As the University of Minnesota courts additional defense dollars, secret research projects have ballooned in recent years, according to public data. 

University policy generally mandates the free exchange of ideas between researchers, the public and international collaborators. However, exceptions may be made for restricted research projects with limitations on who can work on them and how they can be disseminated to the public, when sponsors require them.

Federal agencies — especially those oriented around national security, like the U.S. Department of Defense — often require some degree of secrecy as a stipulation of research funding, including the exclusion of researchers affiliated with U.S. adversaries like China or Iran. 

On the heels of last year’s cancelled National Security Research Institute launch, University policies were relaxed in July to make it easier for researchers to request exemptions for restricted research. 

According to internal documents and the University’s public relations, these policy changes are part of the larger effort to attract and accommodate more defense funding. The documents also state that the proliferation of restricted research may leave non-U.S. students unable to work on these projects at a disadvantage to their domestic counterparts. 

Since summer 2023, University officials have been planning the NSRI, an initiative to create more partnerships between the University and national defense-oriented organizations, including the DOD.

Secret research skyrockets

Public data requested by the Minnesota Daily indicates that restricted research projects have skyrocketed over the past five years.

From 2010 to 2019, no more than one restricted project was approved yearly, and in several cases, no restricted projects were approved at all.

However, starting in 2020, the number of approved restricted projects increased, remaining relatively elevated since. In the past five years, five restricted projects have been approved on average annually, including data through the end of November 2025.

An internal presentation to the Senate committee on faculty affairs attributes the increase to a combination of researchers’ interests/needs and proliferating federal restrictions on publication and non-US participation.

In addition to federally-funded research, projects funded by private entities might also be restricted to protect trade secrets. 

For several years, the U.S. government has grown increasingly wary of research collaborations with countries of concern. In Fall 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives advanced the Securing American Funding and Expertise from Adversarial Research Exploitation (SAFE) Act, which proposed a ban on federal funding to any U.S. scientist who collaborates with researchers affiliated with China, Russia, North Korea or Iran. 

Though the proposal was not ultimately adopted by the National Defense Authorization Act, it represents a larger national effort by the Trump administration to limit the free exchange of ideas and open access to research.

Openness in research 

In July 2025, the University of Minnesota’s Openness in Research Policy — pledging the free exchange of ideas in teaching and research environments — was updated to a new three-tier system. The policy intends to expedite the review of exceptions and expand the criteria for decisions. 

Restricted projects are said to violate the openness policy, except when the University determines the project serves a compelling public interest. 

Previously, all exceptions to the policy were reviewed by the University Senate Open Research Subcommittee, with a final approval made by the Vice President for Research. 

Now, projects deemed low risk, including those with restrictions on participation from students, faculty or staff from foreign countries of concern, may be approved directly by the associate Vice President for Research.

Projects considered medium risk — with potential restrictions on the participation of anyone who is not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident — can be approved by the Vice President for Research. Only projects considered high risk, which categorically prohibit publication of research or participation of non-U.S. individuals, have to go through the full committee review process. 

University public relations said in an email to the Daily, “Some of the change can be attributed to federal funding agency requirements, especially for the protection of research in the interest of national security.” 

An internal presentation to the University Senate proposing the changes also said the previous process had an undue chilling effect on the pursuit of certain research opportunities. 

A task force report for the NSRI, then termed MINNSEC, in 2023, indicated that policy changes to research openness were necessary to accommodate more national security-related restricted research. 

“It may be challenging to justify the rationale for conducting the restricted work to the committee that reviews the exception request, as they might not have the technical expertise or experience with national security to appropriately assess the request,” the report read. “The lack of a streamlined exception process and uncertainty in obtaining an exception reduces the enthusiasm of faculty to apply for and do restricted research. Therefore, addressing this concern in the early stages of the MINNSEC planning process is paramount.”

The report also acknowledges that restricted research could limit graduate students’ ability to write their theses and create a disadvantage for non-US students in accessing faculty, novel research opportunities and job recruitment. 

‘Secret research doesn’t belong on the University campus.’

Some campus community members, including Richard McGehee, a professor of mathematics, believe restricted research is antithetical to the mission of the University. 

“That is one of the foundations of universities. We do research that’s open to the entire public, and we teach students,” McGehee said. “So secret research doesn’t belong on the University campus.”

McGehee resigned from his role as department chair of mathematics in 1990, in protest of a proposed collaboration between the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Army, which would advance chemical and biological warfare. Even more troubling to McGehee, the center violated the now-updated Regents policy prohibiting secret research on campus. 

He refused to sign off on the proposal. 

“According to university policy at the time, without my signature, they couldn’t move the proposal forward,” McGehee said. 

“Well, it was kind of hard to get rid of me, so what they did was they had an emergency meeting … and they changed the policy so they didn’t need my signature,” McGehee added. 

Perry Leo, department head of aerospace engineering and mechanics, said he believes defense funding is important to the work his colleagues do, but that he is ambivalent about the idea of more restricted research projects on campus. 

“[Defense funding] has always been perceived to be good funding, doing good basic research that people in my department do, and do well,” Leo said.

But the potential consequences of increasing secret projects are concerning for graduate students, he said. 

“Students, if you’re going to get a PhD in aerospace engineering, I want you to publish papers in the open literature,” Leo said. “I want you to have a PhD thesis that you could go to and listen to. That might not necessarily be the case with more restricted or applied research.”