RIT students protest president's CIA work by Jennifer Hyman April 30, 1991 Democrat and Chronicle.
A group of students at Rochester Institute of Technolgy has called for the resignation of President M. Richard Rose, on the grounds that his work for the Central Intelligence Agency discredits the school.
At a meeting Thursday, RIT's Faculty Council urged the president to return within two weeks to address the campus community and answer worrisome questions about his links to the covert agency.
Rose revealed earlier this month that his four month sabbatical was being spent at the CIA's Langly, Va, complex working as a high-ranking consultant to devise educational and training strategies for future CIA officers.
Students of the RIT Community for Peace and Justice, as well as two other student organizations, have reacted by circulating a petition requesting the school's Board of Trustees to terminate Rose's presidency. The students say he has compromised the school's reputation and integrity.
"We assert that the notion of a university as a place for the free and open exchange of ideas is a fundamental part of its academic mission," the petition says. "such an ideal is incompatible with the presence of the Central Intelligence Agency . . . "
Student spokesman Brian Lang said that to his knowledge, it was unprecedented for the president of an institution of higher education to work for the CIA "and then to brag about it."
"By definition the CIA is involved in secrecy and deception," Lang said. "If academic institutions value academic freedom and open debate, they can't do things in secret."
The RIT students have forged ties with student activists at the University of Rochester to focus attention on the CIA presence on area campuses, and to bring in ex-CIA officers and experts as speakers. The first was Deborah Crawford of the Chicago-based CIA Off Campus Clearinghouse, who spoke at UR yesterday. Speakers lined up for next week include CIA whistleblower and author John Stockwello and Verne Lyon, a former CIA officer who was recruited in the 1960's to spy on his fellow Iowa State University students.
UR interest in the CIA issue has been fomenting since last fall, when the university planned to establish a government-funded intelligence "think tank" in Washington to serve as a resource for the CIA and other intelligence -gathering agencies. The idea was killed by President Dennis O'Brien after weeks of controversy on campus and vigorous protests by several academic departments.
At RIT, Rose's work for the CIA comes on top of disclosure of other links, including CIA recuiting on campus and cooperative work experiences for RIT students with the CIA. In addition, RIT is one of 10 to 12 campuses nationwide to host a CIA "Officer-in-Residence," a registered student who also teaches classes to selected, pre-screened students.
Rose could not be contacted for comment yesterday as he was out of the country "on CIA business," according to RIT officials. However, a statement he prepared for release to students and faculty Monday describes his CIA role and defends his decision as patriotic, particularly when so many Americans had been mobilized for the Persian Gulf War.
"I certainly recognized the potential for misunderstanding," he says in the statement. "I could have gone underover, that is assigned to the Marine Corps or another government agency. But as I thought about it, I grew uncomfortable with that basic notion and didn't feel it necessary or desirable."
Instead, Rose says, he accepted a high-level assignment to review the CIA's strategic goals for the 1990's, to consider personnel needs and to define future educational requirements. He promises in the statement to discuss his assignment in far greater detail when he returns, probably by June 1.
Apart from Rose's account, faculty and students will also receive a statement Monday from Board of Trustees chairman Tom Gosnell, (remember this name for a later article) endorsing Rose's decision to work for the CIA and expressing "delight" that he will return as president.
Gosnell also notified RIT's vice president for communications, Jack Smith, that the trustees approved proprietary research on behalf of business or government. "We treat all organizations seeking our help, including the CIA, under the same guidelines," Gosnell said.
After hearing student concerns Thursday, the Faculty Council decided not to endorse the call for Rose's resignation, but to urge his immediate return to confront the issue.
"The faculty is not in the mood to ask for his resignation at this point," said Jean Douthwright, a biology professor and member of the council. "But we think it is in his best interests to speak soon to the RIT community. The concern is that a very big precedent is being set and if the academic community accepts this, it means a very different role for the university." (Today, RIT is still doing research for the CIA, by the way.)
Douthwright said she personally has "very deep concerns" about Rose's job with the CIA. "I worry about what it could potentially do to the student population we are trying to draw from other countries because the CIA is known to recruit foreign students. My fear is the perception, particularly in other countries, that RIT is contaminated by this link." (RIT currently has branch campuses in foreign countries as well.)
What follows here is an editorial or two and letters to the editor and a couple more articles both pro and con concerning RIT's link to the CIA. One said many students were for it, although as I recall, it was not that many, but there were a lot of students protesting Rose's affiliation and wanted him to resign--immediately, but he wouldn't. Thus, to the next level. It gets really good in the next major articles--keep focused! And I hope Ben Fulford is reading this as well. I want him to explain the antics of these men who wrote Changemasters and Japan 2000 and why these booklets were written. It's very important to me to know why. $75 million dollars why.
