Faculty Question Deal On Biofuels Research

For some faculty members at UC Berkeley, a pending contract with a private company that will fund $500 million of campus research on alternative energy sources has raised concerns over the role of corporate sponsorship.

Though a final contract between campus officials and BP Amoco PLC has not yet been finalized, some campus faculty members have voiced concerns that an agreement made without adequate transparency and campus-wide debate would constitute the privatization of a public university.

“Does the money come with strings attached that hinder academic freedom of research and teaching?” asked Laura Nader, a professor of anthropology, who said the deal may allow the patron company to dictate the type of research to be conducted.

“He who pays the piper calls the tune,” Nader said.

While he said most of the campus is in favor of seeing the research on energy conducted at UC Berkeley, William Drummond, chair of the Berkeley division of the Academic Senate, said there are still concerns to be worked out over the specifics of the contract.

“There’s no free lunch … (BP) expects something back,” he said. “That seems to be the way our system works, but we don’t want to compromise the university’s values and academic freedom.”

However, Vice Chancellor for Research Beth Burnside said there are safeguards already in place to protect the campus from encroachments on the research and that not allowing the researchers to accept the funds would be a limitation placed on them by their colleagues.

“If some faculty members who don't approve of industry research support were to prevent faculty who have sought this support and want this support from being able to pursue their research aims, this would represent an infringement of the academic freedom of those faculty who want to conduct the industry-sponsored research,” Burnside said in an e-mail.

In 1998, an unprecedented $25 million contract between the College of Natural Resources and pharmaceutical company Novartis became controversial when opponents to the deal alleged violations of academic freedom, prompting the campus to conduct a study of the contract’s effects.

Although the study concluded that the deal did not taint the research, campus faculty still pointed to a decline in administrative transparency, which study co-author Alan Rudy said creates the need for a greater balance between faculty and the steering of the university in the current BP contract.

“It seems to me that our primary recommendation in our report was that the campus needs to have an open and public discussion about what the purposes, mission and constituencies of and for the university are,” Rudy said, echoing an opinion shared by some faculty members on campus.

Although he and other faculty members acknowledged differences between the Novartis and BP agreements, Ignacio Chapela, an assistant professor of environmental science policy and management who claimed he was denied tenure in 2003 because of his opposition to the Novartis deal, said he was concerned that the the BP contract will generate similar effects.

“We have been denied that basic fundamental right (of prior informed consent), so anything you build on that foundation will be shaky and will eventually fall by some weight,” Chapela said.

Drummond said a solution may be for the Academic Senate to hold a series of “town meetings” at which interested members of the campus could discuss the deal in order to best achieve the constructive research goals of the campus.

Dan Kammen, a professor in the energy and resources group who wrote part of the BP proposal said the company likely foresaw such a debate when it picked UC Berkeley as the recipient of its award.

“(BP) made the choice to work with us and no university represents more dissent than Berkeley does. I think it was the right choice … The kind of debate we’re seeing already is what needs to happen,” Kammen said.

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