I DO NOT belong to either political party. But this does not mean that I share the growing contempt in America for political parties. These days, anything involved with political parties is viewed as inherently corrupt.
This point of view has spread to Republican research on voting patterns in Pennsylvania, done using Carnegie Mellon University's equipment. Administrators now are reconsidering research policies. Carnegie Mellon did nothing wrong in accepting this contract, and performing research for political parties is not unethical.
This whole controversy appears to have started when Democratic members of the Pennsylvania legislature found out that Republicans paid Carnegie Mellon $526,000 over three years to use the Pittsburgh supercomputer, equipped with, among other things, highly sophisticated software that can predict population migration and voting preference shifts. Such software was very useful to the Republican Caucus in its attempts to propose redistricting that would elect more Republicans.
The Democrats now have flatly stated that the research was unethical, using particularly choice remarks such as the Minority Leader's comment that "it produces a rancid stench in the nostrils of heaven," and making veiled threats to pull CMU's $2 million in state funding ("CMU examines research policy," The Tartan, Feb. 11). This invective has occurred even though the internal review board found the research consistent with school policy, and the Democrats can't come up with any objections other than the fact that Republicans were involved.
All of this controversy has caused the president of the university to recommend reviewing the school's research policies. President Cohon affirmed the importance "to Carnegie Mellon and the [Supercomputer Center], and to me personally, to maintain positive, productive and nonpartisan relationships at all levels of government."
So far, however, nobody has accused Carnegie Mellon of partisan bias, which is what Cohon is addressing. Rather, opponents are claiming that it is unethical to do research for any political party, which is wrong because it gives a sort of pariah status to political parties for no discernible reason.
Carnegie Mellon did nothing out of line with its standard service agreements. If they had used state or federal grants to finance the work, or to write software specifically for this project, then legislators would have something to complain about.
But the Republican Caucus itself paid a fee for a service just like other entities that ask CMU to perform research for it. The fact that the research is for political ends does not make it unethical. Many other groups, including advocacy groups and corporations, have paid fees to use these research tools. If you think that business never uses research for political ends, you probably also believe that tobacco companies never marketed to kids.
But there is nothing scandalous with Carnegie Mellon performing research for either businesses or political parties, as long as it's factual research. The University is not being asked to make political propaganda or twist facts to help big corporations win lawsuits even when they're wrong. Universities exist to create and disseminate knowledge. Part of that purpose is served by teaching students, but providing knowledge to members of the larger community also is an important part of that purpose.
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The PSC also performs research for federal agencies like the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. These agencies use public universities because they realize that universities do a much better job of producing cutting-edge technical research than more profit-minded entities. Universities develop interesting research tools because they don't have to think about its commercial value. In other words, if universities didn't perform this type of research, it wouldn't get done.
All the brouhaha on this is coming from Democrats, not independent political ethics organizations. If the Democrats feel the Republicans are getting an unfair advantage, they have the same amount of state funding, and they could ask Carnegie Mellon to perform the same research for them. This research also could be performed for nonpartisan watchdog groups who want to make sure unreasonable gerrymandering isn't involved. If Carnegie Mellon is worried about unfairness, these are better ways to fix it than scrapping the research.
Criticisms of the research that the school performed are invalid because they assume unethical behavior simply on the basis of partisanship. Useful knowledge is useful knowledge, no matter who has commissioned it.
(Elizabeth Managan's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at emanagan@cavalierdaily.com.)
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