ANTI-COMPLICITY campaigning in Cambridge/Boston
Hello, dear and faithful readers! I have begun this blog, graciously provided by Simmons College, in the hope that it may serve as a useful political resource in the coming days.
Here in Cambridge, with its elegant church steeples, brick sidewalks, and scattered ivory towers, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may sometimes seem remote and removed from our daily lives. Don't be deceived!
After having organized a historically unprecedented mass opposition to Bush's war plans in 2002 and early 2003, the US antiwar movement has largely floundered and struggled to form a strategic course of resistance. Despite this failing, however, public opposition to the war seems to only increase and intensify, and United for Peace and Justice has indeed been able to pull off some large-scale demonstrations in DC and New York City.
Students have naturally played a role in antiwar activism, but absent a draft, the campuses have remained relatively quiet. It is interesting to note that those campus campaigns that have been the most visible and attracted substantial participation have been at campuses where students have taken advantage of opportunities to link their institutions to the operation of the war machine, whether symbolically or practically. For example, see the recent protests at UW-Madison, UMass-Amherst, and even Brigham Young, for chrissakes!
In short, student antiwar activists can best confront the war by seeking out and challenging any connections between the killing machine and their universities. Academic complicity with the administration's imperial war efforts is the most clear and tangible target for resistance that we have. The research labs, ROTC offices, and policy centers must become to the antiwar movement what the lunch counters of the South were for the civil rights movement.
Student antiwar activists can potentially play a crucial war in disrupting the operations of the war, undermining the long-term strategy of the imperial elite, and rolling back the rapid and further militarization of the university. A broad anti-complicity strategy could consist of a three-pronged approach:
(1) Counter-recruitment - By countering both civilian (State Dept.) and military recruters on their campuses - and even more importantly - in their surrounding communities, students could help to make a serious dent in the war machine's incessant attempts to enlist human fodder. This is both a short-term and long-term goal. The imperial project needs bodies to supply its vast network of military bases and occupation forces. If we can dry up its supply of human materiel, we can force the warmongers to make an uncomfortable choice: either withdraw forces and thus weaken its overseas occupying capacity, OR re-institute the draft, an option that, if taken, would tear the campuses apart within weeks. Moreover, by restricting the flow of new bodies, we may be able to compel the military to place even greater stress on the personnel that remain, potentially stretching the already over-stretched Army National Guard and others to the breaking point.
(2) Military Research - The Defense Department funnels millions of dollars in contracts for research and development to universities, and the military-academic-industrial complex has deep historical roots in the Boston/Cambridge area. Stand on any street corner around the MIT campus, blindfold yourself, and throw a rock - you're bound to hit a department, laboratory, or offshoot company doing military research for the Pentagon. Although MIT certainly must house the greatest number of war crimes collaborators, let's not forget Harvard, where napalm was developed during WWII by Louis Feiser and other crimson chemists. Boston University, with its biolab project, comes in third place, and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) money is most likely on a number of other local campuses as well. Military research on the campus provides a direct link to the war machine, and as such offers the student antiwar movement a viable target for organizing and resistance efforts. Undoubtedly, any actions or pressure will be met with cries of "academic freedom," and our strategy should intelligently anticipate this response. We should argue that there must be no cooperation and collaboration with the Pentagon as long as US foreign policy is predicated upon the subjugation of sovereign nations, as long as the administration prosecutes its transparently criminal wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan.
(3) Intellectual Culture - This third target is the least tangible but the most important and serves to undergird and justify recruitment and research on campus. In short, a culture of militarism pervades all of our social institutions in this country, and the academy is no exception. Student activists should identify its manifestations, constantly educate their fellow students and community members through "propaganda" work (leaflets, posters, teach-ins, lectures, speak-outs, chalking, etc., etc.), and apply pressure appropriately.
Take Harvard, for example. What can we conclude about the intellectual culture at Harvard when we find that a senior professor (Alan Dershowitz) at the Law School argues favorably for torture and launches crusade after crusade to deny other academics tenure (Norman Finkelstein) merely for having the integrity to criticize Israeli policy? How is it that neo-imperialist apologists such as Niall Ferguson can wax eloquent about the virtues of an American Empire without getting laughed out of the Yard?
Posted: October 20, 2007 12:19 am by Joshua Jackson | 0 comments
Tags: academic freedom, counter-insurgency, counter-recruitment, Iraq, militarism, militarization, torture, war