Lack of security clearance shuts out Hopkins president from Applied Physics Lab
Because Ronald Daniels (left), the Johns Hopkins University's new president, is Canadian, he can't be given classified clearance to oversee the nearly $1 billion in research that goes on at JHU's Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, according to a Sun article today.
About 70 percent of the lab's $845 million in annual funding comes from the Department of Defense.
The university, under its own policies, prohibits classified research on its academic campuses -- that's why it uses the APL campus as an outlet for its researchers to work on government-sponsored research.
We learn from Childs Walker's story that the university had to go through some lengths, over several months, to figure out a new way to keep some kind of oversight over APL without sacrificing government funding.
The solution: a limited liability corporation that will handle classified research, with oversight transferred from the president's office to the chairman of the university's board of trustees.
It is worth noting that this major university had to essentially rewrite its own rules on how classified research is handled because of Daniels' Canadian citizenship -- because the rules require the president AND the board of trustees to exercise oversight over APL and classified research. Under the new setup, it's effectively just the board of trustees.
The research that comes out of APL is often groundbreaking and game-changing in a number of industries. Though Hopkins officials seemed to downplay the impact that the change means for Daniels, the lack of access for him to some of the university's richest research capabilities must be a drag. Who, as a university president, wouldn't want to know all the wicked cool things your researchers are working on in top-secret labs?
From the article: "It [the LLC] effectively creates a wall between the part of the university performing research with access to classified information and the rest of the university," said Hopkins spokesman Dennis O'Shea. What do you think?
Comments
This is why US academic institutions should hire US citizens. And I am only a high school graduate and can figure that one out.
Posted by: Average-Joe | September 9, 2009 9:33 AM
Because who knows what the Canucks will do if they get their mitts on our technology.
Posted by: Tyler | September 9, 2009 9:55 AM
And, this comes as a surprise to JHU? They have multi-millions of dollars in Government contracts. (The Space Telescope Science Institute is right there adjoining the Homewood campus and works closley with APL) Can it be that, at no time, no one at all had any inkling that hiring an alien would be a security problem?
JHU claims they were not surprised by this, but some people may still see it as an inexplicable oversight. -gs
Posted by: Eve | September 9, 2009 11:38 AM
It's quite reasonable that in an organization as large as JHU, the president not have access to classified information. Is it reasonable to believe that he has a legitimate "need to know" related to "the wicked cool things your researchers are working on in top-secret labs?"
Actually Justin, I disagree. It's not reasonable and, up until now, Hopkins had required its president to be in the loop on classified research at APL. My two cents: The president of a university should absolutely know everthing about what's going on and what his professors are involved in researching. -gs
Posted by: Justin | September 10, 2009 7:41 AM
Gus,
To your previous comment to Justin:
APL's research could potentially use components (data sets, etc) that are classified by our DoD, Intel agencies and other civilian agencies who contract APL.
Insider threat being what it is, we cannot risk having foreign nationals given access beyond what has already been approved below secret for information sharing purposes.
I am rather certain he can do his job based on the recommendations of his cleared trusted advisers that can redact certain aspects of the work at APL and still empower him to make budget decisions.
Posted by: Chris Ensey | September 10, 2009 9:33 AM