, say
they would accept research for the
CIA if it was both scholarly and open,
although neither is doing CIA re-
search now.
The CIA, in short, has become
more welcome on campus today than
at any time in the last 20 years. Even
Harvard has one CIA contract: a
$7,500 yearly grant that gives the CIA
subscriptions to a series of publica-
tions about computer technology and
information management.
"I think the CIA has been trying to
find an academic home all over the
place, and the trend has certainly
been toward further involvement"
in higher education, said John Shat-
tuck, vice president for governmen-
tal and public affairs at Harvard.
The CIA itself says it is busily try-
ing to re-establish the ties to acade-
mia that were broken during the
1960s, when many universities re-
vealed that they had been secretly
receiving CIA funding and re-
sponded to student pressure by with.
drawing from the research.
"We have been very active in this
area, partially because Congress has
actually mandated that we seek out
new sources of information, third
and fourth opinions, to avoid the
problem of 'staleness' of ideas that
sometimes arises," said Patti Volz, a
spokeswoman for the CIA.
And Robert Gates, deputy director
of intelligence for the CIA, said in an
interview that the agency's isolation
from academic research had led to
some serious intelligence problems.
such as the mistaken view that the
shah of Iran was leading a stable
government.
"There were scholars out there
saying the shah was in trouble, and
somehow that assessment never got
incorporated into any official assess-
ment," said Gates.
Now, Gates said, many campus
scholars see a need to assist the gov-
ernment in their areas of specialty,
and the CIA is more willing to listen
to them.
"Can you imagine what people
would say if we contended that no
one in the academic world has any-
thing to offer us, that there is no
information or perspective that
could help us do our job? It's incon-
ceivable that anyone would make
that point," Gates said.
During much of that time that the
CIA was out of favor on campus, the
mere mention of a CIA research con-
tract in some student newspapers
generated demonstrationas.
And even now, CIA-funded re-
search remains a ticklish question
on some campuses. Volz said the CIA
would not disclose the names of indi.
viduals or universities doing re-
search or consultant work for the
agency.
Harvard recently wrestled for
months with a prickly CIA-related
controversy that arose when the di.
rector of the university's Center for
Middle Eastern Studies, Nadav Sa-
fran, accepted $45,700 from the
agency to support a university con-
ference on Islamic fundamentalism.
Safran also accepted a CIA grant of
$107,430 to underwrite his recently
published book, Saudi Arabia: The
Ceaseless Quest for Security. The
grant allowed the CIA review and
censorship rights over the manu-
script.
When word leaked out about the
secret CIA funding, Safran an.
nounced his resignation as director
of the center, effective in June, al.
though he will remain a tenured
professor of government at the uni-
versity.
More recently, Harvard began an
investigation into the work of an.
other well-known professor, Samuel
Huntington, director of the Center
for International Affairs.
Huntington has acknowledged that
he started work in 1984 on a CIA-
sponsored study of the political sta-
bility of dictatorships without notify.
ing university officials.
He said the contract was for
"slightly more than $10,000" and that
it gave the CIA the right to pre-
publication review of materials re-
sulting from the study, as well as the
right to prevent the disclosure of the
funding source in print.
Harvard prohibits professors from
accepting grants that allow outside
sponsors to review and edit research
before it is published or that restrict
professors from acknowledging fi-
nancial support in print.
The University of Pennsylvania
has similar rules prohibiting any re-
search that isn't open and fully pub-
lishable.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030020-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030020-5
Thomas Naff, director of Penn's
Middle East Research Institute, said
the institute has no CIA contracts,
but added: "We wouldn't necessarily
reject CIA research funding. It de-
pends on what the terms are, and
right away it must be said that we
abide by the university's policy on
research."
Naff, just as many scholars, said he
believes that the CIA is as entitled as
any other government or nongov-
ernment agency to research or infor-
mation from experts in higher edu-
cation.
"As long as there are no CIA re-
strictions that conflict with open re-
search, then it seems to me that one
can't say that CIA money is automati-
cally 'tainted money,'" Naff said.
Robert May, a Princeton professor
and chairman of the Princeton Uni-
versity Research Board, said CIA-
funded research would be welcomed
"if it were open and basically schol-
arly in nature - for example, a look
at the rise of Islam - and it fit into
someone's academic research area."
He said Princeton is not carrying
out any CIA research now.
In the Philadelphia area, Justin
Green, professor of political science
at Villanova University, did CIA re-
search until two years ago. He stud-
ied the political stability of the Phil-
ippines under a contract with a
major consulting firm.
"There are people who think no
American scholar should work for
the CIA, openly or in any other way,"
said Green, a member of the Philip-
pines Studies Association.
"But my sense is that if academics
can't contribute their knowledge to
the government, where the heck is
their government going to get the
information to make better, or hope-
fully better, policy decisions?"
Green, who said he has done no
CIA research for more than two
years, worked for several years as a
consultant for the New York consult-
ing firm of Booz, Allen & Hamilton
Inc., in which he said had a CIA
contract to study the political situa-
tion in the Philippines.
"I didn't receive any money di-
rectly from the CIA," he said in a
telephone interview. "I got paid as a
consultant by the consulting firm,
and I was smart enough to to speak to
both my dean and the university's
academic vice president, so they
knew what I was doing."
Green's CIA-funded work, Villa-
nova officials said, fit within the
university's research guidelines, and
thus he encountered no official prob-
lems.
Two political scientists at Rutgers
University in New Brunswick ran
afoul of school policy when they
worked on a project in 1983 and
failed to tell the university or their
students that the course work might
be used-in a CIA-financed study of
the United States.
The university found that the pro-
fessors, Richard Mansbach, chair-
man of the political science depart-
ment, and an associate, Harvey
Waterman, "acted inappropriately,"
according to a university statement
of Nov. 27, 1984. Rutgers officials said
the contract - to study U.S. foreign
policy in relation to Wester Europe
- was for about $25,000 a year for
several years.
"Mansbach and, indirectly, Water-
man, should have been more con-
cerned with the potential that ex-
isted for inappropriately using
classroom students in connection
with a research project," said Tilden
Edelstein, dean of the Rutgers' Fac-
ulty of Arts and Sciences.
Mansbach, in a recent telephone
interview, said the project had been
completed and that he was not now
involved in any further CIA re-
search.
"I think that if CIA research on
campus is open and unclassified, it
can be a good thing because it opens
up the agency to a diversity of points
of views and perspectives that they
might otherwise not have.
"And for an academic person doing
research, it opens up the possibility
of having a voice or an input into
decisions. Open, unclassified CIA re-
search on campus can provide a heck
of a lot of insight perhaps not avail-
able in Washington," he said.
Mansbach also said that he at least
suggested to his students at the be-
ginning of the class that he was
doing research for a government
agency on a topic related to the
course subject.
"Early in the semester f stated that
the research project is funded by an
agency of the U.S. government - a
major intelligence agency with three
letters in its name," he said.
The only university in Pennsylva-
nia or New Jersey known to be per-
forming CIA research now is Penn
State in State College.
Charles Hosler, the university's
vice president for research, said the
university has a small CIA contract
for "work in an area of business and
economic analysis, but I am not at
liberty to talk about it. It's not classi-
fied at all, but at the same time I have
a verbal agreement not to discuss it."
"It's not a large amount, about
$30,000 a year, and all I can say is that
it's for economic analysis."
Hosler, when asked if the Harvard
controversy were the reason he
could not discuss the project, 'an-
swered, "Yes."
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030020-5