A group of 65 faculty members have banded together to protest the $105 million grant for the multi-institution U.S. Army High-Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC), which will be managed by Stanford. A letter signed by the faculty who oppose the grant pushes for the release of documents related to the grant and advocates for an open dialogue about the ethics of receiving military funding.

The AHPCRC — whose research projects will commence today — has a 17-year history, and its headquarters moved to Stanford this year. The grant, which came through in April, is renewed over five-year periods. The Center will be led by Mechanical Engineering Prof. Charbel Farhat.

The letter was submitted to Faculty Senate Chair Sheri Sheppard, Committee on Research Chair Bernd Girod, Academic Secretary Edward Harris and Dean of Research Ann Arvin. A copy appears in today’s Daily Opinions section [see page 4].

The Letter’s Aims

Mechanical Engineering Prof. Bernard Roth, who was involved in pushing the petition, said the Engineering School receives considerable funding from the Department of Defense (DoD), estimating that more than half of the school’s funding comes from the military.

But Roth said he opposed this particular grant and, as a result, circulated the letter on a mailing list of professors who opposed the war in Iraq.

“Stanford does a lot of research with DoD money so that’s not new,” he said. “What’s new is the sheer size of it, and it’s kind of overreaching.”

Roth said the Committee on Research, a body within the Faculty Senate, will look at the letter and discern if University research rules were violated in accepting the grant. He said he hopes the concerns raised by the letter will be addressed by the Faculty Senate at an upcoming meeting.

Roth also complained that the grant allows an army member ultimate veto power over research projects. He complained that the University was “essentially giving up autonomy to an army functionary.”

“If it’s not legally done, then it should be undone,” he said. “They should renegotiate or abrogate the contract. We’ve just seen the request for the proposal. If that’s how the proposal went in, then I think it’s in violation of the University rules.”

Computer Science Prof. Terry Winograd said the letter pushes researchers to evaluate the ethics of their work.

“I believe that people in all kinds of pursuits, including technical and scientific research,” he said, “need to participate in open discussion of the underlying values and implications of their work.”

The Center’s Reaction

Farhat said the research is not sensitive or classified, adding that he supports releasing the proposal.

“Nobody talked to me, with the exception of one colleague who asked very casually if I could give him a copy of the proposal,” he said. “I told him this is a proposal that involves multiple institutions. I didn’t feel comfortable that I could make the decision of taking the proposals that contain private information of people given that we have partners outside Stanford.”

“Why don’t they wait six months and make a petition based on evidence,” he added. “I was caught by surprise. Nobody was given a chance.”

Farhat said he was disappointed that his colleagues would rush to judge the ethics of those who authored the grant.

“This is not a proposal that came out of the blue involving one or two faculty,” he said. “This was a proposal written to respond to an initiative that has been for 17 years. It was written by 17 faculty. I’m surprised that anyone at Stanford would think that the 17 faculty — why would anyone think that they care less about academic freedom?”

The University’s Reaction

Several people who received the letter yesterday said they were unfamiliar with the petition. Arvin said that she could not comment on the letter without talking to its supporters.

“I am not in a position to comment about the petition without any information about the source,” she said. “I presume that those who are circulating it have a plan for how to bring it forward.”

Senior Assistant to the President Jeff Wachtel echoed Arvin’s sentiment. He said that President Hennessy and Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ‘82 have yet to see the petition.

“It would be premature to comment directly on the substantive matters raised in the copy of the petition,” he said. “We can state generally that the argument advanced is a political one that people are free to raise. However, it is a cherished principle of academic freedom that our faculty make decisions about the funding they seek to support their research.”

Wachtel drew a parallel to this month’s debate over a failed resolution regarding University-sponsored research funded by the tobacco industry.

“The Faculty Senate just took up the issue about tobacco,” he said, “and again there was an issue about the faculty’s right to select, academic freedom and the right to research as long as they meet the other policies regarding conflicts of interest.”

Girod noted, however, that in light of the tobacco-funding debate, the Committee on Research is currently proposing an extension of current research principles.

“As a consequence of [this month’s tobacco] discussion, there were others who said we should really make it clear in our principles of research that professional ethics should play a role in selecting the sources of your funding,” he said. “It’s in the realm of individual responsibility.”

Faculty Senate Chair Sheri Sheppard said the petition would likely not make it to the Faculty Senate this year.

“We’re kind of running up against the end of the school year,” she said. “We have two more Senate meetings and the agenda for this Thursday is totally booked and then we have a meeting on the 14th.”

She said that the petition will first have to be evaluated by the Committee on Research and that researchers are the only ones who have seen the details of the grant.

“To have any sort of discussion with depth, [the petition] would have to first go to the committee on research, and they work with Ann Arvin,” she said. “There has to be some fact finding.”