Institutional Ethics and UARC issues at UHM
From the beginning of the UARC debates one of the questions has been by what ethical
standards UH should decide to accept or reject the UARC.
.
The usual answer has been that ethics isn’t a problem because the administration promises that
the UARC wouldn’t undertake any research that was against the law. The most recent statement,
on the Mānoa Chancellor’s website refers vaguely
UARC FAQs on Manoa Chancellor’s website
to existing rules and policies that constitute our
collective ethics. Perhaps we need to revisit the
Have you considered the ethical implications on
the UARC?
question.
Simply avoiding things that are illegal seems to me
a pitifully inadequate guideline for institutional
ethics. There are many behaviors that most of us
would consider it unethical for the university to do
but that are not actually against the law. What kind
of ethical standards should UHM have as an
institution? Let me suggest a few starting points.
Some hypothetical examples suggest ways tin
which institutional ethics should guide our actions:
We have rules and policies in place precisely for
reasons of guiding our ethical behavior. These
policies represent our collective ethics, and govern all
of our interactions at the University. At the University
we accept sponsored research proposals according
to the existing policies and procedures. Any project
received through the UARC will have to abide by
these policies as well.
All research sponsored by the military is not
unethical. The military sponsors wide ranging
research in areas such as oceanography, the
internet, and even breast cancer – research that has
enhanced our lives. Department of Defense monies
are also used for scholarships and academic projects
that benefit the community.
a.
The institution should not accept gifts from
criminal sources. If an aging yakusa wants to clean
http://manoa.hawaii.edu/mco/initiatives_issues/uarc/f
up his reputation by donating a building to the
aq.htm#18
University, maybe a new Women’s Studies
building for my department, I think we should say no. We would have to say that money
acquired through criminal activity, no matter how legally laundered it might be, should not
become a source of educational support for the students of Hawaii.
b.
The institution should not fund or sponsor research that involves endangering the life or
health of people. Of course such research is illegal in the U.S., so it would or should not happen
here. But it could happen—skirting the law and disguised in various ways—overseas. (I wrote
this before seeing “The Constant Gardener,” but if you want some ideas about first-world
research on poor, third-world foreigners, I recommend the movie.)
c.
The institution has a special obligation to remember that it is here, in Mānoa, on Oahu, on
a small island that is part of the most remote archipelago in the world, a fragile place with a
distinctive history and the home for half a millennium to a particular indigenous population who
are STILL HERE, and that this place is simultaneously home to assorted settler populations, old
and new, with their own different histories and agendas. Hawaii, mauka to makai, is also a plant
and animal world on land and sea, a world perilously vulnerable to our activities and mistakes.
The institution should make decisions that respect the place where we are.
Institutional Ethics & UARC 2
To abstract from these three examples some ethical guidelines, I’d say this. UHM as an
educational institution in a particular place has the obligation to “do no harm” and to reward no
harm and those obligations increase the closer you get to Hawaii. (I have borrowed the elegant
simplicity of this phrasing from Professor Eric Szarmes.)
Don’t reward the yakuza donor with our acceptance of a tainted gift. Allow no harm to the
peoples and place of Hawaii. Do not endanger ourselves or others, here or further away. The
University should be particularly aware of who and what is vulnerable to its touch, especially
when that vulnerability is right here in the Pacific.
The focus on avoiding harm is a minimalist kind of ethics. I don’t think it goes far enough to
deserve the more demanding label of representing “social justice,” which is part of the UHM
strategic plan.
But my thought is to find a formulation that is basic enough to be inclusive—to give some
guidance to all branches of our diverse enterprise at UHM.
At the same time there is nothing about this formulation that would be necessarily transferable to
a different institution. Different institutions have different responsibilities and roles. The Navy,
for example, does not have the same obligations to people and places as a university does. In
fact, there is a considerable clash between Navy and University roles and responsibilities, which
is one of the reasons why many of us are reluctant to establish a center as part of the university
that is really part of the Navy.
To be a bit more specific, I do not think the University should engage in the development of
weapons systems. Weapons development, however, is the Navy’s EXPLICIT purpose for
funding the UARC.
Some people say to me: not so fast! The Navy calls practically everything it has a “weapons
system.” And furthermore, supporters of the UARC ask me several challenging questions. First,
is not much of the proposed research in oceanography or astronomy, such things as learning
about the shape of the seafloor, unobjectionable, standard fare in those disciplines? What
about the valuable, life-saving byproducts of defense contract research? And is there anything
wrong with contributing to the development of defensive weapons?
Let me begin with the last question. My guidelines would not oppose research on purely
defensive systems, leaving aside the term “weapon” for a moment. As an example, it is plausible
to me that early warning systems cause no harm (assuming they don’t degrade the environment)
and I don’t see them as rewarding harm. But is that all that the UARC will be doing? Does the
contract limit the task orders only to such harmless work or even to strictly defensive work? Not
at all. And we must not allow ourselves to be fooled by semantics. After World War II, the U.S.
Department of War renamed itself the department of “defense,” and “self-defense” is the asserted
purpose of our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan . What counts as defense is obviously debatable.
Institutional Ethics & UARC 3
The claim that a research project is merely defensive does not mean that its immediate use will
not be offensive.
As for the standard fare research, it does not in itself ring alarms about institutional ethics. In
fact, as most of us meanwhile well know, many researchers at UH do substantial research funded
by the DoD. I’m not asking for an end to that. If I understood it fully, I might object to particular
projects, but the individual decisions of researchers within the existing university framework are
not what I oppose. In short, I am here not addressing questions of the ethics of individuals.
Rather, I worry when the University itself nestles up next to
the DoD’s powerful claws, organizing a center explicitly for
UARC FAQs on Manoa
the purpose of fulfilling the Navy’s task orders. Thus I notice
Chancellor’s website
that the Navy explains its interest in something so seemingly
Can UHM negotiate a deal that
innocuous as mapping the seafloor by mentioning its use in
will not involve UHM in
amphibious warfare. Surely it is not the University’s
weapons research?
responsibility to assist with the conduct of amphibious
No, we cannot. However, it is
warfare, and it is in fact contrary to our ethical obligations as
important to remember that UH as
an institution.
well as individual faculty will have
the final say on what Task Orders
the institution accepts or the
And the beneficial byproducts of defense spending? I do not
faculty member chooses to
believe that unintended benefits that might conceivably arise
participate.
from UARC research can be used to wipe away the reality of a
research center that has as its main purpose something
incompatible with the ethics of the university as an institution. The byproducts do not obviate
my ethical concerns.
Deepening my sense that the UARC is ethically unacceptable is the issue of classified research.
Research sponsored by the DoD but not classified seems likely to be substantially different in
intent and immediate effect than research that is classified.
There are many reasons not to want UH engaging in classified research. Perhaps the two most
important are because of the way that governmental secrecy corrodes the functions of the
university and the fact that classification is most likely an indicator of the nature of the research.
I think we can expect that unclassified research is further from being weaponized. Research that
is classified is closer to participating in doing harm.
When the UARC debates started at UHM, the question was promptly raised: can we have a
UARC that performs no classified research? The answer was no. This means that classified
research is essential to the UARC. And if my previous logic is correct about the most
weaponizable research being classified, then all the nice possible side effects slide away into
unimportance, the lure of the money takes on a repugnant edge, and the stark fact that the UARC
is about developing weapons systems jumps back into focus. Weapons systems are inherently
about doing harm. And the likelihood is enormous that some of the harm will befall this special
place, the Hawaiian Islands. It has happened repeatedly in the past, frequently in the guise of
Institutional Ethics & UARC 4
mere research. There is nothing about the UARC proposal
that seems likely to prevent damage here yet again. The
perpetual mishandling at UH of the simplest security matters
on our own campus does not reassure. Claims that the UARC
will be constrained by existing federal and state laws and by
existing University policies and procedures cannot reassure
us either because of the contradictions in the University’s
own presentations about how this will work.
Why is establishing a UARC at UHM ethically wrong?
Because it makes the university complicit in doing threefold
harm. The future uses to which the research will be put by
the Navy will cause harm. The misfit between the University
of Hawaii and the Navy -- with its discrimination against
gays and lesbians, its preference for secrecy, its common
exclusion of foreign nationals, its whole apparatus of
“classifying” information—will injure the University,
especially because of the far greater power of the Navy in
resolving any dispute. And the damaging impact of research
on the Hawaiian Islands, on the community and ecosystem
where most of the experiments will be conducted, is easy to
foresee and impossible to forgive.
Along with all the other practical reasons to reject the
UARC, institutional ethics show the UARC is incompatible
with what we want UHM to be. Surely we are not too poor to
be ethical?
Ruth Dawson
dawson@hawaii.edu
UARC FAQs on Manoa Chancellor’s website
Will the UARC engage in weapons
development?
Under the current BOR policy governing research,
all research undertaken by our faculty is done
voluntarily. This is a decision that individual faculty
members would have to make, not the
administration.
Faculty members through their research can
improve the understanding of national security
issues, develop and evaluate new technologies and
transition those technologies into effective, practical
and affordable solutions and finally educate and
train the people required by governmental and nongovernmental organizations. Faculty members that
wish to contribute toward this goal should be free to
make such a decision on its merits. However, we
will have a review committee established to look at
all task orders to determine if they are appropriate
to the University.
Research will only take place in areas where we
have been determined to have a core competency:
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


Oceanography
Astronomy and Optics
Electro Optical Systems
Applied Engineering in communications,
networks and protocols, and signal
processing
The Mānoa administration has stated that no project
involving weapons of mass destruction would be
accepted. However, basic research conducted the
fields above will likely be applied to further the
mission and goals of the Navy.