With this year’s unveiling of the Undergraduate Academic Life Web site comes a new push by the University to make research accessible to undergraduates. Freshmen at New Student Orientation were bombarded with appeals to visit http://ual.stanford.edu and discover all that Stanford has to offer. New dorm-based academic advisors are regularly sending emails, reminding students about upcoming deadlines for quarter-long grants, summer fellowships and the coveted Chappell Lougee scholarship for sophomores.

Lost amidst this frenzy to try and include all undergraduates in the research process is one uncomfortable fact: thanks to the Provost’s International Travel Policy, Stanford cannot fund research trips to countries where a State Department Travel Warning has been issued. No exceptions. Granted, the Haas Center and the office of Undergraduate Research Programs (URP) offer an array of travel and research options. But unfortunately, current travel restrictions still severely limit the possible range of research destinations.

To some extent, the University’s policy makes a conservative sort of sense. Obviously, Stanford should not make it a policy to fund research just anywhere. That in-country research project on Kurdish nationalism in northern Iraq or a detailed, survey-based study of the social impact of the Columbian drug wars will have to wait a little while.

History has shown that these concerns are not to be taken lightly — Stanford students have gotten in trouble before. The tragic 1993 death of Fulbright Scholar and Stanford alumna Amy Biehl ‘89 in South Africa makes this point all too clear. But the current policy that strictly bars students from conducting research in nations like Israel, Nigeria and Kenya is a needlessly imprecise way to protect Stanford’s legal liability. Furthermore, the policy unnecessarily restricts the spirit of discovery and inquiry that the URP Web site claims is at its core.

Part of the problem is the unreliability of the State Department’s warnings. The State Department is obviously trustworthy, but some inclusions on the list (and omissions from it) are suspect. Uganda, despite having what the CIA World Factbook calls “continued armed fighting” and nearly 300,000 refugees, is not included on the list, but Kenya and Nigeria, both relatively safe countries, are. The restrictions on those two nations are especially irksome — and even offensive — for the Nigerian and Kenyan nationals who attend Stanford and could use University grant money effectively in their home countries. Other travel warnings mention specific regions of a country that should be avoided, and as a result the entire country is deemed a no-go research location. Does enforcement of such a policy significantly reduce academic gains that could possibly be achieved by studying in one of the country’s safer regions?

Scrutiny of overseas research project grants, especially those involving human subjects, is very rigorous. Applicants must submit detailed expense reports and plans on how to conduct their study or survey, and methodology is reviewed extensively. There is little reason that this review could not be expanded to a case by case evaluation of each researcher’s attempted destination and how safe it may be. A waiver could even be incorporated if the applicant is determined to go abroad and Stanford wants to abdicate liability.

The Haas Center and URP provide millions of dollars for undergraduate research each year, and their attempts to reach all students should be applauded. But a sensible revision of the Provost’s International Travel Policy, one which at least considers awarding grants to restricted countries, would open up these opportunities to even more eager researchers and more meaningful academic contributions.