In the days when wars were simple —and considered just—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was a proud developer of U.S. weaponry. As a patriotic duty in World War II, for instance, the school's electronics wizards perfected the radar that foiled Hitler's bombers. Now duty has become a Faustian dilemma. In the age of antiwar dissent, M.I.T. still gets more money from the Pentagon—$108 million last year —than any other U.S. university. The result has thrust M.I.T. to the forefront of a growing national debate: What role, if any, shall universities play in war research?
The dispute at M.I.T. only marginally involves the school's on-campus research, which received $17 million from the Pentagon last year. This is generally thought of as "clean" money, since it finances nonsecret research—into computer technology, for example. The issue, rather, is what to do about the off-campus Instrumentation and Lincoln labs, which get the lion's share of the Pentagon cash. They operate with so much independence that M.I.T. administrators exercise virtually no control over what projects they undertake. Although they do some civilian work on space projects, including Apollo moon flights, the "special labs" are mainly involved in military research, most of it classified.
Diverting Talent. The Lincoln Laboratory, for example, has developed a foliage-penetrating radar that detects Viet Cong hiding in the jungle. The Instrumentation Laboratory has designed a multiple-warhead guidance system for the Navy's Poseidon missile. Radical students, who staged a march at "I-lab" in April, insist that a university should totally shun research that is aimed at killing people. Moderate students and professors argue that the special labs' secrecy violates the academic principle of free inquiry, and more basically, that the growth of the special labs has diverted M.I.T. talent from domestic and social problems, such as housing, pollution and transportation. In fiscal 1969, the Instrumentation and Lincoln labs accounted for almost 70% of the $176 million that M.I.T. spent on all types of research.
Last spring a special faculty-student-administration panel recommended that the labs gradually start new programs in domestic and social research, while reducing secret military work and rejecting "projects involving the actual development of a prototype weapons system, except in times of grave national emergency." The panel also urged the university to set up a standing committee of faculty, students and lab staffers to advise M.I.T. President Howard W. Johnson on which projects the labs should accept or continue to pursue. The recommendations pleased the moderate majority of M.I.T.'s faculty, which last month voted 450 to 11 to put them into effect on a trial basis.