In fiscal year 2008, six percent of Brown's research budget - $8.6 million - came from the Department of Defense to fund research in the physical sciences, according to an article in yesterday's Herald.
Professor of Computer Science Pascal Van Hentenryck told The Herald that public debates about the ethics of using military funds are not common among academics in the physical sciences, though colleagues debate it among themselves. He said researchers in the sciences who take funding from the military often produce work that is useful in many fields, rather than just for defense, and that the researchers often have little idea how their ideas will be put into practice eventually.
We are not questioning the ethics of taking funding from the military, since that debate is too large for this space. But we are concerned with Van Hentenryck's statement that academics would accept funding for research without knowing how their ideas will be put into practice.
We know this information is not always clear, but it should be ardently pursued before a researcher agrees to be paid to contribute to a project. Unawareness, whether careless or willful, does not obviate responsibility.
Brown's only standards for research are that it is neither classified nor proprietary, meaning the publication is restricted. According to Vice President for Research Clyde Briant, there is no University-level debate on the sources from which a researcher draws funds, and such discourses would be personal among academics.
The onus of responsibility is then on professors to decide whether a funding source will put their research to ethical use. But that research carries the name of Brown - and thus reflects on our institution. Though a professor can choose to be unaware of what might later come from their findings, Brown's name will forever be tied with the product. A University's reputation for producing knowledge comes from the collective contributions of individual academics; therefore, while we advocate for researchers having the freedom to choose subjects that interest them and in which they will excel, we also believe they have a social responsibility to the Brown community to uphold a high standard of ethics.
We urge professors not to engage in research until they have tried as hard as they can to learn what sorts of applications the results may have. Only with this information can they make knowledgeable decisions about whether the work corresponds with their values. We do not think that there exists an absolute standard on whether researchers can accept military funding, but we absolutely believe that our researchers need to be fully informed of what they are helping to create before attaching the name of this university to it.
