Penn President Amy Gutmann is stepping into the national limelight on national-security issues that could have far-reaching effects on federal policy toward academia.
Gutmann is among 15 university leaders from around the country selected to serve on a committee that will look at the relationship between terrorist threats and higher education.
FBI Director Robert Mueller announced Gutmann's appointment to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Security Higher Education Advisory Board last week, when the agency unveiled its plans to seek advice from university administrators on issues ranging from international student visas to intellectual- property rights.
Gutmann and her fellow board members will meet in Washington at least three times each year. The first meeting is planned for this fall.
"Without [academic administrators] being at the table, there's really no way that we could ensure that our needs are really understood" by the FBI, Gutmann said.
"I want to share advice about ... traditions of intellectual openness and how important it is -- not only to us at Penn ... but also to this country," she added.
Born out of FBI concerns about terrorists posing as applicants to American universities, the committee was conceived about a year ago when Graham Spanier -- president of Penn State University and chairman of the advisory board -- met with FBI officials to introduce an academic's viewpoint into the mix.
According to FBI spokesman William Carter, Penn's groundbreaking scientific research in areas like physics and infectious diseases could appeal to terrorists looking to develop new technologies.
"Much of the nation's intellectual property is produced in universities," Carter said. "Yet there are nations that would exploit our discoveries."
But protecting Penn's ability to continue innovative research, Gutmann said, is something she intends to pursue.
"We're very aggressive and ambitious about moving the research agenda forward," Gutmann said. "There was a low point, post 9/11 -- for understandable reasons -- where the barriers [to new research] had gone up, higher than now they need to be. We've made some progress there, and we want to make some more progress."
Gutmann said she expects the FBI to take the committee's recommendations seriously.
"The kinds of people who are being invited to participate, like President Gutmann, are not likely to simply be happy if they are used as window dressing as opposed to making a real contribution," said Avery Goldstein, a professor of political science who specializes in international security. "It would be a dangerous thing and a foolish thing for the FBI simply to do this as a ruse."
Restrictions on international student visas after Sept. 11, 2001 have made it more difficult for international students to study at American universities.
With 2,708 international applicants to Penn this year, student visa policies are a crucial concern for Gutmann.
"If we want to compete effectively as a country, we have to be open to the best and the brightest students at our universities," she said. "We pride ourselves at Penn on contributing to the health of our democracy.
