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STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305

 

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Dear Jack: In bagel

Here, at long last, are some preliminary views on the conditions
that Stanford would want to attach in the event that the White-
head Institute were to be established here in close proximity to
the Stanford Medical Center. I do apologize that we weren't able
to get these to you earlier; but, as I remarked in my previous
letter, it was difficult to get all the right people together
during the last month of the summer.

In what follows, I shall make several assumptions about the
Institute and its proposed relationship to Stanford. These are
all quite basic, and probably can be taken for granted, but I
thought it wise to list them anyhow. First, we assume that the
Whitehead Institute will be a non-profit education and research
organization, created and endowed as a separate entity, with its
own governing board. We further assume that the main reason for
your wish to locate it close to the Medical Center is the expecta-
tion that there will be close intellectual interactions between
the Institute and the various departments of basic medical science
here. Finally, we assume that specific decisions about space,

and negotiations about the status of Institute personnel, should
be taken up with the Director whenever he or she is appointed.

For that reason, the specifications I'll set out here ought to

be considered general, for the purpose of testing your further
interest.

In view of the expected close relationship between the Whitehead
Institute and the Stanford University Medical Center, we would be
prepared to commit prime academic reserve space for location of
the Institute building. This space would be in the Governor's
Lane area you were shown on your visit; it is adjacent to the
Medical Center buildings, and already houses the Cancer Biology
Institute. We also hope to construct a radiobiology building

in that same vicinity, with about 40,000 square feet of space
devoted to basic research in radiation biology, cancer biology,

and physiology. :
Mr. Edwin C. Whitehead
October 1, 1980 page 2

The Institute building would be constructed to your specifications,
but the University would retain the usual rights of approval of
the design. The building project budget would have to conform
to some Stanford specifications, and would include a general
plant improvement pro-rata charge that we make on every building
constructed on the main campus. This charge amounts to 7% of
the project cost, and essentially pays for the 'externalities'
associated with new construction -- utilities, roads, and the
like. The land would be leased to the Institute for 51 years,
at the end of which term the land and buildings would revert to
Stanford.

Stanford University would not charge the Institute for the lease.
In consideration, the Institute would construct, as a part of the
building or perhaps as a connecting wing to an existing structure,
space for Stanford's use, in an amount of a little more than
one-quarter _of the total space in the project (or approximately
$10 million dollars of the projected project cost of $35 million).
That space could, to a limited degree, include facilities to be
shared by the Institute and the Stanford Medical Center, such as
seminar and conference rooms; it could also include needed animal
room space for the Medical Center and for the Institute. But in
total, this space provided to Stanford for its use should amount
to approximately the proportion stated.

Now let me turn to some matters that relate to the governance of
the Institute. It is our intention that the Institute be a free-
standing, independently-governed entity that relates to Stanford
through its location and through a set of policies that link
membership on the senior staff of the Institute to membership

in Stanford academic departments, but leave the Institute free
to set its own policies in the main. Here are the arrangements
we believe essential to the establishment of that relationship.
First, in order to guarantee that there is a general congruence
of aims between the Institute and the University, we would like
adequate representation on the governing board. I do not, at
this point, know what plans you have for the size or composition
of that board. It is our feeling, however, that something like
25% of the board's membership should represent the University;
we would probably want to specify at least one faculty member in
the basic biomedical sciences and one administrator.

In order to guarantee the necessary interactions at the scholarly
level, Stanford would want to have the right of joint approval of

the Director of the Institute who would also be appointed to member-
ship on the Stanford faculty. It is highly desirable, of course, that
Mr. Edwin C. Whitehead
October 1, 1980 page 3

as many members of the Institute's professional staff as possible
have formal relationships with Stanford departments. Stanford's
rules provide an opportunity for that; by vote of the appropriate
department, a member of the staff could be named Professor (or
Associate Professor or Assistant Professor as appropriate) by
courtesy. This title confers, among other things, the right to
supervise the work of graduate students. That would be advan-
tageous for the Institute because Stanford graduate students
supported on national fellowships or by other means (some, we
would hope, on Institute funds) would come to constitute a major
source of research talent for the Institute. And, of course,
Stanford is advantaged as well, by the presence of an additional
pool of outstanding professorial talent. Such courtesy appoint-
ments would require a certain minimum of effort on behalf of
Stanford's purposes -- perhaps the direction of a graduate seminar,
or -- as I indicated above -- the supervision of graduate students.
But there would be no formal teaching requirements as such. Nor
would we insist that every member of the Institute's staff, or
even the majority, hold such appointments; you would be free to
appoint some persons who, for one reason or another, would not
qualify for faculty appointments. But we do think it essential
that a special, limited category of senior staff be required to
qualify for academic appointment.

Finally, let me turn to some more general problems; these relate

to University resources and policies, and the extent to which

the Institute is required to use or to follow them. Stanford has

a set of research policies that govern, for example, the use of
human subjects and research, the control of biological hazards,

and the openness of the research environment. I have attached a set
of statements that apply to these policies. It would be quite
important, I think, to agree that the Institute would abide by

them even though it is not a part of the University. We can save
for later discussions whether the same committee or institutional
review board structure used by the University would also be used

by the Institute. At this point a general agreement about the
appropriateness of the rules should suffice. Stanford University
also maintains a variety of services that would be relevant to the
work of the Institute. These include Lane Medical Library, a
personnel department, procurement services, and so on. We would
expect that with regard to an academic resource -- like the Lane
Medical Library -- sharing would be the most sensible approach, and
we would hope to develop jointly with you proposals about how the
Institute could contribute to the services as it uses them.
Mr. Edwin C. Whitehead
October 1, 1980 page 4

Whether or not you want to consider the use of administrative
services is something you may wish to think about.

I hope very much these rather general and tentative conditions
leave you still interested in pursuing matters further with
Stanford. There are obvious advantages to both of us in doing
so. This is an extraordinarily pleasant place in which to locate;
the available land affords the opportunity to design a pleasing
structure in a good location, with a close physical connection
to the Medical Center; and the quality of interactions the
Institute would enjoy is, I think, as high as could be found
anywhere. We've tried to limit the conditions to those we think
essential to the protection of Stanford's interest, and we

would of course be interested in hearing alternatives you might
propose.

I'm looking forward very much to our next round of discussions.
With best regards.

Sincerely yours,

J

onald Kennedy

Enclosure