If You Want to Turn Swords Into Plowshares, Start With the Schools

A recent report by a special presidential advisory panel urged Bill Clinton to keep his campaign promise to shift $7 billion in federal research-and- development spending from defense to civilian purposes. If he and the new Congress follow through, they will help return the nation’s universities to their primary mission--arenas for the free exchange of ideas and learning.

Currently, two-thirds of the country’s roughly $113-billion R&D; budget is spent on projects with direct military application. Much of this research is performed at universities by faculty and students.

The problem is that university budgets are under pressure. Traditional sources of revenue are yielding less money, and tuitions can only be hiked so far. When it comes time to trim budgets, the humanities and other liberal-arts programs are favorite targets because they do not attract huge amounts of research dollars.

At Stanford, the drama department has lost one class after another. In the American Studies program, my major, a key faculty member lost his job in cutbacks. Not a single program in the liberal arts has escaped unscathed.

Not so for the engineering department. It remains healthy thanks, in large part, to the Defense Department’s deep pockets. Stanford is home of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, which is devoted to nuclear research. The Pentagon mostly pays its bills.

At the University of Pennsylvania, a center devoted almost exclusively to military research is under construction. Its multimillion-dollar cost will be mostly picked up by the Defense Department. Sadly, to make room for the center, the university must tear down two historical buildings that house liberal-arts programs.

Other universities besides Stanford and Penn increasingly rely on defense dollars to shore up diminishing budgets. At Johns Hopkins and Georgia Tech, more than 60% of their R&D; money comes from the Pentagon.

The moral dilemma inherent in percentages this high are frightening: Some universities are in danger of becoming de facto corporations competing for money from the Pentagon. Penn even hired a lobbyist to press Congress for the millions of defense dollars it needed to build its proposed research center.

This kind of pressure goes against everything universities were created to stand for. Because much of the military research is classified, the ideas it generates cannot be discussed. Under such circumstances, learning is handicapped.

Any moral objections researchers or faculty members may have to military-related research are effectively silenced by the threat of the R&D; funds drying up. So they continue to devote themselves to building better bombs at a time when the nation would be better served by research aimed at more general scientific and technological goals.

The effects of DOD funding reaches into the ranks of university alumni as well. Researchers who specialize in military related undertakings at school will leave equipped mainly for military-related jobs.

The Bush Administration chose to avoid change. The budgets of the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the major sources of non-military R&D;, have been cut by $13 million and $217 million respectively. Meanwhile, the Pentagon budget remains largely intact.

Much of the money Clinton has promised to shift must be funneled into non-military agencies. Giving like the NIH control of greater chunks of dollars to direct toward the nation’s universities will realign the agenda of college curriculums. That, in turn, would give more priority to studying science for its sake alone rather than military superiority and prevent the continued hemorrhage of dollars flowing away from the humanities.

Until this trend is reversed, universities will continue to be forced to turn to the Defense Department for new funds. Now it’s up to Clinton to take them off the list of the top 100 “defense contractors.”