Bowing to pressure from federal officials, the University of Alaska has removed Professor Rick Steiner from their National Sea Grant College Program grant over his criticism of how the program (both at the University and across the country) is run. Steiner, who has been teaching at the University and working with the program for more than thirty years has grown critical of the program for being too pro-business and too anti-conservation over the years. He has grown more public with that criticism, joining the Alaska Marine Conservation Council in criticizing the University for giving Shell Oil undue influence in a recent conference.
While federal officials argue that Steiner has become too much of an advocate for conservation to meet the program’s objectives, Steiner and faculty members see an alarming trend of government and corporate influence in decisions at the University. "If Sea Grant can tell the University of Alaska that their grant comes with stipulations, then why can't Shell, or Exxon,” stated Steiner.
This is far from the first fight between faculty and pro-development interests at Universities in the west. Earlier this year, an Eagle River legislator put pressure on the University to silence faculty that were not pro-development. In 2006, University officials tried to prevent the research of an Oregon State graduate student from being published because it came to the conclusion that some types of logging may be bad for the forest—a conclusion not backed by the logging industry donors to the University.