BP - "Beyond Petroleum" - is the oil company that knows how to be a good corporate citizen.
Never mind that pesky oil spill in Alaska last year shutting down the pipeline. Forget about those human rights violations in Columbia and around the world. Ignore that $183 million lawsuit for air pollution just filed against BP by the California Air Quality Resources Board. We must just have this "green" company all wrong.
After all, what else could explain the apparent willingness of a fine public institution like the University of California to get in bed with this petro-giant - and then go deep under the covers as well? In a just announced "partnership," one of the world's largest public research Universities will accept $500 million from BP to fund an Energy Biosciences Institute. But it's all in the public interest, you understand. This "gift" will help us to get off the oil addiction. We'll be free of all that turmoil in the Middle East. And the Easter bunny will come early this year.
In fact, this deal, if approved, is just one more example of "science for sale" at American Universities, both public and private. By making such arrangements, corporations are able to leverage far greater amounts of public funds to accomplish their commercial research agenda. In a very real sense, the University becomes the lab of the company, here BP. Taxpayer funded research scientists (and most importantly a flood of graduate students) do their bidding and the results receive the UC Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
Don't shed too many tears for those scientists however. They frequently make out very well, thank you - coincidentally recipients of lucrative "consulting" contracts. Frequently, they turn up at regulatory or court proceedings as well - as well paid but "independent" expert witnesses. As one jokester put it, to identify these professors "it's like the invasion of the body snatchers. You take one look in their eyes and realize they are gone."
The BP deal even takes this questionable marriage one step further than most. After shameful disclosures in the LA Times and elsewhere about their giving up millions in patent royalties, Universities now usually hold the intellectual property rights to their research. And they license their results to more than one company. Not this time. BP will actually co-own and may even get exclusive rights to these licenses paid for with your tax dollar. They will also get to charge you monopoly prices for resulting consumer products. But why shouldn't they?
After all, 50 of their own scientists will be working right on campus.
We will have a new UCBP.
This is not a new debate. It is just that the forces of academic freedom and University independence have been steadily losing for decades.
In the 1970's, the genetic engineering explosion brought with it a flood of "faculty entrepreneurs." These were scientists working in University labs with deals with biotech companies. Their scientific breakthroughs became their own; companies like Genetic and CETUS were born on campus. A 1982 complaint filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council triggered an investigation by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) for the misuse of public funds due to conflicts of interest. There were Congressional hearings (the House Subcommittee was chaired by Congressman Al Gore). A "summit meeting" - held in secret of course - took place at Pajaro Dunes between the University presidents from Harvard, UC, MIT, Stanford and Cal Tech. They came off the mountain top with an entire set of vague but impressive commandments. A more concrete and tougher set of regulations were promulgated by the FPPC. They mandated that research scientists at public Universities fully disclose their financial stake in their research. Those regs remain in full force and effect. So it will prove interesting to anyone who looks to learn what UC scientists are doing and for how much from the good folks at BP. If anyone even bothers to look that is.
In the 1970's, Al Meyerhoff sued the University of California for its ties to agribusiness funding alleging research like "the gamma ray lettuce harvester" would be harmful to families, farmers and farm workers - in violation of the land grant statutes creating the University. . . He won.