REGARDING GIFTHORSE FROM BIG OIL: CHECK MOUTH

The problem, according to Jennifer Washburn, author of University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education is not that the universities are using BP funding for research but that BP is using the universities, and thereby taxpayer funding, for ITS OWN research and development. (Watch for her upcoming LA Times op-ed piece on the subject.)

UC Berkeley chancellor defends BP energy deal; Birgeneau responds to criticism from some faculty, students over contract
Matt Krupnick, March 10, 2007 (Oakland Tribune)

- University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau is adamantly defending the university's part in a $500 million research deal with energy giant BP Amoco PLC…People who attack corporate funding deny the value of the resulting research, he said…
- Faculty leaders called the meeting to air complaints from some students and professors that administrators had not sought adequate campus input on the project. The university will partner with the company, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois to study ways to increase energy production and reduce energy use.
The company will help build the institute on the Berkeley campus…
- Critics said the quiet bidding process violated recommendations made by a Michigan State University panel in 2004 after similar criticism erupted over a UC Berkeley deal with the biotech company Novartis.
- Professor Ignacio Chapela, a longtime detractor of the Novartis project, compared the BP deal to prostitution…
- Supporters argued that corporate funding — even with the BP money — is just a small part of the university's budget. Industry money will make up about 5 percent of the school's outside funding after UC Berkeley receives the BP funds…
- Like other universities, UC Berkeley restricts companies' control over the research they fund…"It seems to me," said [public policy professor Robert] Reich, a former U.S. Labor secretary, "that the strength of these regulations will determine whether the (institute) is a huge feather in Berkeley's cap or a huge noose around Berkeley's neck."
- Most students who attended Thursday's forum appeared to oppose the deal, but faculty attendees were split…