The University of Hawai\u02bbi is poised to renew a contract with the Navy to operate a controversial Navy sponsored\u00a0University of Hawai\u02bbi Applied Research Laboratory, otherwise known as a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC).<\/p>\n
The UARC was approved in 2008 despite fierce opposition and a civil disobedience campaign that culminated in a week-long occupation of the UH President McClain’s office. The UARC was intended to be a no-bid contracting pipeline for UH to receive military research contracts through the classified research center.<\/p>\n
WHAT YOU CAN DO:<\/p>\n
1. CONTACT UH PRESIDENT GREENWOOD ASAP and urge that she not renew the Applied Research Laboratory contract. Request that she instead refer the matter back to the Board of Regents and allow them to review a full accounting of the program and have a public discussion of its risks and liabilities.<\/p>\n
2. SUBMIT WRITTEN COMMENTS TO THE BOARD OF REGENTS BY WED. JULY 17th:<\/p>\n
BACKGROUND:<\/p>\n
Anticipating the expiration of the UARC contract, Keever sought out information about the contract and all task orders performed by UH for the Navy under the UARC through public information requests. \u00a0All she got was the runaround. In articles published in the Civil Beat<\/a> and\u00a0Hawaii Independent<\/a>:<\/p>\n Not since the Vietnam War and other protests of 40 years ago had the Manoa campus seen anything like the furor that erupted in opposition to establishing a military research laboratory at the University of Hawaii.<\/p>\n Students and faculty sounded off with blowhorns at assemblies, hung banners from rooftops, held nighttime vigils at the UH President\u2019s mansion and petitioned the Board of Regents at a marathon, six-hour hearing.\u00a0 With backpacks and sleeping rolls, they swooped up the stairs of Bachman Hall, invaded the president\u2019s office, and settled in for a six-day sit-in and sleep-in that garnered negative headlines around the globe and lured the nation\u2019s leading academic newspaper to send its own staff reporter to the scene.<\/p>\n \u201cThe last time the U.S. Navy built a laboratory on a university campus, Franklin D. Roosevelt was president and the United States was a war with Axis powers,\u201d Kelly Field reported to the Chronicle of Higher Education. \u201cSixty years later, as the nation battles terrorism and an insurgency in Iraq, the Navy is encountering fierce resistance at home over its plans to develop a laboratory here at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When the UARC was proposed in 2004, there was strong opposition to the UARC led by a dynamic coalition of students, faculty and community that raised awareness, mobilized creative actions and occupied the UH President McClain’s office for a week. Kanaka Maoli students and faculty were at the head of efforts to oppose the UARC citing the threat this classified naval research lab posed to UH as a “Hawaiian place of learning”. \u00a0 The UH M\u0101noa Faculty Senate, UH M\u0101noa undergraduate student association, and even the UH M\u0101noa Chancellor opposed the UARC. \u00a0But the UARC, intended to be a no-bid contracting pipeline to funnel military research funds to Hawai\u02bbi and military research facilities at the Pacific Missile Range Facility, was moved from the UH M\u0101noa Campus to the UH System level and eventually approved by the Board of Regents in 2008.<\/p>\n GENEALOGY OF THE UARC<\/p>\n The UARC originated with an earlier secretive contract named “Project Kai e\u02bbe”, which means tsunami in Hawaiian.\u00a0Project Kai e\u02bbe involved UH researchers, the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai\u02bbi (RCUH), the Office of Naval Research, several admirals and Senator Inouye. \u00a0It became the focus of a scandalous Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) investigation of possible fraud, abuse, and conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n Project Kai e\u02bbe was intended to be a $50 million multi-faceted military research project awarded to RCUH to conduct military research based at the Pacific Missile Range Facility. \u00a0As RCUH Executive Director Harold Masumoto reported to the RCUH Board in\u00a0October 4, 2001:<\/p>\n This may become a major project \u2013 about $50 million if funding comes through. As more of these types of projects become reality, there may be a need for a separate entity to manage them because of their focused objectives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n On December 4, 2001, Masumoto reported to the RCUH Board of Directors that:<\/p>\n RCUH was asked to submit a proposal and has done so for an ONR project with a potential price tag of $48 million over four years\u2026A Phase 2 proposal may also be submitted. This project is basically in support of the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At the June 6, 2002 RCUH Board of Directors meeting, Masumoto reported:<\/p>\n Project Kaiee<\/span> \u2013 We are still awaiting award of the contract. In the meantime, we will receive $800k of funding to get started (hiring an Executive Director and a Technical Director as well as some other support\/technical personnel). The project will be incubated by RCUH. Plans at this time include evolving it into a UARC (University Affiliated Research Center).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n RCUH was involved in providing services for the Navy funding agency as well as using this privileged information to submit the Project Kai e\u02bbe bid. \u00a0This raised flags about conflicts of interest issues. \u00a0 As a result Harold Masumoto moved several “services” contracts to the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research, a quasi-public corporation with historical ties to UH where he also held an executive position.<\/p>\n The NCIS reported that an Office of Naval Research program manager Mun Won Chang-Fenton and Admiral Paul Schultz:<\/p>\n planned to benefit from their NAVSAIRSYSCOM affiliation by orchestrating the award of a proposed contract, N00421-02-D-3151, to a company [they]\u00a0were developing, Pacific Research Institute (PRI), also referred to as PROJECT KAIE\u2019E\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n UARC<\/span> \u2013 We are also looking into the establishment of a University Affiliated Research Center and have discussed the matter with President Dobelle and UHM Chancellor Englert.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n University Affiliated Research Center<\/span> (UARC) \u2013 The proposal is 99% complete and the UHM approvals are in place to take it to next step which is for Admiral Cohen (Chief of Naval Research) to send it to NAVSEA to designate UHM as a UARC. It is hoped that the UARC will be in place by this summer. Because a UARC functions as a trusted agent of the government, it operates under sole source, multi-task delivery of contracts to perform work primarily for Navy sponsors\u2026. Until UH changes its policy on classified research, such an activity has to be run through an organization like RCUH. Creating a separate 501(c)(3) type organization is another alternative.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The UARC first came to public attention in 2004, when UH faculty raised strong objections to classified military research at UH. \u00a0After several years of strong opposition the UH Board of Regents approved a five year contract with a commitment that no classified research would occur on the M\u0101noa campus and that there would be no classified research in the first three years of the contract. \u00a0Keever writes:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now, fast-forwarding to five years later, Senator Inouye has passed on and on July 14, the UH\u2019s contract expires with the U.S. Navy\u2019s Sea Systems Command, its war-fighting, weapons-development arm.<\/p>\n Without discussion by or disclosure to the public, UH is set to sign a new contract with the Navy. \u201cBecause there are no planned changes to the contract other than the timeframe, this modification would be signed by the Vice President for Research with the approval of the President,\u201d according to the response to my e-mail made by a representative of Lynne T. Waters, UH\u2019s associate vice president for external affairs and university relations. UH is now selecting replacements for both the Vice President for Research and for the President.<\/p>\n Before UH administrators sign the new contract, however, the Board of Regents has been urged to have a designated UH administrator explain fully the amount, scope, costs, revenues, locations, outcomes of UH\u2019s ARL-conducted research and the kinds of censorship placed on dissemination of all research results. The Board is scheduled to meet on July 18 at the UH Cancer Center in Kaka\u02bbako.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Alia Wong of the\u00a0Civil Beat\u00a0<\/a>wrote a follow up article exploring the secrecy surrounding the renewal of the UARC contract:<\/p>\n Kitty Lagareta, who chaired the Board of Regents between 2005 and 2007, said she and other regents approved the plan on strict conditions, including that none of the initial research be classified, and after long-drawn-out consultations with stakeholders.<\/p>\n She said regents also called for a review of the lab\u2019s research after a few years.<\/p>\n \u201cAn agreement\u2019s an agreement,\u201d she said. \u201cThe university ohana as well as the public are probably deserving of some sort of a recap.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n