The UC Academic Assembly recommended to the Board of Regents in a resolution not to reject tobacco-funded research at UC schools on the basis of moral or political standing by a vote of 27 to 16 at their Oct. 11 meeting.

The resolution began with a recommendation to uphold a precedent created in 2005, that only gave the regents the right to prevent faculty from receiving donations based solely on the funding source. The assembly also passed two related motions that both support academic freedom and assert that the tobacco industry has been known to suppress academic freedom in the past, according to Academic Senate Chair John B. Oakley

According to John Pierce, a professor and associate director for cancer prevention at the Moores Cancer Center, the center and the department of family and preventative medicine were among the first to decide on a ban for the acceptance of tobacco research money by their members. This came after David Burn, a clinical professor in the department was unable to receive a settlement grant due to a stipulation that recipients couldn’t be involved in a group that had taken tobacco money in the past.

When Burns presented the issue to the Academic Senate for review, the body voted that he couldn’t accept it, and that an academic unit like the department of family and preventive medicine had no right to restrict academic freedom in that way. They also decided that systemwide money should not be taken from foundations that restrict academic freedom.

UCSD biology professor Darwin Berg’s research is partially funded by tobacco company Phillip Morris, but he said he has not been adversely affected by his other donors.

The issue came to the regents before in fall 2004, when President Robert C. Dynes wrote who a letter stating that “while people may differ in their views about the appropriateness of accepting research funding from the tobacco industry, I believe that it is the fundamental right of faculty to accept such funding.” He cited that faculty, regardless of their funding source, are bound by “the highest ethical standards of intellectual honesty and integrity in research.”

For the Oct. 11 meeting, Dynes distributed materials to the assembly, reminding them of a resolution passed last year by the Academic Senate. The resolution warned that academic freedom issues would result if faculty was not funded based on future uses of their research results.

UCLA professor and researcher James E. Enstrom agreed in an article in online publication Inside Higher Education, “The whole purpose of a university is to provide an environment where people can pursue the truth. To dictate what research is done at a university destroys the objectivity of a university.”

However, Assembly member and UC San Francisco professor Stanton A. Glantz, believes that new information is now available to overturn the previous resolutions and clarify the regents’ position toward a ban on tobacco-funded research. He cited the regents’ previous decision to divest from tobacco stock in their investment portfolio, and argued that the tobacco industry has abused academic research and “manipulated the scientific process.” Also, referring to a recent federal district court ruling, Glantz argued that the industry had been engaged in fraud.

“The [tobacco] industry is careful in the selection of projects and individuals for funding,” he stated in a letter to his colleagues. “Moreover, history demonstrates that if the findings do not support pro-tobacco positions, funding will be withdrawn.”

Glantz referenced Enstrom’s study as an example of how the tobacco industry has used research for its own benefit in a Missouri case.

According to Enstrom, “[Glantz] makes a number of false statements. I think that’s why [the vote has] come down in the favor of academic freedom. … The tobacco industry has not behaved very professionally over the years either, but that doesn’t mean that everything that other people do with tobacco funding is wrong. … Glantz was trying to make a case that I was corrupt, but I’m not corrupt. This is a difference of opinion that Glantz has tried to turn into a scandal.”

Enstrom said he does not believe it is likely that the regents will ignore the Academic Senate’s recommendation, but conceded that the issue will not be finalized until the regents act on it.

Stephen Green, a spokesman for Lt. Gov. and ex-officio Regent Cruz Bustamante, who brought the issue to the regents in September, said, “[It’s] not an issue [Bustamante] plans to give up on.”