Here's more evidence that our universities have become research stations to generate profits for large corporations. Oil industry leader BP created a “private-public” entity called the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) last year to develop transgenic cellulosic ethanol, the next wave of biofuels. Mendel Biotechnology CEO, Chris Somerville, runs the Berkeley arm of EBI, a natural choice since his company, which is co-owned by Monsanto, purchased the largest collection of a perennial grass ideal for cellulosic ethanol. According to one Berkeley professor:

Somerville was rushed in to Berkeley through a secretive and highly irregular flash-hire process to be safely on the UC side as a professor for the signing of the agreement...Not surprisingly, there is no outward sign that the Academic Senate even knew about all this...In this proposal, Berkeley is nothing but a business partner with these corporations, and professors, entrepreneurs, and students, simply cheap labor, paying high fees for the privilege of giving their work to the right corporation.

In a similar vein, the New York Times reported today that it obtained a tobacco industry contract with a public university under the Virginia Freedom of Information law. This secret contract had "highly unusual" terms and "raises questions about how far universities will go in search of scarce research dollars to enhance their standing."

The contract bars professors from publishing the results of their studies, or even talking about them, without Philip Morris’s permission. If 'a third party,' including news organizations, asks about the agreement, university officials have to decline to comment and tell the company. Nearly all patent and other intellectual property rights go to the company, not the university or its professors.

 This sounds similar to BP's transgenic biofuel venture:

Most information would flow through and be filtered by the BP personnel and their UC Berkeley affiliates, who would need to sign non-disclosure agreements, making it impossible to distinguish between their private and public roles. 

Wendell Berry once said that “someday we will look back on ‘objectivity’ in academic research as a very influential idea, but a very strange one indeed.”

Sources: Americas Program and The New York Times