The Politics of Militarization and Corporatization in
Higher Education

War Colleges

By HENRY GIROUX
June 29, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/

While there is an ongoing discussion about the increasing
corporatization of higher education--extending from the
attempted buying of faculty positions by  right-wing
billionaires such as the Koch brothers to the increasing
casualization of faculty labor and the commodification of
knowledge, what is often left out of this analysis is the
intrusion of the military into higher education. (1) 

The culture of organized violence is one of the most
powerful forces shaping American society, extending deeply
into every aspect of American life. There can be little
doubt that America has become a permanent warfare state.
(2)

Not only is it waging a war in three countries, but its
investment in military power is nearly as much as all of
the military budgets of every other country in the world
combined. The Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute states that "The USA's military spending
accounted for 43 per cent of the world total in 2009,
followed by China with 6.6 per cent; France with 4.3 per
cent, and the UK with 3.8 per cent." (3) 

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost Americans
a staggering $1 trillion to date, second only in
inflation-adjusted dollars to the $4 trillion price tag
for World War II." (4) 

Pentagon spending for 2011 will be more than $700 billion.
To make matters worse, as Tom Englehart points out, "We
dominate the global arms trade, monopolizing almost 70% of
the arms business in 2008, with Italy coming in a
vanishingly distant second.  We put more money into the
funding of war, our armed forces, and the weaponry of war
than the next 25 countries combined (and that's without
even including Iraq and Afghan war costs)." (5) 

Moreover, the United States maintains a massive ring of
military bases and global presence around the world,
occupying "over 560 bases and other sites" (6) and
deploying over 300,000 troops abroad, "even as our country
finds itself incapable of paying for basic services." (7) 

In spite of how much military expenditures drain
desperately needed funds from social programs, the
military budget is rarely debated in Congress or made a
serious object of discussion among the public. Not only
does the United States squander its resources and human
lives on foreign wars, we ignore facing  "the realities
and costs of war" at home.  (8)

As a central element of domestic and American foreign
policy, the social costs of such wars are rarely subject
to debate and largely endorsed by a pliant and conformist
media. NBC Nightly News, for example, provides
unproblematic representations of war narratives almost
nightly, reducing such narratives to human interest
stories while simultaneously depoliticizing the meaning
and purpose of war and organized state violence.   War is
now normalized even as the United States becomes more
militarized, moving closer to being a national security
state at home and an imperial/policing power abroad.  One
consequence of the increasing militarization of American
society can be seen in changes that have taken place in
public and higher education.

Schools have become the testing grounds for new modes of
security and military-style authority, treating students
as if they were largely detainees subject to a range of
egregious disciplinary practices ranging from repressive
zero tolerance policies to the criminalization of what is
often considered trivial infractions such as dress code
violations.  The war at home is most obvious in the ways
in which young people marginalized by class and color are
now largely seen as a disposable populations, whose
behaviors are largely governed through a youth crime
complex. In fact, in cities such as Chicago, military
academies have become the institutions of choice in
dealing with students marginalized by race and class.
School for many young people has become simply a pipeline
into the criminal justice and correctional system. In
fact, a few years ago two judges in Luzerrne County, in
Northeastern Pennsylvania accepted over $2.6 million in
kickbacks for sentencing hundreds of kids to a for-profit,
privately owned juvenile detention center. (9)

Since the tragic events of 9/11, state-sanctioned violence
and the formative culture that makes it possible has
increasingly made its way into higher education. While
there is a long history of higher education taking on
research funds and projects that serve the
military-industrial complex, such projects were often
hidden from public view. When they did become public, they
were often the object of student protests and opposition,
especially during the 1960s.  What is new today is that
more research projects in higher education than ever
before are being funded by various branches of the
military, but either no one is paying attention or no one
seems to care about such projects.

Ethical and political considerations about the role of the
university in a democratic society have given way to a
hyper-pragmatism couched in the language of austerity and
largely driven by a decrease in state funding for higher
education and the dire lack of jobs for many graduates.
It is also driven by a market-centered ethos that
celebrates a militant form of individualism, a survivalist
ethic, a crass emphasis on materialism, and an utter
disregard for the responsibility of others. As research
funds dry up for programs aimed at addressing crucial
social problems, new opportunities open up with the glut
of military funding aimed at creating more sophisticated
weapons, surveillance technologies, and modes of knowledge
that connect anthropological concerns with winning wars.

Military modes of education largely driven by the demands
of war and organized violence are investing heavily in
pedagogical practices that train students in various
intelligence operations. Programs such as the Pat Roberts
Intelligence Scholars Program and the Intelligence
Community Scholarship Programs disregard the principles of
academic freedom and recruit students to serve in a number
of intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, that have a
long history of using torture, illegal assassinations,
murder, running illegal prisons, and on occasion
committing domestic atrocities--such as spying on Juan
Cole, a prominent academic and critic of the Iraq War.
The increasingly intensified and expansive symbiosis
between the military-industrial complex and academia is
also on full display the creation of the "Minerva
Consortium," ironically named after the goddess of wisdom,
whose purpose is to fund various universities to "carry
out social sciences research relevant to national
security." (10)  

for the rest of this article, go to
http://www.counterpunch.org/

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