BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell Fund & Influence Research at Major Universities

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Big Oil Goes to College: BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell Fund & Influence Research at Major Universities

AMY GOODMAN: The world’s largest oil companies aren’t just heavyweights in the world of Washington lobbyists; they’re also showing a great deal of interest in financing energy research at major American universities. According to a new report released by the Center for American Progress, five of the world’s top ten oil companies—ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips—give millions—have been giving millions over the last decade to support energy research at America’s top universities. The private funds might fill a gap left by declining public investment, but the report warns they also pose the risk of hijacking the universities’ research agenda and compromising academic independence.

Top Obama administration officials, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Undersecretary for Science at the Department of Energy Steven Koonin, strongly advocate using industry money to advance research on clean energy. Prior to joining the administration, both Chu and Koonin were instrumental in brokering a $500 million research collaboration between the British oil giant BP and three major publicly financed research institutions—University of California, Berkeley; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The report provides a detailed examination of ten university-industry agreements that exceed $800 million. It looks at grants awarded to Arizona State University; Stanford; the University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Davis; Colorado School of Mines; University of Colorado, Boulder; Colorado State University; Georgia Institute of Technology; Iowa State University; Texas A&M; the University of Texas at Austin; and Rice University. The report is called "Big Oil Goes to College."

I’m joined now from San Francisco by the author of the report, investigative journalist Jennifer Washburn. She’s also author of the book University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education. Jennifer, welcome to Democracy Now! Lay out the scope of this.



JENNIFER WASHBURN: Right, so, basically what I did was I looked at ten large-scale agreements between universities and the bigger oil companies and energy companies, more broadly. And what I found was pretty staggering. I mean, it’s difficult to get a read on what the impact is of industry funding on university research. And so, what I did in this report was look at the actual legal research agreements that are signed between the energy companies and the universities. And I looked to see how well do they protect the universities’ core academic independence, their ability to carry out more objective research.

And what I found was really pretty surprising. Nine of the ten agreements allow the industry sponsor to basically control the overall governance of the research alliance on campus. The reason that’s important is because these alliances are long-term alliances that last anywhere from five to eight to ten years. So they really institutionalize the relationship between the outside oil company sponsors and the university. In eight of the ten agreements, the industry sponsors control the evaluation and selection of research proposals. None of the agreements that I looked at require any kind of independent expert peer review of faculty research—

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http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/18/big_oil_goes_to_college_bp

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