However, many other universities do not have the capacity to create similar watchdog groups and often can not afford to forgo badly needed federal funds. Unlike most universities, Harvard can afford to turn down federally funded projects that curtail the sharing of information.

The University can therefore take the lead in challenging the Administration's policies. "It's terribly important that there be institutions like Harvard and Stanford to set a clear precedent for other universities," says Dr. Robert M. Rosenzweig, President of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an umbrella group that represents the nation's 54 major research universities. "It's really important that institutions be clear about these policies."

Harvard officials insist, however, that they are not trying to encroach on other universities and establish policies that all must follow. "We're certainly not trying to tell other universities how to behave," Shattuck says. "That is the role the AAU should play."

Instead, Shattuck says, Harvard has built a coalition that opposes the Administration's information restrictions. "We have analyzed the secrecy policies and criticized them, brought them to the attention of Congress and other universities," Shattuck says of Harvard's role.

When Shattuck and other lobbyists began rallying the opposition to the restrictions on scientific communication, the scientific community was among the first to respond. Scientists are "even more unified now in the realization that you have to have a free flow of information," Blanton says.

"Secrecy makes it very hard to do research," says Dean of the Division of Applied Sciences Paul C. Martin '52. "Scientific research depends on communication."

Scientists have particularly objected to the Administration's attempts to limit their ability to collaborate with their foreign counterparts. The National Science Foundation has drafted research guidelines--and submitted them to the Reagan Administration--that would allow foreign scientists to have access to American supercomputers.

In the past, the Congress has not been able to opppose Reagan's policy effectively and has allowed the Administration a relatively free hand, analysts say. "For the most part, Congress has not figured out ways to rein in the executive branch in these areas," Blanton says.

But the Iran-contra scandal and fears of economic decline have prompted a change, and the Congress has joined the fight for free exchange of information, observers say.

"There is not any protectionist sentiment of this kind in Congress right now," Coddington says.

The Administration's recent efforts to prevent superconductivity laboratories from sharing their findings with foreign scientists have come under attack from the scientific community and are unlikely to pass through Congress, lobbyists say.

Such restrictions "are stupid and self-defeating," Blanton says, adding that the legislation is "not going to go anywhere" in Congress.

"It just seemed damned stupid" to impose such restrictions, Coddington says, terming the Administration's proposed legislation "an example of thoughtless foolishness." We weren't hiding anything from anyone."

Prompted by fear that the United States' products are not competitive in the world market, economic experts, too, have joined the fight to ease information restrictions.

Their ire has been aroused particularly by the way the Administration has applied the 1979 Export Administration Act. Enacted primarily to regulate the overseas export of goods and machinery, the law has increasingly been used to restrict the communication of technical information and ideas within the U.S.