The Hindu : Blair Govt. accused of academic censorship

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 24, 2002

International

International

Blair Govt. accused of academic censorship

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, FEB. 23. The Blair Government has been accused of trying to "suppress'' academic freedom by proposing to bring a range of areas of scientific research under official scrutiny on grounds of national security.

Under a new legislation, now before the House of Lords, academics would need to seek clearance from the Government before publishing a "sensitive'' research work, or appointing foreign scholars to work in an area regarded as a potential security risk. In what is seen as a move towards unprecedented expansion of Government control over academic research, the bill empowers it to preview communication between researchers engaged in security-prone areas, and to vet foreign scholars wanting to work in British laboratories.

What the bill does is to extend the provisions of Britain's Export Control Act _ intended to regulate arms trading _ to scientific ideas and concepts whose "export'' might lead to production of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The intention is to control ideas or information which could be put to "dual use'', and it follows calls to strengthen the original Act which was found to lack enough safeguards to make sure that "dual use'' items were not exported.

Angry academics across Britain have denounced the move as "censorship by other means'', saying it has serious implications for academic freedom. The Universities UK (UUK), which represents university vice-chancellors and principals, has said it would be curtail the basic academic freedom to publish new research, and jeopardise international collaborations. "Academics consider the option of publishing new research to be a basic freedom, and there is a fear that the new Bill will infringe this freedom,'' a UUK spokesman said, demanding an amendment to the bill to safeguard bona fide research.

Widely respected academics such as Ross Anderson of the Security Research Group at Cambridge University have ridiculed the move to club exchange of academic ideas with export of arms. Dr Anderson made a distinction between a patent and a research paper saying while the former could be suppressed for defence reasons, there was no justification for suppressing scientific papers. A spokesman for Save British Science, a pressure group, said it was "ironic'' that a Government which claimed to be in favour of freedom of information was now trying to curtail academic freedom.

Experts said there were so many areas of scientific research, particularly in medicine, which could lead to "dual uses'' that entire disciplines would come under Government control. They were not convinced by official claims that "basic scientific research'' would be exempted. The problem, they argued, was that the definition of what compromised "basic'' research would be determined by the Government requiring academics to be constantly looking over their shoulders.

However, the Department of Trade and Industry, which is piloting the bill, has refuted allegations of academic "terrorism'' and said the controls would apply only when the Government knew that certain information was or might be intended for use in the creation of weapons of mass destruction. "We cannot see how any organisation can seriously say the Government should not have the power to control exports who might assist in acts of, for example, terrorism,'' a spokesman told The Independent which first broke the story.

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