‘Worry’ for academia-security partnerships after Penn discovery

The University of Pennsylvania’s celebrated closeness with Joe Biden has turned threatening, after discoveries of classified documents in their joint private possession left both sides struggling to explain their unique relationship.

The White House acknowledged that Mr Biden’s lawyers discovered “a small number” of classified documents in an office that Penn maintains in Washington DC for functions that include the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

The centre was created by Penn in 2017 – at the end of the Obama-Biden administration – as part of a paid but largely ceremonial faculty arrangement that the Ivy League institution constructed with Mr Biden as a publicity vehicle for giving speeches, hosting students and building top-level political connections.

In the days after the White House acknowledged the documents at the Penn office, Mr Biden’s team admitted that an additional number of classified documents were found at the president’s home in Delaware.

The discoveries threaten major political repercussions because Mr Biden had earlier mocked his predecessor, Donald Trump, over classified documents found at Mr Trump’s home in Florida. The top-secret documents also carry legal implications, and quickly prompted Mr Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, to appoint a special counsel to investigate the potential violation of laws that sharply restrict the movement and storage of such papers.

The case also poses risks for Penn and similar arrangements in academia. Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, and now a visiting professor and founder of the Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security at George Mason University, told Times Higher Education that he was a “bit worried” about US lawmakers reacting in a way that could threaten such partnerships.

Mr Hayden said he and his teams at the CIA and the NSA often met with academics, and found the sessions highly valuable, and saw his centre and the Penn Biden Center as part of an essential tradition of exchanging expertise that should be valued and preserved.

After Mr Biden’s election as president in 2020, a Penn spokesman called the decision to hire him – at a total salary expenditure of $911,000 (£742,000) over two years – “phenomenally successful”.

But the university had already encountered some criticism, partisan and otherwise, for spending heavily on Mr Biden and other staff at the Penn Biden Center who are now playing key roles in his administration, including secretary of state Antony Blinken.

Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at Penn, said payments to Mr Biden approaching $1 million for eight campus appearances plus a single classroom visit looked “appalling on their face”.

“Even thinking about this subject in terms of value propositions cheapens what we do, because it communicates to the people in our community that we’re in a business,” he said.

Mr Hayden said Mr Biden and his aides clearly made a mistake in their handling of the documents. Penn, however, “didn’t do anything” that should cause it legal or political trouble, or prompt lawmakers to threaten the valuable model of cooperation between academia and the national security community, Mr Hayden said. “I hope not,” he added, “but Congress does some crazy things.”

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com