Openness, Opportunity, and Security in Universities: A National Challenge

President Charles M. Vest's Address to the National Association and College and University Attorneys, Boston, Massachusetts, 26 June 2002.

INTRODUCTION

We have all just finished an academic year that began in tragedy. The thousands of deaths in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania have changed our outlook in profound ways. The ramifications will be with us for years to come.

The attacks of September 11 did not pave the way only for a military response. They instantly changed America's relationship with the rest of the world. They challenged our very concepts of citizenship, civil liberties, and openness.

We will all struggle with these matters together in the months and years ahead. They have no simple answers, and they hold grave dangers. But they also provide opportunities to think about how we might define and achieve the security of this nation - and this world - in new ways.

As we consider opportunity in the context of a post-9/11 world, we find ourselves asking questions that have arisen time after time in our modern history:

• To whom is opportunity available?
• How open should our society and institutions be?

OPENNESS AND OPPORTUNITY

Each spring, my wife Becky and I host a dinner for the men and women who are retiring from the tenured ranks of the MIT faculty. These are always extraordinary gatherings of talented and accomplished colleagues—people who have defined MIT and have helped to shape their scholarly and professional fields.

As I survey that room each spring, I realize how much America has benefited from being open to people from other countries. And I am reminded that my colleagues and I are fortunate to spend our lives in an institution that aspires to meritocracy—one committed to selecting and advancing its people on the basis of their talent and accomplishment rather than wealth or nationality.

Now, some might say that the diversity of our university's retiring faculty represents nothing more than the passing of an era . . . that I am simply observing the end of the intellectual migrations from Europe that were associated with the turmoil of World War II. But there is more to it than that. The sustained excellence of America's colleges and universities is due in very large measure to the fact that we have welcomed scholars from other nations.

The recent Nobel laureates on the MIT Faculty include people born in Japan, India, Mexico, Italy and Germany, as well as the U.S. Most of them came to this country as graduate students. Or consider our Institute Professors, the dozen or so faculty members who have achieved the highest faculty rank at MIT. They were born in the United States and in Belgium, Italy, Mexico, Israel, and China. Any of our great universities would offer a similar lesson.

The fact is that America has always been a nation of immigrants, and we have long been a land of opportunity. Those who have come from around the world to study here have contributed greatly to our society and to our institutions. Many have stayed and built our nation. Some have returned to the land of their birth, taking with them the knowledge and skills learned here. They also have taken with them a better understanding of what is good in this country, its people, and its institutions. And all have contributed, by their very presence, to the education and quality of experience of their fellow students.

And let me also note the fact that MIT is blessed with extraordinarily talented, accomplished, and motivated undergraduates—many of whom are the sons and daughters of immigrants to America. As we strive to make all who live in this country safe from those who would harm us, we should not let our fear close the door to our own opportunity. We need to recognize the cost to future generations if we were to become too zealous in tightening access to our colleges and universities.

PULLING OUTWARD / PUSHING INWARD

Research universities today are subjected to orthogonal forces. Concerns about export controls and terrorist dangers are pushing us inward and threatening to isolate us. Yet globalization and communication technologies such as the World Wide Web pull us outward, into a broader and more instantaneous interaction with the world. The balance of response to these forces is complicated and critical—perhaps even of historic importance. This balance was emerging as an issue long before September 11, 2001, but now it is absolutely at center stage.

SERIOUS STUDENTS

• Presidential Directive No. 2, on "Combating Terrorism through Immigration Policies," promulgated last October;
• The Patriot Act; and
• The Border Security Act.

1. The tracking of international students who have been issued visas to study at U.S. colleges and universities;
2. A mandate to define "Sensitive Areas of Study" for which the State Department should not grant visas to students from certain countries; and
3. The need to appropriately secure scientific materials and research results that might be used by terrorists.

The Presidential Decision Directive on Homeland Security of October 29, 2001, called for measures to end certain abuses of student visas, and to "prohibit certain international students from receiving education and training in sensitive areas of study, including areas of study with direct application to the development and use of weapons of mass destruction."

This directive, although its aim is well understood, has led to considerable worry on the part of many of us in academia. I am among those who worry about it. There were visions of an overly simplistic process, banning foreign students from certain majors or even individual classes. Many of us have also been concerned about its effectiveness, because one of the bitter lessons we have learned is that a determined terrorist need not resort to sophisticated technology, and the identification of what knowledge might be put to nefarious uses is virtually impossible.

It is my view, however, that the Bush Administration is moving toward implementation of this directive in a thoughtful and careful manner. Last month the Administration announced the creation of a new Interagency Panel on Advancing Science and Security, or IPASS, that will provide a new level of review of specialized visas, including those used by students, postdoctoral students, and researchers.

What will trigger such reviews? These reviews, by which the meaning of "sensitive areas of study" will be developed, will be triggered when visa applications are received from citizens of countries known to sponsor terrorism who want to pursue study or research in specific topics of concern that are "uniquely available in the United States."

The criterion of unique availability in the U.S. . . the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction . . . and the use of a substantial multi-agency review panel . . . seem to me to form the basis of a sensible framework for approaching this complex issue.

The details of the protocols are yet to be understood, and many practical questions remain. Above all, it will be essential for the government to maintain substantive dialogue with the academic community. But I am cautiously optimistic that this framework can minimize unnecessary or unworkable incursions against academic openness. We must adhere to the fundamental openness of our system of higher education.

A senior government official recently remarked that the system should allow "serious students to study in serious institutions," and that once admitted by the State Department, they should not be denied the basic freedoms and values that define America. I agree.

The issues surrounding research materials and information in the context of homeland security also are complicated. The complexity arises from the fact that it is not possible to place either materials or knowledge into neat boxes labeled "Useful for Terrorists," or "Not Useful for Terrorists." Terrorism to date has been low-tech, although somewhat sophisticated organizationally. Truck bombs, the commandeering of commercial aircraft, and credit card fraud are not the stuff of doctoral dissertations. To date, the primary tools of terrorists have been fertilizer, diesel fuel, and a variety of off-the-shelf chemicals - and they remain among those about which we should be most concerned.

Traditional weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear weapons and missiles, require advanced "know-how" and techniques beyond the basic scientific knowledge attainable in university classrooms and laboratories. The materials for nuclear weapons must be maximally secured, and "know how" must be protected insofar as possible through existing formal classification and security processes.

Cyber terrorism requires sophisticated information and knowledge, but it is presumably readily available, as are the computers and internet access necessary to implement it. It is not obvious to me that this area is ripe for reduction through restrictions on universities.

Bioterrorism for me is a more perplexing area of concern, perhaps in some measure because it is the area I know the least about. But for the most part, basic knowledge that might be used for ill purposes is readily available in the scientific literature. It is not clear to me how difficult it is to attain the "know how" to do things such as milling dangerous biological agents for their dispersion into the environment. But presumably the difficulty is not great.

Biological materials and knowledge are also special cases because the distance from the research laboratory to application is very small. But the tools of contemporary biology are clearly double-edged swords: the knowledge that tells one how to make agents more virulent may simultaneously be the key to more effective therapies. The National Academy of Science and leading life science organizations are working hard to resolve these dilemmas and provide advice and guidance to scientists and to the government.

There are common-sense steps that we should all take regarding dangerous biological, chemical, or other materials. We should minimize inventories . . . work insofar as possible with micro quantities . . . and maintain accurate and effective inventories, security, and tracking of these materials. We should educate all of our students about the security of scientific materials, integrating such training with health, safety, and environmental responsibilities. And students should not work with such materials — or indeed in virtually any laboratory setting - alone.