A Precarious Balance

Bureaucratic oversight is often a necessary evil at a university. The administration’s unprecedented takeover of a federal grant given to a researcher at the School of Public Health (SPH) is a perfect example of this. In February of 2004, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases Phyllis Kanki received a $107 million grant to address AIDS in Africa as part of President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The grant is meant to pay for the treatment of thousands of AIDS patients in Botswana, Nigeria and Tanzania. But last summer, University officials imposed a centralized management structure on Kanki as well as a provision tantamount to a gag order that prevents her from talking to the government, even though she was the recipient of the grant.

It is unfortunate that the University is forcing Kanki to manage her grant through an executive director who reports directly to Mass. Hall. However, given the tremendous size of the grant—almost two times larger than any other received by Harvard—and the liability Harvard assumed by accepting the grant, the administration’s actions are understandable though inexplicably heavy-handed.

Not surprising, much of the impetus for the oversight came from the Joint Committee on Inspections, a monitoring board made up of members of the Corporation and the Board of Overseers, which had the initial concerns about the grant. Provost Steven E. Hyman said that the Committee “only gave permission to go forward if financial and administrative control and the authority to commit Harvard University to additional responsibilities were in the hands of someone with deep administrative experience in global development projects.” Such oversight is necessary given the risks of working in Third World countries and the fact that the University’s reputation is at stake if something goes wrong. Indeed, it is standard procedure for the University to keep some baseline level of control over grant money given to the researchers it employs.

Beyond reputation, though, is the overriding issue of legal liability. Harvard has every right to take action to prevent lawsuits, especially in the wake of the University’s legal problems regarding two grants totaling $57.8 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The University was held liable for up to $34.8 million when a federal judge ruled that the University breached contract and Jones Professor of Economics Andrei Shleifer ’82 and former Harvard employee Jonathan Hay conspired to defraud the government and violated the False Claims Act while advising the Russian government on its transition to capitalism. The University must ensure that something similar does not happen again.

However, we suspect that the University could have taken preventative measures in a more diplomatic and less severe manner. The University made several mistakes in dealing with Kanki that inflamed the situation. Officials at first attempted to appoint another researcher who had applied for the grant to co-manage the money with Kanki. They then compelled Kanki to report to an executive director who had little experience with AIDS issues in Africa. Though a new, expert executive director was eventually appointed, the damage was done.

In light of these two previous missteps, the gag order is especially troubling. We firmly believe that no researcher should feel stifled by his or her University. Such a large and complicated grant necessitates transparent communication between the grant giver and the grant recipient. Disrupting that communication with a gag order is, at least, another annoying layer of red tape stymieing Kanki from fulfilling the stipulations of her grant. At most, as an official from the Association of American University Professors recently said, it constitutes an infringement on Kanki’s academic freedom.

University officials seem to be recognizing their ills, and both Hyman and SPH Dean Barry R. Bloom have said that the gag order will soon be rescinded. We applaud the administration for this move and encourage them to look for a solution that will provide both the oversight necessary and address Kanki’s grievances. If Harvard is to remain perched atop the research food chain, it must take steps to ensure that the balance between its own interests and the interests of its researchers never tips too far out of kilter.