Dean of the School of Public Health (SPH) Barry R. Bloom has been among the most outspoken of this latter camp, arguing that effective protection from bioterrorism can only originate from open communication among scientists.

“The greatest threat is putting restrictions on knowledge that you need for security,” he says. “Fundamentally, censorship of science is the antithesis of its objective.”

It is into this setting that University leadership has been thrown, as Harvard has been faced with an array of often unprecedented questions, forcing administrators to determine exactly where the boundaries of openness and academic freedom lie.

Their new challenge is to find a way to use innovation to protect the nation without sabotaging the values of science itself.

A CHANGED TERRAIN

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the series of anthrax attacks that followed reorganized governmental priorities.

The zeitgeist shifted toward national defense, and a mandate from Washington apportioned a large slice of the national budget toward protecting the country from terrorism—a new type of national threat.

In pursuing projects geared toward this end, the government turned largely to institutions working at the vanguard of research, and in a large way to universities like Harvard.

In January of last year, Bush unveiled Project BioShield, a $6 billion budgetary allotment to fund research on biological defense.

The program has helped to bring about a burst of new opportunities for Harvard and its peers.

At the beginning of this academic year Harvard Medical School received $45 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to build a new biodefense research center. The facility will initially house nine research projects working to develop vaccines and treatments for anthrax, SARS, botulism, West Nile virus, and other of the world’s most dangerous pathogens.

One week later, the University garnered another $15 million to support a Center of Excellence in Complex Biomedical Systems research at the Bauer Center for Genomics Research.

And in January, SPH received a $20.5 million biodefense grant—the largest in its history—for a study of immune response to pathogens. The study’s results, when ready, will suggest how the human immune system can best be fortified against biological agents, many of which could be used for bioterrorism.

According to Senior Director of Federal and State Relations Kevin Casey, there’s been a significant rise in funding in the wake of Sept. 11.

In the year before the terrorist attacks, Harvard received $348 million of federal funding. Last year, by contrast, research projects at the University brought in a total of $412 million. Casey points out however, that other factors, such as a planned increase in the grant budget of the NIH, likely helped drive these gains.