UC Academic Senate Pursues Investigation of Tobacco Funds

Representatives from the Academic Senate decided yesterday to further investigate the proposed prohibition of tobacco company-funded research slated for a vote by the UC Board of Regents in May.

After reviewing the proposed restrictions on the use of tobacco funding at their meeting in January, the regents referred the issue back to the faculty parliamentary body and postponed the decision until May due to worries about violating academic freedom.

Regent John Moores, who proposed a restriction on tobacco-funded research, asked the Academic Senate to address several key questions in making their decision, including how the restriction would impact academic freedom and how the regents should consider the tobacco industry, given that it has been found guilty of fraud.

“We know this is a divisive issue. My priority is to achieve an up-or-down vote before the May meeting,” said Academic Senate Chair John Oakley. “We adopt to attempt robust system-wide consideration and a face-to-face meeting before we vote.”

Throughout the coming months, the Academic Assembly, which is a body of representatives from the Academic Senate, will establish a small group of faculty members representing various UC committees and campuses to assess the evidence and opinions system-wide, preparing an overview to present before the assembly votes.

“The regents want to move beyond the rhetoric and move to what they see as evidence,” said UC San Francisco professor Stan Glanz. “It’s crucial in terms of credibility of the senate that there be an intelligible, well-reasoned response to this.”

In 2004, when the UC Berkeley School of Public Health decided not to accept any tobacco company research funding, the UC Office of the President ruled that individual campus units did not have the authority to make that call. In October 2006, the Academic Assembly released a mixed statement about the faculty sentiments on the issue, after much debate.

While the regents overruled the policy made by the school, many faculty system-wide still believe that the university should not accept funding from Philip Morris USA, which recently was convicted of fraud and misinformation. UC currently has 19 contracts across four campuses with the company, including at UC Berkeley.

“This is not a hard philosophical question,” said David Kessler, dean of UC San Francisco School of Medicine and a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and chief witness in the federal investigation of Philip Morris. “There is an ongoing criminal enterprise. The question is do you want to be a part of it.”

At UC Berkeley, where faculty have spoken out in defense of their academic freedom, the regulation of research funding from the UC governing body is disputed. Some have voiced, in faculty discussions, that restricting the source of funding in this case would start UC down a slippery slope involving several other industries.

“There are so many companies that routinely get indicted,” said William Drummond, chair of the Berkeley division of the Academic Senate. “The proposal said there was a case about (tobacco companies) specifically, but even then they can’t single this out. What is next?”

If the faculty assembly is asked for a yes or no vote in May on the proposed funding restriction, Drummond predicts that the faculty will vote down funding restrictions. But he said because the prohibition is so controversial, he doubts that the issue will remain unresolved.

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