Faculty Skeptics Seek a Voice in Berkeley's Controversial Energy-Research Deal With BP
Chronicle of Higher Education 4/5/07
The demands for more of a voice in the venture, the Energy Biosciences Institute, have been building since early February, when BP announced that Berkeley, along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had won a competition for the project. The project is expected to involve research teams from more than 25 laboratories.
Much of the concern is driven by an unease among some faculty members over the potential for commercial influence on research and academic freedom, and questions of whether administrators paid adequate respect to Berkeley's tradition of "shared governance" in getting the institute proposal going. Some of the same issues were raised nearly 10 years ago, when Berkeley entered into an agreement with an arm of the life-sciences company Novartis (The Chronicle, June 22, 2001).
"Many of the pitfalls into which the administration stumbled have yawned again," said Anne M. Wagner, a professor of art history who has questioned the university's approach to the deal.
She, along with other faculty members, as well as critics outside the university, have also raised questions about the role and nature of a private arm of the institute that would be housed on the campus but be staffed entirely by BP scientists, whose research would not be subject to university rules on open publication.
BP has said that as much as one-third of its $500-million would be allocated to that private arm.
In response to those concerns, some of which were raised in two faculty petitions circulated in the past few weeks, Berkeley's Academic Senate plans to convene a special meeting on April 19 to discuss the institute, which is commonly called the EBI.
"We want to have some level of reasonable transparency in the EBI," said William J. Drummond, a professor of journalism and chairman of the Academic Senate. "Berkeley needs a structure that would allow us to provide reasonable oversight without onerous regulation."
Berkeley administrators have already made one concession. In March the vice chancellor for research, Mary Beth Burnside, announced that the faculty members who lead four of the senate's most important committees would be invited to participate in the confidential negotiations with BP.
"They will be shown all parts of the contract for input," Ms. Burnside said. Once the contract is signed -- by July 1, she hopes -- the four representatives would be free to discuss the negotiations.
Ms. Burnside said she has continued to consult with the Academic Senate leaders about the institute but was "not enthusiastic" about the idea of a standing oversight committee for large corporate research partnerships. She said she doubted it could operate without adding a layer of "onerous bureaucracy."
She said many of the basic questions over governance of the institute were still being worked out. But, she said, an executive committee of nine people would probably make most decisions on which proposals would get money and at what levels. Its decisions would be subject to approval by a governance board, which is likely to have equal representation from BP and the academic partners.
She said all parties had agreed in principle that no project would receive a grant if either party objected. "I don't see why we should fund something that BP wouldn't want to do," she said.
Charles F. Zukoski, vice chancellor for research at Illinois, said the arrangement suited his institution too. "No one is coerced to do the research," he said.
Both Ms. Burnside and Mr. Zukoski said no decisions had been made on how the funds for the public section of the institute would be apportioned among the academic partners. That will depend on what proposals come in.
Ms. Burnside said that the institute's "private" arm would not be all that different in style from an existing university laboratory, adjacent to the campus, where Intel employees now work alongside Berkeley researchers.
She said BP scientists working in the private arm at Berkeley, and in a smaller version at Illinois, would focus on taking the fundamental research developed by academics and finding ways to apply it to real-life problems.
The ability to have a private arm as part of the institute was a priority for BP.
"They want to be embedded on a major campus," Ms. Burnside said. "They want to be able to come to our classes, talk to our faculty, talk to our students."
Even though BP will not be obligated to share its findings with its academic partners, Ms. Burnside said the collaboration would be helpful to them as well because it would be a way for those working in fundamental research "to get early feedback" from BP.
In February, BP publicized the new partnership in a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal. Ms. Wagner, the art historian, said she feared that the ad was a sign that BP planned to use the partnership to "greenwash" its reputation, which has suffered as a result of an Alaska oil spill in 2006 and a deadly refinery accident in Texas in 2005.
Ms. Burnside said she was not troubled by the ad because it was straightforward and factual. Mr. Zukoski, of Illinois, said he was not bothered by the ad either because, after all, BP was indeed putting up a lot of money. Even if the company is trying to burnish its image, he added, "aren't we going to let them atone?"