Harvard DOD Ties Criticized

The University Conversion Product, a Cambridge-based organization that keeps tabs on universities' ties to the military, says Harvard's advisory involvement with the Department of defense harms its academic environment.

In a list compiled by the War research Info Service, Harvard ranks 41st of the 140 educational institutions that received the most military contracts during the fiscal years 1987-1990 and the most grants in 1989.

While Harvard does not receive as much money from the department of defense as many other universities, its professors are still involved with the military, said University Conversion Project founder Richard A. Cowan.

"What they do is advise the government" Cowan said. These advisory ties create a twofold problem, he said.

"The Department of Defense is using experts at Harvard to give academic legitimacy to their policies," he said. ":And Harvard professors are losing a little bit of their freedom by having to maintain these ties to the Department of Defense."

In the 1990 fiscal, year, Harvard held the third highest number of seats in a group of 32 Federal advisory committees, according to Covert Action magazine.

Harvard professors are members of several major government advisory committees, including the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, the Defense Policy Board and the Defense Science Board and the defense science Board Cowan said.

Another drawback of Harvard's governmental advising role is that professors feel pressured to back the administration's Policies, Cowan said.

"You have to take a position," he said." that means for the Bush administration, you generally have to support high military spending."

"If you have a different position, you'd be branded as a radical" and risk removal from your post, he added.

Such heavy influence from the military can only be damaging in the end, Cowan said.

"The idea of the university being critical of society at large, and being a place of discussion, is corrupted when people are too close to the administration," he said.

Cowan said his organization seeks an environment in which "people learn to think critically about what universities are training people for."

"We want to see non-military fields and careers get funded instead of being marginalized."