Despite my own deep concern about the goals of SDI, I would urge extreme caution in restraining university research, and in pressuring colleagues on what research to do and what sponsorship to accept, as a way of conveying political messages.
Even though most people are not pressing—as they might have in the 1960s—for the university itself to take a political position, they are asking their colleagues to do so. This peer pressure, even though informal, affects the intellectual climate adversely. After all, peer review is a significant aspect of the culture of academe; it quite properly influences the professional judgments of researchers. But it is inimical to the fragile academic enterprise when peer review extends to judgments of what cause is just, and collegial pressure is exercised to influence research for reasons other than academic merit.
How each of us judges our own research in the larger scheme of social ...
