Staff Editorial: The right call on research policy

The University's recent decision to maintain its policy against engaging in classified research is sound. Given the current political climate and the amount of revenue such government-sponsored research might have generated, it seems like it would have been a very tempting endeavor to pursue.

However, doing so would have raised some serious ethical questions.

Due to the USA Patriot Act, among other things, this sort of research raises many questions. At the crux of the issue is the chance that members of the University community could be restricted from performing research based only on criteria such as their nationality or medical history.

That is unacceptable. Clearly, the University's policy on discrimination prohibits such action. Diversity of culture, language and nationality is part of what makes Penn a vibrant intellectual community, and any undertaking with the potential to restrict that is not worth the risk.

This type of research would also raise questions about publication freedom. Our commitment to learning and the free exchange of information is a clear priority and is antithetical to the nature of classified research.

The question of whether or not to construct an off-campus research facility, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Penn State did, was addressed by the report, but not resolved. We strongly caution the University to avoid such an endeavor as it seems unlikely in this situation that the University can have it both ways.

Certainly, individual professors should not be restricted from pursuing research on their own. But involvement with a classified research facility that is affiliated with the University, on or off campus, stands to threaten some of the basic principles upon which Penn was founded.

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