Princeton University. Special Committee on Sponsored Research, The Kuhn committee,

The executive committee of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC), chaired by President Robert Goheen, established the Special Committee on Spronsored Research in May 1970 in response to growing faculty and student outcry over ties between researchers in the Princeton University community and the U.S. Department of Defense. The committee became known as the Kuhn Committee after its chairman, Professor of Mathematical Economics Thomas Kuhn. CPUC charged the committee to recommend how best the University could eliminate sponsored military research activities, but the committee later expanded its mission to cover sponsored research in general. The members of the committee included faculty (both scientists and non-scientists), graduate students, undergraduates, and staff members, as well as two non-voting administrators to advise on technical and financial matters. The Kuhn Committee wrote reviews of sponsored research at Princeton and other universities, and sponsored a series of public meetings to canvass the views of the faculty and the student body. Kuhn's committee recommended that the University's sponsored research policy be strengthened and its research board be granted more oversight so that ethically inappropriate research projects could be rejected. The collection provides access to the heart of a debate over the University's mission. The committee wrestled with issues such as the transparency of the administration and the morality of accepting conditional funding from outside sources - especially those tied to the Department of Defense. But the debate also raged among Princeton faculty over the existence of and access to restricted collections, particularly the Classified Library, and the role of the University in restricting faculty freedom to research. Series 7 of the collection provides an introduction to the responses to sponsored research dilemmas at universities across the country.