Background Check

A provision was kept virtually intact which required the University to make a 15-year check of the jobs and addresses of any alien it wants to employ at the accelerator and then submit the job application to the AEC for approval. In the final contract, the AEC will have ultimate authority to decide whether a Soviet bloc alien can be employed at the accelerator. This is the first time Harvard itself has not completely controlled all employment at the University.

The third major AEC restriction was on visitors to the CEA. The AEC was to have the power to stop any visit planned by accelerator officials, and the CEA was to be required to furnish a detailed report on the visit of every guest from a Soviet bloc country. All restrictions on casual visitors to the accelerator have been removed, but formal tours for scientists from Soviet bloc countries must have prior approval from the AEC.

When the objectionable controls were first presented to Harvard negotiators last April, the University rejected them completely. The AEC then did some revising and presented a new list of restrictions last April, but Harvard found the new controls as objectionable as the earlier ones.

Finally, under continuing pressure from the University and the ever-present fear that Harvard might actually refuse to operate the accelerator, top officials of the AEC gave approval in February to some liberalization of the original restrictions. But the AEC continues to insist on at least some controls. It fears, in large part, the wrath of economy-happy Congressional investigating committees which might slash the AEC budget because Communists are running around unsupervised at the Cambridge accelerator.

Harvard Obligation

The University still considers the AEC controls irritating and unjust. It accepted them to simplify AEC confrontations with the Congress and, as Wiggins stated last week, "because the research facility will do a lot for our Faculty." Yet for any reason, such an action establishes an unfortunate and dangerous precedent.

Harvard remains one of the few Universities in the United States which refuses to accept any classified research from the government during peacetime. The University follows this policy, according to President Pusey, "specifically because it does not want to get involved in any project which in any way limits the freedom of its Faculty." Pusey asserts that Harvard "is continuing to maintain its policy of eternal vigilance" and "carefully checks every provision of every contract to ensure that Harvard's freedom of action is not being restricted."

All work done at the CEA will be unclassified, but unhappily, the present CEA contract has many loopholes which could permit the Federal government to tighten its controls over the accelerator at some future time. Wiggins stresses that if the AEC should ever attempt to impose intolerable controls, Harvard will stop operating the accelerator. But by then electron research could be so dependent on Federal funds that it may be almost impossible to turn down the yearly operating grant from the AEC.

Harvard's Office for Research Contracts handled the negotiations with the AEC efficiently, but the bargaining will not be complete when the contract is signed. It is entirely possible that the University could have had even more of the restrictions removed if it had held out longer. And it may prove unfortunate that Faculty and AEC convenience were given priority over complete freedom of action for the University.