...university officials warn of a dimly grasped threat from the U.S. government itself, having less to do with legitimate security worries than with a needless clampdown on academic freedom — including moves to bar non-citizens, and even foreign-born U.S. citizens, from participating in an ever-expanding list of science and engineering research projects.

Freedman, pointing to what she calls the Bush administration's "anti-intellectual" tilt, is not optimistic. Under previous presidents, she says, "We never spent any time worrying about clauses that said you have to be a U.S. citizen. That didn't happen. We never spent any time worrying about clauses that asked us to list our foreign students.

"If it's classified work, you want it classified," she continues. "You want to know upfront that this work is going to be used for military purposes and it's classified. But for basic, exploratory, we-don't-know-where-it's-going kind of work, it's the way the world moves on. And we're going to miss out on that…. Research isn't going to stop. It's just going to go somewhere else."