UC President Asks Renewal of Pacts for Weapon Labs

Despite faculty opposition, UC President David P. Gardner on Thursday urged that the university renew its federal contracts to run nuclear weapons laboratories because of benefits to national security.

His statement was widely viewed as proof that the regents will vote next week to continue the controversial ties with the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories.

UC has managed federal weapons research facilities since World War II and to drop that relationship now “could place at risk laboratories that have proven to be such significant assets to the nation’s security and its scientific and technological advancement,” Gardner said in a report to the regents released Thursday.

Moreover, Gardner contended that the easing of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union may shift the labs to work on more non-defense energy projects. Such unclassified experiments, he said, would allow greater involvement by UC faculty and students. Critics now complain that the top-secret nature of the labs is at odds with academic freedom.

The current multibillion-dollar contracts with the U.S. Department of Energy expire in 1992. The regents must indicate at their meeting at UCLA next Thursday and Friday whether they intend to start negotiations for another five-year renewal.

UC management of the labs has been debated since the 1960s, raising issues usually not discussed by the regents: relations with the Soviet Union, morality of nuclear weapons, storage of atomic wastes and feasibility of the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as the Star Wars defense system. Never before, however, has the UC faculty so clearly voiced its opposition to the contracts.

Last November, a UC-wide faculty committee voted 6 to 2 to recommend that ties to the laboratories be ended, saying that the secret research “is contrary to the fundamental nature of the university” and that the labs require too much attention from UC administrators. Last spring, 64% of all professors who participated in referenda on UC campuses voted to urge the regents to drop the labs. The faculty senates of all nine campuses agreed, although the margins against contract renewal ranged from the overwhelming 312 to 75 at UC Santa Barbara to the squeaker 204 to 201 at UC Irvine.

Gardner’s aides claim that opposition to the labs may be overstated because only 42% of the professors participated in the votes last spring, although faculty leaders stress that such a turnout is higher than in state and national elections. Some UC professors complain that Gardner has tried to shield the regents from faculty dissension on the issue and predict long-term friction between the administration and faculty. Gardner insists the regents have been kept fully informed.

Meanwhile, Charles Schwartz, a UC Berkeley physics professor and a longtime opponent of the labs, was arrested and cited for trespassing late Wednesday for refusing to leave the UC system headquarters in downtown Oakland at closing time. Schwartz had spent most of Wednesday unsuccessfully seeking to meet with Gardner on the labs. Gardner, however, met Thursday with two of Schwartz’s colleagues in the campaign against the labs.

Gardner did not accede to a call from 14 legislators this week for UC to drop the contracts because of alleged toxic and radioactive leaks at the labs that, the lawmakers said, “pose serious public health and environmental hazards.”

Even opponents of the lab ties concede that approval next week by the regents to start contract negotiations with the government is a foregone conclusion.

“I’m afraid it’s not going to be even a close vote. And I’m disappointed with that,” said Karl Hufbauer, a UC Irvine history professor and an expert on the development of nuclear weapons who served on the systemwide committee that called for contract phase-out. However, Hufbauer predicted that UC eventually will drop the labs.

The federal government owns the labs at Livermore, 35 miles east of Oakland, and Los Alamos in New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was developed. The U.S. Energy Department sets policies and pays UC about $2 billion a year for equipment, management of the experiments and salaries for the 16,000 employees at the two facilities. UC clears about $11 million a year, a figure that Gardner said may have to be increased in the next contracts.

UC’s involvement attracts top scientists and allows internal debate that a private company or the military would not permit, UC officials contend. But critics complain that UC really has little say and that the government uses the university as a cover of academic respectability for weapons of mass destruction.

Two years ago, UC beefed up its supervision of the labs by adding new liaison officers. That was in response to a series of political and environmental controversies.

Critics of the laboratories alleged that Livermore officials exaggerated technical progress on the Strategic Defense Initiative to ensure more funding and improperly lobbied members of Congress to vote against further limitations on underground testing of nuclear weapons. The feasibility of SDI remains hotly debated, although a report by the federal General Accounting Office found the lobbying was not illegal.

In addition, the Livermore facility has received much bad publicity about possible leaks of toxic and radioactive materials, drug use by employees and theft of government supplies.

UC’s contract to run the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley also is up for renewal but is not controversial because the energy and biotech research there is not related to weaponry.

The regents’ meeting next week at UCLA coincides with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Some professors and staff interested in the labs issue but unable to attend because of religious observances asked for a delay in the vote. But UC officials declined, saying that regents must settle the matter at this month’s session.