Government under funding of universities has encouraged universities to seek funding elsewhere. One major source of funding for university research is the business community and especially those corporations and industries that can benefit from the research produced. This divides university research into two categories - studies that are fundable with some financial pay off (pharmaceuticals or genetically modified organisms for example) and those that are not fundable either because they threaten industry (health effects of chemical pollutants) or are benign with no obvious economic value now or in the foreseeable future.

Corporate funding and corporatization are two ends of the same spectrum. Some corporate funding makes sense. Suresh Narine, a former Trent student, now Research Chair in Food & Nutritional Sciences at the University of Alberta, receives several million dollars from various multi-national corporations to produce biodegradable plastics from crops. Corporate funding makes this research possible and provides support for graduate students. Because Suresh insists on publishing his results and not patenting the final product, the funding agency and anyone else who wants to use the formulation can compete for market share by advertising that they use biodegradable packaging, which presumably is less harmful to the environment. Everyone benefits from this type of joint university-corporate venture.

However, not all partnerships are this favourable. Consider the case of Dr. Olivieri at the University of Toronto. She was studying the effects of a drug on children and when she realized that the drug was doing more harm than good she wanted to discontinue her study. But she had signed a legally binding contract. Her moral obligation as a medical doctor, namely to do no harm and to act in the best interests of her patients, came into conflict with her legally-binding obligation to honour her contract. When she was unable to convince the company to release her from her legal contract she went public with her rights and responsibilities of academic freedom as a medical scientists. What surprised me in this dispute was the lack of support she received from the University of Toronto, the primary academic institution in Canada that should protect academic freedom above all else.

Has the university system changed? What would have happened 30 years ago?

Yes, the university system has changed and here is an example that would be unheard of today. Thirty years ago, two men from a multinational company with its head office in the United States visited the president of a prestigious Ontario university. They offered the university 2 million dollars with one condition, that a young professor who was doing research on lead pollutants be "put out of business."

How did that university president react? He said that he had to make a phone call before he could give them his answer. So he phoned the office of the professor whose research was so threatening to this industry. He explained the situation. All he heard was a stunned silence on the other end of the phone. The last thing he said before he hung up was "I wanted you to know that I am just about to throw these two gentlemen out of my office." The president was John Evans, the university was the University of Toronto, and the professor threatened by this company was Tom Hutchinson, now a Trent Professor. How many university presidents would respond the way John Evans did?

As soon as corporations begin to influence what research is done and what research "cannot" be done; as soon as they start to dictate how a study should be designed; as soon as they start to interfere with the interpretation of the results or interfere, in any way, with the publication of those results, they have crossed the line of corporate funding to corporatization. As soon as they challenge any aspect of academic freedom they have crossed the line.

Why do industries ask university scientists to speak on their behalf? Why don't they ask their own scientists instead? The key reason is credibility. Many industries, because of their past practices, simply lack credibility. They have a vested interest to look good irrespective of the "truth" and thus are considered biased. But what will happen to the credibility of university professors once they are funded by industry money? How likely are they to release information that would be potentially damaging to their key sponsor? Corporate funding threatens university culture, university independence and the credibility of university scientists.

Freedom of the press and academic freedom are essential to a democratic society. Both of these freedoms are being threatened and, in some cases, have been severely eroded. This is a very real challenge for which we need adequate safeguards to protect the university, to protect the professors involved and, above all, to protect academic freedom.