Battleangel

Via Majikthise. There is a genuine concern here. Unfounded and bizarre as it seems …

Universities and scientists are protesting Bush administration moves to limit foreign students’ access to research equipment that might be valuable to spies or terrorists.

Academics and scientists are scheduled to meet Friday at the National Academy of Sciences to discuss Commerce Department plans to write regulations governing use of the equipment. The rules could deny foreigners access to hardware involved in a broad array of research projects from microbiology to computer software.

University leaders say that moves by Commerce to impose business restrictions on universities are unworkable and will discourage foreign students from studying for graduate degrees at America’s leading research universities. School officials say that new background checks required of students after of 9/11 should be sufficient to determine whether students are coming to the United States to learn or spy.

Foreign-student enrollment in the United States is already off more than 28 percent since the attacks, largely because of new visa requirements. There were more than 216,000 foreign students enrolled in graduate programs at American universities in the 2003-04 school year.

Source: Roseville and Rocklin Today

Now that is just brilliant. But good news for the rest of us. The US has been largely parasitical when it comes to sucking up academic excellence over the decades. So I’m not complaining here exactly. Let them have it. I just wonder if they realize what they’ve done …

On a similar note, Sweden’s security service (SÄPO) issued a rare alert of sort the other day, claiming that China had spies at Swedish universities, specifically the Karolinska Institute (KI). Now, for SÄPO to do that is very peculiar indeed. For one, it seems contrary to good police work to tip people off that SÄPO is after them, assuming of course that there was even something to this. Smells more like a propaganda trick or xenophobia to me. Or that SÄPO is on a fundraiser again. There has been so much talk of intellectual property and immaterial laws lately that they probably thought it would be practical to jump the bandwagon.