Universities can walk away from Trump’s demands – Varghese

A former chief diplomat, Peter Varghese, says Donald Trump and his administration have every right to attach conditions to the research they help fund, but Australian universities equally have the freedom to “accept, reject or negotiate” those terms, write Julie Hare and Paul Karp for the Australian Financial Review.

The federal government has yet to respond fully to concerns raised by universities and science leaders over what is being described as foreign influence by the Trump administration.

Peter Varghese, a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and now chancellor of the University of Queensland, said universities needed to make their own decisions about what was acceptable when taking funding for research projects. “At one level, of course, the US, like any other government, is free to attach conditions to its funding. Equally, we are also we’re free to accept, reject or negotiate those conditions,” Varghese said. “It is a pity that grant applications are not to be judged solely on their merits but rather on whether the researcher’s university is on the right side of Trump’s culture wars.”
Full report on the Australian Financial Review site