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Universities Say Research Hampered by Security Curbs: Foreign students denied access to
certain data
June 12, 2000, San Francisco Chronicle
At Stanford University, a Chinese graduate student
was barred from working on a spacecraft control
algorithm he designed.
At the University of California at Berkeley, foreign researchers have been excluded from meetings and
denied access to documents important to their research.
At Pennsylvania State University, foreign students
were not allowed on a field trip to a Boeing plant to
study helicopters.
These are some of the obstacles major universities
are facing as a result of government restrictions that
deny foreign students and researchers access to certain kinds of
technology and data.
The limitations in the State Department's
International Traffic in Arms Regulations were
developed in response to fears that sensitive
technical information could be leaked to foreign
governments.
But they are so broad and confusing, university
officials say, they are seriously undermining research
and jeopardizing a wide range of projects on
spacecraft and satellites.
Although passed last year, the regulations began affecting universities only recently, after
administrators were alerted by agencies that
sponsor research that previous exemptions for basic research no longer apply.
Attempts to get the State Department to clarify the
regulations have been unsuccessful up to now, so
the universities have joined forces with NASA to lobby Congress for a resolution to the problem.
Because of the ambiguity, they fear prosecution if they disclose even unclassified technical data to
foreigners from 10 countries, including China, Israel, Pakistan, Taiwan and
India.
``We have these brilliant young minds, but if we can't let some of them see parts of the research
because they are foreigners it makes it difficult to maintain the academic setting,'' said Debra
Zumwalt, acting general counsel for Stanford, where
foreigners account for 30 percent of graduate students.
University officials believe the regulations were inadvertently written too broadly to include
fundamental -- in addition to classified -- research after the State Department replaced the Commerce
Department as the agency in charge of oversight of
such data. The change came in part as a result of the controversy surrounding Wen Ho Lee, a
Taiwanese-born scientist, now charged with
breaching security at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory.
``I do think the Los Alamos case has everybody in
kind of an uproar. Everybody starts making rush
decisions in the wrong direction,'' said former
Stanford President Donald Kennedy, who recently left the campus to head Science
Magazine. He said that similar regulations were applied to university
research in the early 1980s, when fears about the
Soviet Union were high.
``What it was intended for was military hardware
and specifications relating to military hardware,''
Kennedy said. ``If, all of a sudden, no graduate
student from an unapproved country can work on it,
it hampers basic research. These students are
interested in basic research, they are not spies.''
In the '80s the problem was resolved by an
executive order from President Ronald Reagan
deeming fundamental research generally unrestricted
and making classification of sensitive research the
mechanism for control.
``If (the State Department) decides that a particular
project contains so much of a military value, all it has to do is classify it. End of game,'' Kennedy said.
An official from the State Department says
universities don't understand the rules. Most
academic science, they insist, is still exempt.
But university officials say if that is so, neither
academics nor the private and government agencies
they work with -- including NASA
--have been given clear guidelines.
``The State Department has been very elusive in this
discussion. If we are misunderstanding it, any
attempt for clarification is absent on their part,'' said
Claude Canizares, a professor of physics and
director of the Center for Space Research at MIT.
``There is an exemption, but it is very unclear how it is applied.''
A defense appropriations bill working its way through Congress, Canizares said, includes
language
calling for the president's Office of Science and
Technology Policy to look at the problem and work with the State
Department and NASA to resolve it.
At UC Berkeley, where 18.4 percent of graduate
students are foreigners, Janet Luhmann, a senior fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory, hopes the
resolution comes before she has students working
on her project. She has already had to keep
documents from foreign collaborators and exclude
them from meetings.
``It is awkward. They are people we have worked
with for many years, and the information is no
different than before,'' she said.
At Stanford Robert Twiggs, a professor of
aeronautics and astronautics, said the regulations
have prevented students from placing
data-collecting satellite stations at other universities
around the world.
In addition, an Irish scientist, who designed
equipment being used by graduate researchers,
can't assist them in bolting it to a satellite because of the regulations.
``We are more careful about what we talk about,'' said James Cutler, an electrical engineering graduate
student at Stanford. ``There has to be a division
between what foreign students can work on and
what American students can work on.''
The penalties for violating ITAR limitations can be very severe, including 10 years in jail and up to $1
million in fines. Such potential punishments are
making people cautious, said Spence Armstrong, a
senior adviser at NASA, which spends $1 billion
annually on university research.
``We are concerned that we won't get the benefit of
having the widest participation in our projects and
that the universities will restrict foreign students who
may be helpful in doing the work,'' Armstrong said.
Some university officials say they have recently
refused projects that required them to exclude
students and collaborators from other countries.
``We pride ourselves on an open society, and if we
are going to restrict who participates, we need to do it based on valid data, not on broad
generalizations,'' said Marlene Johnson, executive
director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of
International Educators.
The regulations and the need for secrecy required
by them are raising concerns about personal and intellectual freedom, said Robert Shelton, UC's vice
provost for research.
``I understand there is a certain type of research
where secrecy is required, but it's not appropriate in a university setting'' he said.
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