Limitations on who may participate in sensitive research, established in the wake of Sept. 11 through the USA PATRIOT Act and Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, also requires researchers working on biological agents and toxins to undergo FBI scrutiny and forbids foreign scholars from certain nations—such as Iran, Iraq, Cuba, and North Korea—from participating in research on biological agents.

Restrictions such as these have sent shock waves through academic and research communities.

Vest said on Friday that the government should work toward eliminating any restrictions on who can participate in research. These limitations, he said, are one of several complications of the national security process meriting creative solutions.

But some would-be researchers do not make it to the United States at all.

The federally outlined Technology Alert List includes a list of study areas that could threaten national security if abused. The list is used to identify which visa applicants to isolate for further scrutiny, Casey explained.

The list itself has existed for over a decade, he said. But applications isolated for scrutiny were previously approved after 30 days if no governmental agency objected. Since Sept. 11, however, a scrutinized application must receive explicit approval for each agency in order to pass—a procedure that has slowed down visa processing tremendously, and has prevented some prospective students and scholars from arriving in the U.S. in time for their studies.

Vest referred to these backlogs as “black holes” in information processing at Friday’s conference.

“Requests from foreign students go into Washington and maybe come back someday,” he said.

And the Alert List itself encompasses an absurd number of fields, he added.

“I actually had the pleasure of telling the chair of landscape architecture that he was on the Technology Alert List and he”—Vest grinned and snapped his wrists—“jumped out of his chair.”

A Harvard student from China did not receive his visa last fall largely because he was studying urban design, Casey says.

“The U.S. must remain the destination of choice for the world’s best minds,” he says, adding that the U.S.’s Nobel laureates, entrepreneurs and technology-industry leaders have traditionally been overwhelmingly foreign-born.

“People matter. This isn’t just about technology,” Vest told the audience, composed of some of the nation’s top scientific innovators. “We must better understand the history, culture, religious, language, politics, psyche, modes of thought and world views that give rise to terrorism today.”

A Double-Edged Sword

In spite of restrictions that some fear may threaten academic freedom, however, the relationships between most U.S. research institutions and the government is far from antagonistic.