Enough is Enough

CONSIDERING ITS TRACK record, it would be difficult to portray the Reagan Administration as anything other than the mortal enemy of open and unrestricted research. In the past few years, while ceaselessly warning about the impending Soviet military superiority (read Armageddon), White House and Pentagon officials have pointed the executive finger at that familiar storehouse for "excesses of democracy," the academic system.

Universities provide the backbone of basic scientific research for the government. But Harvard is one of a minority of schools which are financially fortunate enough that they can be discriminating; they can afford to refuse to conduct any research which is classified by the government or otherwise kept from free dissemination. These institutions realize that learning and secrecy cannot be reconciled irrespective of the (frequently substantial) dollar payoff of government contracts.

But during the past five years, these schools have had to fight as never before to keep even basic work in issues far removed from national security free from the new dissent-quashing mania. Among contracts recently offered to Harvard for unclassified research without rights of immediate publication are "International Comparison of Health Science Policies" for National Institutes of Health and "Study on Changing Economic Conditions of Cities" for Housing and Urban Development.

Reagan has already dramatically loosened restrictions on what can be classified. But this week, the Department of Defense escalated its attack on open scientific research. In a 34-page report entitled "The Soviet Acquisition of Militarily Significant Western Technology: An Update," the Pentagon said virtually every Soviet military project made use of available, published Western know-how. It also said that Harvard astrophysics and engineering research had been "targeted for acquisition" and that, horror of horrors, more applications by Soviet scientists to visit Harvard were filed in the early 1980's than for any other school except MIT. It did not say what the nine who actually came here took back with them or why it was important.

Harvard was unimpressed. Vice President for Government and Public Affairs John Shattuck, an outspoken critic of the tightening grip on academic integrity, voiced fears that the report--which did not make policy recommendations--would bring on its heels new sweeps of classification and restriction. We share those fears, and a Defense Department spokesman's prediction that the report will be used to lobby for a decrease in the number of Soviet scientists allowed to come here and for more pre-publication review did little to dispel them.

Enough is enough. Of course foreigners benefit from our technology, just as we benefit from Swiss watches and Japanese cars. But while information can be obtained, a missile silo cannot, as the purposefully vague Reaganese threats would like us to infer. The Administration's spy-hunting hype has passed the bounds of mediocre entertainment to the point where it now threatens the most fundamental freedoms of our more or less open society. With all its shadowy accusations and logical pratfalls, the Administration must not be allowed to dupe the public into fearing Commies when it should fear abridgements of the rights of speech and knowledge. We wish Harvard every success in its ongoing fight against the Pentagon's new McCarthyism and support its right to publish whatever scientific and social truths it finds and to bring here whichever scholars it chooses.