Pioneer sparks debate at Delaware

The Pioneer Fund, an allegedly racist foundation that has given money to the University, has sparked controversy at other campuses across the country. Four years ago, the University of Delaware banned faculty members from accepting grants from the foundation. While administrators lifted the ban a year later, the question of whether the university had violated professors' academic freedom remained unanswered. The ban at the University of Delaware came as a result of a faculty committee's recommendation to stop accepting further financial support from the Pioneer Fund because its beliefs conflicted with the university's commitment to racial diversity. "What [the] university did was argue that it could refuse to process the money from an outside foundation if it disapproved of that foundation's mission," said Educational Studies Professor Linda Gottfredson. An independent arbitrator ruled in 1991 that Delaware had to allow Gottfredson and fellow Education Studies Professor Jan Blits to apply for grants from the foundation, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The University reversed its policy on academic freedom this week by agreeing with the conclusions of the 1992 report compiled by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), according to a press release written by Gottfredson and Blits. "The University originally justified its ban on taking Pioneer monies by arguing that banning [grants] on ideological grounds is not a violation of academic freedom," Gottfredson said. The AAUP report stated that "denying a faculty member the opportunity to receive requisite funding improperly curtails the researcher's academic freedom" and that such an act is the same as if the university "took direct steps to halt research that it considered unpalatable." "The arbitrator never ruled on the issue of academic freedom," said Maxine Colm, vice president for employee relations at the University of Delaware. "What he found was that the Senate Committee on Research violated its own procedures." But Frank Murray, dean of the College of Education at Delaware, contended that the university has always maintained the highest standard of academic freedom. "Faculty have always been free to pursue any line of research," Murray said. "There is no ideological constraint on academic inquiry." According to Gottfredson and Blits' press release, the controversy over the Pioneer Fund resurfaced this March when Murray stated that the issue of the ban had little to do with academic freedom, as Gottfredson and Blits had claimed. "The dean argued that it wasn't a question of academic freedom because [the university] did not ban my work," Gottfredson said. In a letter to the vice president of employee relations, Gottfredson and Blits said they are "gratified" that the administration now agrees with the AAUP's 1992 report. "AAUP had never issued any statement on the protections that academic freedom might or might not provide," Gottfredson said. Gottfredson added that she still has some money left from the Pioneer Fund from a grant given to her two years ago. She is currently studying job-related aptitudes and intelligence traits on which she claims "races seem to differ the most." "If the Pioneer Fund were a fraction of what people say about it, we would not have won in arbitration and we would not have won this long battle with the university," Blits said. At the University, Associate Regional Science Professor Daniel Vining received a $6,500 research grant from the foundation in 1992 to study population growth. Despite controversy over the nature of the fund, the University never intervened. Vining denied that race is a motivating force in his work.