In a presentation to the Faculty Council on Wednesday, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Dean for Research and Information Technology Paul C. Martin presented a report that plotted the University’s path to ensure academic openness in the face of post-Sept. 11 research restrictions.

The report—submitted by the Provost’s Committee on Biodefense Research and Regulations—attempts to maintain the pathways of information exchange vital to biological work, all the while staying within the boundaries of recent legislation.

Administrators say that no major changes are required in light of the report’s recommendations. But some say the report could have supported openness more vocally.

“I think the report missed an opportunity to emphasize the centrality of access to knowledge within the University,” said Harvard School of Public Health (SPH) Dean Barry R. Bloom.

The report advises against having graduate students participate in projects involving select biological toxins, maintaining that they should always be free to publish, share or continue their work. These conditions cannot be guaranteed in certain projects because of post-Sept. 11 legislation.

“Very few students are probably inclined to [participate in research with select agents], so the act would be largely symbolic,” Bloom said.

But under the current report, the University can also grant individual exceptions to this policy.

The report also calls for the University to work toward an eventual curtailment of restrictive laws that have “no compensating increase in security,” but does not specify a course of action.

In Aug. 2002, Provost Steven E. Hyman established the committee to carve out a policy for Harvard’s biological research consistent with restrictions in the USA PATRIOT Act and the Bioterrorism Act of 2002.

The acts, which Congress passed in an attempt to stymie future terrorist threats, limited research on so-called “select agents”—a list of more than 30 biological toxins—and imposed restrictions on laboratory practices and the dissemination of certain research findings.

Baird Professor of Science Gary J. Feldman, a member of the Faculty Council, said FAS does not use biological toxins in quantities substantial enough to be regulated by the federal government.

SPH, the only Harvard school that currently has projects affected by the legislation, has so far met all of the technical requirements imposed on it, according to Bloom.

But the vast majority of Harvard’s research remains outside the realm of the report’s recommendations on select agents, he said. Bloom said most research on biological toxins involves work only on non-dangerous components.

“There’s an enormous amount of science that does not involve the actual [select agent], whole in a freezer in the lab,” he said.

The report addresses three main concerns about the legislation’s impact on University research—restrictions on publication, personnel and laboratory access. It urges the University’s scientists to avoid restrictive pressures affecting changes from the laboratory to the academic journal.