THE MILITARIZATION OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY AND WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA: West Lafayette Renews Rolls-Royce and Saab Tax Abatements
(“We are calling on the city council today to vote that the companies are not in compliance and ultimately to rescind the tax abatements, on the grounds that the machines these companies produce are immoral,” Olivia Gearner, a member of the Greater Lafayette Democratic Socialists of America, said. “We also urge the city council to rescind all tax abatements for companies which do not contribute to shared prosperity, environmental sustainability and peace.” Quoted in a sub stack by Dave Bangert, July 2, 2024).
Posted on \Thursday, April 11, 2024
Here Come
Raytheon, Rolls-Royce, and Military Studies in Liberal Arts to Purdue
University
Harry Targ
The Raytheon Technologies
Corporation reported that “Raytheon Technologies is working with
the University of Arizona, Texas A&M University, Purdue University, the
U.S. Air Force Academy and other academic institutions on hypersonic research
and testing, to include the use of wind tunnels to emulate flight conditions
and accelerate development.”
Raytheon, one of the
five largest defense contractors in the world, sold more than $64 billion in
military hardware in 2021. Raytheon profits will be higher in 2022 because of
the war in Eastern Europe. Recently, Gregory Hayes, the CEO of Raytheon and a Purdue
University graduate who was given an honorary doctorate by Purdue’s Krannert
School of Management, predicted that the war in Ukraine will be good for his
company’s business.
[Source: twitter.com]
As researchers William
Hartung and Julia Gledhill put it: “The
war in Ukraine will indeed be a bonanza for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed
Martin. First of all, there will be the contracts to resupply weapons like
Raytheon’s Stinger anti-aircraft missile and the Raytheon/Lockheed
Martin–produced Javelin anti-tank missile that Washington has already provided
to Ukraine by the thousands. The
bigger stream of profits, however, will come from assured post-conflict
increases in national-security spending here and in Europe justified, at least
in part, by the Russian invasion and the disaster that’s followed.” https://tomdispatch.com/the-new-gold-rush/
Another military
contractor with ties to Purdue University is the Rolls-Royce Corporation which,
according to “Purdue Partnerships at Purdue,” signed a research and development
program in 2016 “to create the next generation aircraft agreement with Purdue
University.” The partnership resulted in a $33 million jet-engine research and
development program to create next-generation aircraft propulsion systems.”
Unraveling an electronic engine controller for the Rolls-Royce AE 3007H jet engine during an announcement of a new engine controls facility in Discovery Park District are, from left, Brian Edelman, president of Purdue Research Foundation; Tom Bell, president of Defense and CEO of Rolls-Royce North America; Mitch Daniels, Purdue University president, and Candice Bineyard, director of defense programs for Rolls-Royce North America. [Source: purdue.edu]
In addition, on April
20, 2022, the company announced a $204 million project to expand one building
and two test facilities in the Purdue Discovery Park. Shortly thereafter the
West Lafayette government granted the Rolls-Royce Corporation a five-year tax
abatement for the construction of facilities in Purdue’s Discovery Park.
·
[Source: purdue.edu]
Also, the College of
Liberal Arts at Purdue University has established a “Forces Initiative:
Strategy, Security, and Social Systems” which is designed to help “shape
long-range and global military, political, and organizational decision-making
for a just, stable, and secure world.” Faculty affiliates include a member of
the ROTC program, a military historian, a political scientist, a
“peace researcher,” and a Library Science professor who has published on the
F-35, and in military studies journals. https://www.cla.purdue.edu/research/forces-initiative/index.html
In the past, liberal
arts programs, described and explained what was and is American history,
culture, politics, and philosophy. Now it seems, the Liberal Arts
will serve the “postwar American dogma” for which Bacevich refers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/books/review/Bass-t.html
Posted
on Wednesday, August 16, 2023
UNIVERSITIES AND
THE NEW COLD WAR (Original essay posted on August 6, 2019)
Harry Targ,
Research and development and production of weapons is intimately connected to foreign policy. And as President Eisenhower warned a long time ago the military/industrial complex would be penetrating, shaping, and distorting every institution and policy in the United States. And, as the essay below suggests, this penetration includes universities and local communities.
**************************
“Purdue is advancing a broad defense innovation capability,
distinguished by its depth, breadth, and speed, with the goal of contributing
to our nation’s third offset strategy of innovation by integration of
existing strengths and forming new partnerships. The depth in quality and
creativity of Purdue research centers is, and will remain, our strongest asset.
The breadth responds to the need expressed by multiple DoD customers for a
‘total package’: new, integrated solutions (technologies, transition), new talent
(graduates highly trained in relevant problems), and new modes of knowledge
access (personnel exchange, training, distance education)."
Purdue University
researchers conducted over $40M of sponsored research in the 2014-2015 academic
year and, in doing so, educated hundreds of graduate and
undergraduate students in cutting edge technologies.” https://www.purdue.edu/research/defense-innovation/
“NDIA,
in partnership with Purdue University, will host a comprehensive program on
hypersonic systems. Together with government, industry, and academia, NDIA will
present the technical foundations of hypersonic systems, the current approach
to rapidly developing hypersonic capabilities, and the warfighter, policy, and
acquisition perspectives on delivering a sustainable operational capability”
"2019 Hypersonics Capabilities Conference," NDIA 100, ndia.org.
The National Defense Industry Association NDIA is an
association of defense industry contractors who lobby for increased military
expenditures. Its members are described as “informed opinion leaders” dedicated
to improved national security.
And Now:
Purdue University is launching a
center to advocate for Taiwan as a trusted partner and encourage US investment
in the nation, former US undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy
and the environment Keith Krach told a news conference in Taipei yesterday
Krach, chairman of the
Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, first announced plans for the
establishment of the Taiwan Center for Innovation and Prosperity before his
arrival in Taiwan on Wednesday for a four-day visit.\
The center would be a
partnership between public and private sectors in the US and Taiwan to
“advocate for Taiwan internationally and attract more global partners,” the
institute said.
Purdue launching center to advocate for Taiwan
o
By Liu Tzu-hsuan / Staff
reporter
******************************************************************
Purdue’s Discovery Park
launched in 2001 with a grant from the state of Indiana and expanded by a $25
million Lilly Endowment as a nanotechnology center. Today it is a $1.15 billion
research and learning complex that combines Purdue’s expertise in science,
engineering, technology, and biology, with connections to the corporate world.
As its website suggests: “Leveraging Lilly Endowment’s investment, Discovery
Park has created an innovative environment where major global challenges are
examined objectively, generating new ideas and directions for future
generations.”
One of Discovery Park’s core strengths
is “Global Security.” Key research on this subject is designed to respond to security
threats, global instability, defense needs, terrorism, nuclear deterrence and
proliferation, basically responding to “the most pressing security and defense
challenges facing the nation and the world.”
Chief Discovery Park
scientist, Professor Tomas Diaz de la Rubia posted an essay entitled “The New
Future of Warfare” (Purdue University Discovery Park Vice President’s Blog,
(October 1, 2018). In it he addressed the emerging salience of new military technologies
based on artificial intelligence (AI) and war. De la Rubia speculated that
future wars will not be fought on battlefields but rather in cities or in
cyberspace. New AI weapons of war in the hands of presumed enemies could
constitute an existential threat to the survival of the United States.
Discovery Park, he indicated, is already engaged in vital research on
biomorphic robots, automatic target recognition for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,
automatic targeting for drones, and other technologies. In short, a core
Discovery Park mission includes the preparation for and implementation of war.
And this is necessary because as Professor de la Rubia argued:
“It has become apparent that the U.S. is no longer guaranteed top dog status on the dance card that is the future of war. In order to maintain military superiority the focus must shift from traditional weapons of war to advanced systems that rely on A.I.-based weaponry. The stakes are just too high and the prize too great for the U.S. to be left behind. All the more reason to call upon Purdue University and its inestimable capacity to weave together academia, research, and industry for the greater good. We’re stepping up to secure our place in the future of our country, and there’s much more to come!” He warned that China had announced that it would overtake the US by 2030 in the global artificial intelligence market.
Recently, the NDIA and Purdue University hosted a conference on “hypersonics,” the development of high speed weapons systems, stimulated by a $2.4 billion allocation in the 2020 defense budget. According to a Purdue press release, the university has one of the most comprehensive hypersonic research capabilities. University President Mitch Daniels declared that the university was “…ready to establish itself as the ‘university hub’ of hypersonic research and development.”
Indiana Governor Eric
Holcomb declared that “Hypersonics systems are our state’s number one defense
priority, and I’m glad we can bring industry leaders together at Purdue
University to showcase what Indiana can offer.” (“NDIA, Purdue Launching
Inaugural Hypersonics Capabilities Conference to Advance Transformational
Military Capabilities,” Purdue Research Foundation News, July 29,
2019). Some comments suggested also that this new military research
agenda would lead to greater economic development in the Greater Lafayette
area. One particularly bizarre spokesperson justified the Purdue commitment to
high speed warfare by referring to the mission of the Morrill Act of 1862
establishing land-grant universities (Dave Bangert, “Purdue ‘Doubling Down” on
Military Research on Hypersonic Flight, Weapons,” Lafayette
Journal and Courier, July 30, 2019).
These statements
illustrate that Purdue University, a large land-grant university, increasingly
is committing its skills to research, development, training, and the production
of the instruments of war. Such commitments have been made with little discussion
in the broader university community.
Important theoretical questions are not being raised. For example, is war inevitable? Are other countries a threat to the United States? Should we conceptualize the world in the twenty-first century as one in which the United States and China are competitors and threats to each other? Should the United States commit itself to remaining the number one power in the world, however that is defined?
Or should research prioritize
human development and conflict resolution rather than “security? Is there a
relationship between poverty, hunger, environmental devastation, the spread of
weapons and war and violence? One wonders if more of
government and corporate resources should be allocated to these many issues,
rather than to ill-conceived, notions of national “security.” And, finally, do
collaborative efforts between universities, such as Purdue, with defense
contractors and the Department of Defense best serve the needs of national
security, conflict reduction, research, or education? And, in the end, does not
this collaboration between the military, the university, and industry
constitute a huge robbery of the wealth of society at the expense of social and
economic development, ecological survival, and the prospects of peace?
President Eisenhower in
1960 warned about an unwarranted growth of the influence of the
military/industrial complex in American society. Today he would characterize
the danger as the military/industrial/academic complex. It includes the
shifting of the research and education missions of higher education away from
human development to war-making.
These qualitative changes in
university priorities are being made largely in non-transparent decision-making
ways. But when challenged, the military/industrial/academic complex tends to
defend its existence by claiming war is inevitable. And to secure support, when
questioned, self-identified experts construct narratives of enemies; whether
they be the Communists, the terrorists, China, the Cubans, the Venezuelans,
artificial intelligence, or all of the above. As Andrew Bacevich so
compellingly has argued, ever since the end of World War Two, the United States
has created a “permanent war economy.” Given the increasing financial
challenges universities face in the twenty-first century, collaboration with
this permanent war economy becomes attractive to university administrators.
