Bok Letter

Following are excerpts from President Derek C. Bok's open letter, released today, on issues involving prepublication review, secrecy and sponsored research:

Within the past year, several issues involving secrecy have arisen at Harvard. We have learned that professors have agreed to write books on condition that they refrain from disclosing the source of funds for their research and that professors consulting for intelligence agencies may be required thereafter to submit their scholarly manuscripts for agency review prior to publication. Committed as we are to the ideal of open communication, such revelations cannot help but cause concern. While our current rules regarding research may provide a framework for dealing with these issues, some faculty members are clearly unaware of the rules or under the impression that they apply only to research contracts administered by the University and not to scholarly work that professors carry out on their own.

In defining our policies on these matters, the faculty must play a prominent role, since policies relating to secrecy affect the nature of their research, their teaching, even their consulting. Faculty members have the experience to understand the varied circumstances in which issues of secrecy arise. Since a university cannot enforce regulations on secrecy without a degree of surveillance unsuited to an academic institution, its policies will have little effect unless they are backed by a peer pressure that can result only from common understandings built through informed discussion. Of necessity, moreover, the rules the University adopts only define minimum obligations. Each professor has a personal responsibility to decide what further forms of self-restraint are advisable. Hence, the standards individual faculty members set for themselves are likely to be as important as the rules the University promulgates.

To help in such deliberations as interested faculties may undertake, I offer this brief essay, concentrating on the issues that arise when scholars are required to submit their manuscripts to outside review prior to publication and when they must decide whether to disclose the sources of funding for their research. Later this year, I may prepare another letter on problems of secrecy and other restrictions that can arise in carrying out scientific research sponsored by industry. My purpose in writing these essays is not to propose definitive answers but to provoke and assist discussion. Through such deliberation, we may ultimately arrive at a wider consensus on the meaning of the rules adopted by the faculty and the need, if any, for modifications.

What kinds of prepublication agreements ... might we consider improper for a scholar? Suppose that [a] widow would only offer materials to the biographer of her husband on condition that she review the manuscript in advance to insure that her husband was "treated with proper respect?" Or suppose that the widow offered her papers only with the promise that she have power to censor the book to insure the accuracy not merely of her own statements but of everything written about her husband. In both cases, the standards are so broad and vague as to carry an unacceptable risk of interfering with the views or interpretations of the author.

Perhaps the following formula will be suitable. We will allow a few limited agreements for prepublication review, but only where the claim seems (1) to further a legitimate interest of the reviewer, and (2) to involve minor aspects of the text that do not interfere with the right of the authors to present their opinions and interpretations or to include material facts that they were entitled to present. To put it more generally, we see nothing wrong with allowing someone else to review a draft and edit it for matters of legitimate concern to the reviewer, if these matters are sufficiently inconsequential that the threat to the scholarly integrity of the manuscript seems nonexistant or clearly outweighed by the added information made available in return.

Although these issues must be considered by the faculty, I do not wish to hide my views behind a veil of conflicting arguments. Let me close, therefore, by briefly stating my personal conclusions.... As currently advised, I believe that faculty members should not be barred by the University from agreeing to prepublication reviews insuring against disclosure of classified information (unless and until there is evidence that such reviews have resulted in unjustified censorship). But I do feel that members should be required to disclose that fact in any book or article so reviewed and to indicate whether the review resulted in any changes in the manuscript. (I should add that even though I would not now urge a rule prohibiting others from submitting to such reviews, I would be personally reluctant as a scholar to agree to prepublication review of my own manuscripts.) Assuming that the preceding points were accepted, it may be superfluous to require professors to disclose that their research had been funded by an intelligence agency. Hence, I would not care particularly whether such a rule were in force, although I would feel personally bound to disclose my source of funding whenever such disclosure would be likely to interest readers. Finally, I believe that the rules relating to sponsored research should apply equally to all research carried out by professors while on the Harvard payroll. As a result, I would make the rules clear by redrafting them to conform with this point and with the others previously made.

Let me repeat that I disclose these tentative opinions to provoke faculty discussion, not to inhibit it. What emerges from this essay is that our current rules relating to secrecy in research do not seem either adequately framed or sufficiently understood within this community to deal satisfactorily with the kinds of issues we have been discussing. By themselves, of course, the situations we have analyzed may seem minor. Probably, only a few faculty members will ever encounter such problems in their own work. Still, the principles at stake are important to a community of scholars, and the kinds of questions we have examined are likely to increase in number and complexity as the importance of research to government and industry continues to grow. If we do not attend to these issues as they arise, we may eventually come to realize that questionable practices have taken such firm root that our integrity as an institution of learning has been seriously, even irreparably, compromised. The principal responsibility for avoiding this result should rest with the faculty, for it is they who mush consider the standards appropriate to their own individual work and to help define the rules required for the University as a whole.