ustxtxb_obs_2005_09_09_50_00012-00000_000.pdf

million and making other changes to sweeten the pot. At the end of March, Lockheed announced that it would reenter the Los Alamos competition; UT did the same shortly thereafter. On May 12, 2005, the UT regents voted 9-0 to allocate $1.2 million for a Los Alamos bid and announced that their team would consist of Lockheed as the lead partner and two junior corporate partners that thrive off the nation’s radioactive legacy, CH2M Hill \(a company that boasts expertise in both manufacturing and cleaning up rival, as head of its team. The DOE will announce the winner by December 1. Every big idea needs its envoys, its architects. In the case of the increasing merger of corporate, academic, and governmental research interests at the national laboratories, two men have risen to the task: Mark Yudof and Paul Robinson. Yudof is a peculiar Texas politiciana social liberal \(at least by impressive political savvy. Since his appointment as chancellor in 2002, he’s been quietly “triangulating” for the UT articulating a vision of how to organize collaborative research in the country. The intellectual framework for their endeavor is an interpretation of a relatively obscure book by Donald Stokes, Pasteur’s Quadrant. The book argues that the old distinctions between understanding-based basic science and use-based applied science are no longer relevant. Instead, Stokes argues, funded research should seek to balance and blend the two. In notes from a July 7, 2004 meeting between UT and Lockheed/Sandia officials, obtained “LOS ALAMOS PROVIDES A TRUE OPPORTUNITY TO ACCELERATE AND COMMERCIALIZE NUCLEAR OPPORTUNITIES FOR OUR COUNTRY.” -PHIL WILSON, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR GOV. PERRY a contractor charged with the environmental remediation of radioactive bomb plants line for proposals passed on July 19, UT-Lockheed revealed a network of 33 universities that would act as research partners to the lab. Paul Robinson stepped down as president of Sandia Corp to head up the team. The incumbent UC System assembled a team consisting of Bechtel \(a giant global engineering firm that manages the Nevada Test Site and has enormous contracts a company in charge of Pantex, a nuclear weapons assembly and Washington Group International. UC has appointed Michael Anastasio, director of the Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos’ Systemtrying to keep UT moored to the traditional notion of a public institution while talking shop and taking action the conservative, corporate way. In that vein, he has authored some remarkable polemics on how to make universities more responsive to market forces, borrowing wholesale the neoliberal ideology and management argot of the corporate world. Robinson, on the other hand, has been working within Sandia and Los Alamos for most of his professional life. He was employed by Los Alamos from 1967 to 1985, serving as chief of the nuclear weapons division for six years. He also served as president of Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed company, until April, when he took over the UT-Lockheed bid. Together, the two men have been through an open records request, Robinson cites Pasteur’s Quadrant as providing the basis for the “inevitability of our academic/industrial partnership.” The notes record Robinson as saying: “We should organize ourselves \(and subsequently each of the make it the driving theme of our proposals. It’s the prescription for fixing what’s broken at Los Alamos.” \(This document seems to reveal UT and Lockheed/Sandia jointly contemplating a bid for Los Alamosindeed, laying planslong before they made the official announcement in June 2005 or their almost-simultaneous withdrawal from the competition a month after the On April 6, 2005 at the Sandia-UT signing ceremony in D.C., Yudof 12 THE TEXAS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 9, 2005