Colleges to Examine Industry Relations

President Bok and the presidents of four other universities and several scientific research companies will meet privately this spring to draft guidelines governing the research relationships between universities and industry.

The new codes would be the first of their kind formed by a group of universities and Bok said yesterday they would probably be looked on as a precedent for other colleges.

Fundamental Stuff

The March conference in California will include the universities currently conducting most work in areas of research closely related to that being done by private corporations, Bok said, and will be an "attempt to see if we can agree on a series of fundamental practices for what relationships should exist between campuses and industry."

The California Institute of Technology, MIT, Stanford, and the University of California will join Harvard at the conference.

The similarity of research being done in certain areas of bio and high-technology has caused competition between universities and industry and also potential conflicts of interest for professors who have financial interests in outside companies, Bok said.

"At the present stage of development, the differences between what is being done in universities and industry are much smaller than they might ordinarily be," Bok said. "Paradoxically, that is where the problem lies."

"What we are concerned about is [professors] confusing their role," he said. "It's not that they are leaving universities, it's that they are trying to do two things at once," he added.

"I am quite worried that a professor working for a university might also be working for a profit-making company in the same area. That's the point--how do we draw these lines?" Francis H. Burr '35, the senior fellow of the Corporation who will accompany Bok to the meeting said yesterday.

Stephen Peeps, assistant to the president at Stanford, said two alumnae [like Burr] from each school with some experience in research or business would join the presidents at the conference.

The written guidelines governing research which are anticipated to be drawn up at the meeting would not directly affect any other universities, "but they would be the first statement of this kind and would arouse a lot of interest because they would not just take the word of administration but all the people involved," Bok said.

Last fall the Harvard Faculty approved a set of guidelines which stated that any professor most report to an advisory committee any outside work which might be a "conflict of commitment" by taking time away from his university-oriented work and that no faculty member could spend more than 20 percent of his time on outside projects.

Bok said Harvard's existing guidelines would probably not have to be significantly changed after the upcoming meeting but would be strengthened and improved by the addition of some specific recommendations from the California conference.