Harvard Grapples With Patriot Act

Late last month, University President Lawrence H. Summers sent two letters to Washington. One was addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the other to Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tom Ridge ’67. The documents detailed problems that have surfaced at Harvard and across higher education since Sept. 11, 2001.

Harvard’s international enrollment figures are down, Summers wrote. Echoing other leaders of higher education, he suggested that the decline resulted from regulations and restrictions on travel established in the wake of Sept. 11.

“I think it’s a very serious problem for our students, for the University, and ultimately for the United States, because recruiting the best foreign students here is very important for our prosperity,” Summers wrote. “And it is very important in promoting international understanding of the United States and by the United States, when that is in shorter supply than it has been for a very long time.”

Summers’ letters to Powell and Ridge add to a growing debate about the necessity and side effects of the Patriot Act and other post-Sept. 11 legislation, a debate that has been going on for the past two years.

While some contend that this legislation is unalterable and entirely necessary, others claim that it is excessively constrictive and even self-defeating.

One thing is clear: At Harvard and across academia, legislation enacted after Sept. 11 have had a major impact on Harvard, affecting primarily the University’s international population and its scientists. Stories to follow will examine the effects of this legislation on these two facets of University life.

At the same time, some fears about the legislation—particularly faculty concern that government agents would make use of a Patriot Act provision allowing them to look into library records without a warrant—have, thus far, not come to fruition, according to University officials.

For the University’s international community, post-Sept. 11 legislation has impelled many of the world’s top scholars to seek education elsewhere. New regulations have introduced new steps into the processes allowing foreign students and scholars to study in the United States. In some cases, the new systems have produced new backlogs—sometimes making a successful arrival in Cambridge an unexpected hurdle after the race for admission.

For scientists, a change in governmental priorities in the name of national security has been a mixed blessing. Fears of bioterrorism have at once brought a tremendous influx of funding and support to Harvard and its peers. At the same time, though, it has imposed new restrictions, which critics like Bloom say compromise the spirit of open exchange on which science is predicated.

While some higher education advocates have suggested exempting universities from some of the Patriot Act’s more extreme demands in order to eliminate delays, those close to the new legislation do not seem to support the possibility for exceptions to the legislation’s scrutiny.

“I think any restriction would not only be impractical, it would be counter-productive,” says former Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, who was primarily responsible for assembling the Act in its final form.

According to those who have tracked concerns most closely over the course of the past year on behalf of the University, a mutually satisfying solution is neither easy nor imminent.

American higher education, it seems, will likely be living with the new regulations for some time.

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

Since Sept. 11, foreign students subject to new scrutiny have found it increasingly harder to acquire the paperwork to be admitted to the U.S. in time for the start of the classes.

Over the past two years, more than a dozen students were not in Cambridge to submit their fall study cards due to visa-processing delays. Some have had to change their plans entirely, deferring enrollment as much as a year, or making hasty plans to study at universities elsewhere.

And now it seems that international administrators’ worst fear—the possibility that many of Harvard’s prospective international students would favor educational programs in other countries—has come to pass.

International applications to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences fell by 15 percent this year, mirroring a trend in more than 90 percent of graduate schools nationwide. Each of Harvard’s nine schools reported similar decreases in international application numbers.

And, according to Director of the International Office Sharon Ladd, this drop coincides with an increase in the number of international applications at universities in England, Canada, and Australia.

The implications of these changes suggest serious problems for a University increasingly attempting to become part of a global community.

Summers’ letters to Powell and Ridge outlined an argument that complicates an already thorny set of issues still further.

“If the next generation of foreign leaders are educated elsewhere we also will have lost the incalculable benefits derived from their extended exposure to our country and its democratic values,” he wrote. “And if other countries feel that we do not welcome their citizens, these countries may feel less inclined to help America.”

The letter is Summers’ first stand on these concerns before Washington leadership. Some scholars who have been kept outside Harvard’s gates because of visa delays argue that this is not enough—that the University’s leadership should have spoken out louder a long time ago.

Regardless of the outcome of the next election, Harvard’s representatives in Washington say the disquiet post-Sept. 11 legislation raises is still palpable almost three years after the terrorist acts—and isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon.

“The concerns that people have continue to percolate,” said Kevin Casey, Harvard’s senior director of federal and state relations. “The international issues are going to be with us for a long time.”

Although Ladd says the process of bringing foreign students into the country this year was much more lucid than it was last year, about 10 students almost didn’t make it to Harvard this fall.

And with a new fingerprinting system, capable of inducing delays, now mandatory only for visa-holders from some nations but scheduled to become universally required this fall, the International Office will have to stay on its toes for some time.

SCIENCE

With heightened fears of bioterrorism in the wake of Sept. 11, the Bush administration has more than doubled federal funding for programs against terror, with nearly $6 billion allotted to a new program called Project BioShield.

Much of this support has found its way to academia. Harvard, in fact, has seen a sudden burst of facility construction and resources development over the course of the past year, largely as a result of the new federal appropriations.

But increased federal attention to scientific research hasn’t come without costs.

Since Sept. 11 scientists have found their work itself under greater scrutiny—and, in some cases, facing new restrictions. Researchers from nations deemed sponsors of terrorism have been barred from work involving nearly 80 biological pathogens—the very front on which anti-terrorism work is concentrated.

In other cases, previously publishable studies are no longer able to find a place in journals for fear of disseminating information that terrorists could use against the country.

Combined with increasing use in government documents of a “sensitive” category of research—an undefined term out of use since the Cold War—these restrictions have impelled some research leaders to discuss a “chilling” effect within the academy.

For scientific research, critics say, the new regulations continue to be a mixed blessing, bringing in valuable funding for important new work while in some cases imposing unwelcome conditions on these projects.

Some of the Patriot Act’s more extreme provisions—such as a section allowing wiretapping without previously required court approval—are scheduled to “sunset” next year, and Casey says he presently expects Congress to support the shutdown of some of the Act’s requirements.

Still, he cites a “culture of secrecy” within the Department of Defense, suggesting that the future is vague still.

With resolution still fixed indefinitely in the future, debate rages on among the nation’s top scholars, academic leaders and, in some cases, its legislators. Bills that would scale back some of the Patriot Act’s provisions are presently under debate in the Senate and the House.

While some demand that the new restrictions be scaled back, others suggest that systematic problems with existing post-Sept. 11 legislation are not sufficient reason for governmental regulation to back off entirely. In fact, Richard Clarke, former senior adviser to three presidents and a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government, suggests that the program’s greatest weakness is its present insufficiency.

“We haven’t spent the money on homeland security we should have spent,” he said. “It’s still a very small program relative to what we need to do to reduce our vulnerabilities here at home.”

—Staff writer Nathan J. Heller can be reached at heller@fas.harvard.edu