SHIFT FROM UNIVERSITIES

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32394, 5 September 1970, Page 19

SHIFT FROM UNIVERSITIES

U.S. Research Programmes

fN.Z. Press Assn—Copyrights WASHINGTON September 3. The United States Secretary of Defence, Mr Melvin Laird, said yesterday that student violence would probably cause the Pentagon to consider resiting its university research programmes.

“I think this is going to cause us to reassess whether the university campus is the best place to construct federal facilities if it is going to cause this kind of problem," he told an unscheduled news conference yesterday. Mr Laird, who as a congressman helped create the Army mathematics centre that was recently bombed, at the University of Wisconsin, said that his concern applied to all types of Federal research—not just to research related to defence.

“The point is that if Federal research facilities on the campus are causing university administrators ■ problems, there are other places where these facilities can be biult,” he said. “They can be located close to the campuses, without being on the campuses themselves.” He cited the Stanford Research Institute and other facilities at Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “Which are completely divorced from the campus and the university administration, although many people play a dual role.”