Higher Education and the New Cold War: Purdue as an Example of Weaponizing Universities

 Harry Targ

Purdue university in 2021 established what is called the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy. Its goal, its website says, is to integrate “technology expertise, Silicon Valley strategies, and foreign policy tools to build the Global Trusted Tech Network of governments, companies, organizations and individuals to accelerate the innovation and adoption of trusted technology and ensure technology advances freedom.” 

New Purdue president Mung Chiang reported that when he returned to the the university from the State Department as the Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State, his vision was based on the view that “technology must advance freedom.” And the Krach Institute, named after another State Department operative was created to:

“put the Purdue Equation, “Transformation to the Power of Trust,” to the test by embarking on a global campaign to challenge the market dominance of Chinese tech firms through the Clean Network. The strategy united countries and companies around a commitment to a set of trust principles in technology adoption, data privacy, and security practices. In this highly successful strategy, Krach’s team transformed US diplomacy and created a new model based on trust called Tech-Statecraft by integrating Silicon Valley strategies with traditional foreign policy tools. As Bloomberg wrote, “The Clean Network’s effort to create a united economic front is to China what George Kennan’s historic “long telegram” of 1946 was to the Soviet Union.” 

https://www.lifeandnews.com/articles/purdue-forms-worlds-first-institute-for-tech-diplomacy-through-transformation-and-trust/

 And recently according to the Taipei Times:

 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

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/08/12/2003804626?utm_source=sfmcPT&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=230815PurdueToday&utm_term=Purdue+launching+center+to+advocate+for+Taiwan&utm_id=773245&sfmc_id=0038c00003HUJYnAAP

The question remains for the citizenry of Indiana and the nation as to whether higher education should be weaponized, particularly in a world of conflict and the profusion of nuclear weapons. Not too long ago over 200 colleges and universities supported programs in Peace Studies. These included curricula and research on war and peace. They were not based on assumptions about the inevitability of war, presumptions about enemies, or even American exceptionalism. However, they were motivated by the recognition that war and violence were among the most prominent afflictions in human history and education and research could play a role in reducing their occurrence.

2024 - 05 - 28 - 2000 - Grass Is Greener - HarryTarg On Campus Censorship by WXRW riverwestradio.com 104.1fm

A Memorial Day Question: Why a New Cold War With China?

Harry Targ 

Why is United States foreign policy, from Trump to Biden, returning to a policy hostile to China, perhaps creating a “New Cold War?” The answer has several parts. First, as Alfred McCoy has described (In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, Haymarket Books, 2017), the United States, relatively speaking, is a declining power. As to economic growth, scientific and technological developments, productivity, and trade, the US, compared to China particularly, is experiencing stagnation or decline. China has engaged in massive global projects in transportation, trade, and scientific advances and by 2030 based on many measures will advance beyond the US as to Gross Domestic Product.

According to McCoy, the United States has embarked on a path to overcome its declining relative economic hegemony by increasingly investing in military advances: a space force, a new generation of nuclear weapons, cyber security, biometrics, and maintaining or enhancing a global military presence particularly in the Pacific (what Obama spokespersons called “the Asian pivot”). In other words, rather than accommodating to a new multipolar world in the 21st century, the United States is seeking to reestablish its global hegemony through military means.

Second, the United States is desperately seeking to overcome the end of its monopoly on technological advances. In computerization, transportation, pharmaceuticals, it is challenging Chinese innovations, claiming that China’s advances are derived not from its domestic creativity but from “pirating” from United States companies. For example, the prestigious and influential Council on Foreign Relations issued a report in 2019 entitled “Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge.” The report warned that “…the United States risks falling behind its competitors, principally China.” China is investing significantly in new technologies, CFR claims, which they predict will make China the biggest inventor by 2030. Also, to achieve this goal they are “exploiting” the openness of the US by violating intellectual property rights and spying. Therefore, the CFR concluded, since technological innovation is linked to economic and military advantage and since US leadership in technology and science is at risk, the nation must recommit to rebuilding its scientific prowess.

Third, while the United States is engaged in efforts at regime change around the world and is using brutal economic sanctions to starve people into submission (such as in Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and 36 other countries victimized by economic sanctions), China is increasing its economic ties to these countries through investments, trade, and assistance. And China opposes these US policies in international organizations. In broad terms Chinese policy stands with the majority of countries in the Global South while the United States seeks to control developments there.

Fourth, although Biden’s foreign policy as well as his predecessors, is designed to recreate a Cold War, with China as the target, a policy also embraced by most Democrats, there is at the same time counter-pressure from sectors of the capitalist class who have ties to the Chinese economy: investment, global supply chains, and financial speculation. Moreover, sectors of Chinese capital own or have substantial control over many US corporations and banks. In addition, the Chinese government controls over $1 trillion of US debt. For these sectors of US capital, economic ties with China remain economically critical. In addition, some writers, such as Jerry Harris, point to the emergence of a “transnational capitalist class” whose interests are not tied to any nation-state (Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy, Clarity Press, 2016).

Consequently, while the trajectory of US policy is toward a return to cold war, there is some push back by economic and political elites as well. Although with the emphasis on domestic investments in technology highlighted in the 2022 National Security document mentioned by Sanger, it appears the advocates of a New Cold War with China seem to be in control of US foreign policy. (The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 reflects this renewed commitment to technological advance in the United States).

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/us/politics/biden-china-russia-national-security.html

Fifth, American domestic politics provide an additional cause of the transformation of US/China policy. The popularity of the Democratic Party and President Biden remain low. Therefore, a classic antidote for politicians experiencing declining popularity is to construct an external enemy, “an other,” which can redirect the attention of the public from their personal troubles. It is this external enemy that becomes the source of domestic problems in political discourse. In this context the President is talking tough with the “enemy” of the United States, and, as former Secretary of State Pompeo suggested, it was about time that the US government gave up illusions about working with China.

Finally, the ideological package of racism, white supremacy, and American Exceptionalism so prevalent in United States history resurfaced in dramatic ways in the Trump years and continues today. White supremacy at home is inextricably connected with American Exceptionalism abroad. For example, President Theodore Roosevelt in 1910 claimed that the white race has been critical to civilization.  Years later Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration (and more recently President Barack Obama) spoke about the United States as the “indispensable nation,” a model of economics and politics for the world. For President Biden, the US stands with “democracy” against the world’s leading “authoritarians.” This sense of omniscience has been basic to the ideological justification of United States imperial rule.

Each of these elements, from the changing shape of economic and military capabilities to political exigencies, to the pathologies of culture, require a peace and justice movement that stands for peaceful coexistence, demilitarization, building a world of economic justice, rights of people to determine their own destiny, and inalterable opposition to racism, white supremacy, and exceptionalisms of all kinds.

And for scholars and diplomats, the question for now is whether it is better to work for a world of respect, cooperation, recognition of multipolarity and multilateralism, or for war with China.

 

 

COGNITIVE WARFARE CONTINUES

 Harry Targ

 

The Cognitive Domain is a new space of competition, beyond the land, maritime, air, cybernetic and spatial domains.
© NATO Innovation Hub

Harry Truman on free institutions versus totalitarian ones:

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. (from the Truman Doctrine speech, March 12, 1947)

And President Biden’s articulation of the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism:

“It is clear, absolutely clear … this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies,” Biden said. “That’s what’s at stake here. We’ve got to prove democracy works.” https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/25/politics/biden-autocracies-versus-democracies/index.html)

On NATO’S Conception of Cognitive Warfare:

In cognitive warfare, the human mind becomes the battlefield. The aim is to change not only what people think, but how they think and act. Waged successfully, it shapes and influences individual and group beliefs and behaviours to favour an aggressor’s tactical or strategic objectives. In its extreme form, it has the potential to fracture and fragment an entire society, so that it no longer has the collective will to resist an adversary’s intentions. An opponent could conceivably subdue a society without resorting to outright force or coercion.

In cognitive warfare, the human mind becomes the battlefield. The aim is to change not only what people think, but how they think and act. Waged successfully, it shapes and influences individual and group beliefs and behaviours to favour an aggressor’s tactical or strategic objectives. In its extreme form, it has the potential to fracture and fragment an entire society, so that it no longer has the collective will to resist an adversary’s intentions. An opponent could conceivably subdue a society without resorting to outright force or coercion. https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2021/05/20/countering-cognitive-warfare-awareness-and-resilience/index.html)

On Cognitive Warfare

This NATO document, of course, is addressing the world of international relations but the concept of “cognitive warfare” seems to parallel efforts “to change not only what people think, but how they think and act.” This project animates the efforts of media conglomerates-print, electronic, social media platforms. Changing how people think and act has its historic roots in campaigns to convince citizens to support wars, consume cigarettes, forget climate disasters, and to find flaws in populations because of class, race, gender, sexual preference, and/or religion. Creating images of enemies is central to launching wars. The processes of “branding” are similar in all realms of human experience.

On the Media

The media and political, economic, educational, religious, and entertainment institutions shape our consciousness. People are told, inspired, coerced, and manipulated to think in certain ways, usually ways that support the economic and political interests of the rich and powerful. Sometimes theoretical arguments about “ideological hegemony” are too abstract or too immobilizing. However, specific efforts at thought control  can be understood and identified. And campaigns to challenge them are feasible.

On Ideology

The economic and political structure of capitalism requires “an ideology, a consciousness, a way in which the citizenry can be taught to accept the system as it is. This ideology has many branches but one root, the maintenance and enhancement of the capitalist economic system. The elements of the dominant political ideology include: privileging individualism over community; conceptualizing society as a brutal state of nature controlled only by countervailing force; acceptance of the idea that humans are at base greedy; and, finally, the belief that the avariciousness of human nature requires police force and laws at home and armies overseas.”

The Battle of Ideas Matter

Statements by prominent Americans from the nineteenth century on have celebrated American exceptionalism. The frequency and intensity of such messages have been correlated with the rising of challenges to economic and political hegemony and orthodoxies that have arisen to challenge the status quo. As Howard Zinn and others have vividly pointed out resistance has been as much a fabric of US history as celebration. But to challenge resistance educational, information, and cultural institutions have intensified the prevailing mythologies. This cognitive warfare, of course, always includes efforts to censure uncomfortable and challenging alternatives.

So today, the US is faced with global challenges as its support of Israel, Ukraine and NATO are resisted. And more and more citizens are questioning rising militarism and police repression. It is in response to all this that the frank NATO call for a “cognitive war” was raised.

And for those of us who work for peace and justice it is worth remembering that the battle over ideas matter; in educational, media, cultural, and religious institutions.

***************************************

And for more:

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2024/01/old-ideas-still-hegemonic-as-we-greet.html

THE WAR ON HIGHER EDUCATION: A Radio Interview on "The Grass is Greener"

2024 - 05 - 28 - 2000 - Grass Is Greener - HarryTarg On Campus Censorship by WXRW riverwestradio.com 104.1fm

Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" of 2024, the war on Gaza, has facilitated a new more dramatic attack on higher education.

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-crisis-of-higher-education-in-21st.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1FxMvyTRqBLr49FSWGaf9QemcAoN1qpRobFYRU8kZn9_vP-Cg_s3uxiss_aem_AcIE2DM0nrCiXuDlIdA2DbjJ4AOUV8gu9lLVR2hwHBbAFHYWO6S0SAFzGfKXYQEa-9qYrtuQZHbt-s9usgHXSFQD

THE WEST LAFAYETTE CITY COUNCIL REJECTS A CEASEFIRE RESOLUTION

 Harry Targ

June 4, 2024

                                    Photo by Dave Bangert

Those of us from the Jewish community who speak out against the genocidal policy of Israel are outraged when we, as others, are criticized as being “antisemitic.” For us, the historic pain and suffering of our ancestors is being used to justify global imperialism, racism, and militarism.

And we resent the moral numbness of a West Lafayette City Council that cannot bring itself to endorse a call for the bombing of thousands of people, including children, to stop. As our only community voice, we see the City Council of our community as an important place to express our points of view.

Finally, and the only positive outcome of the City Council meeting was to see and hear articulate, reasoned, historically grounded, morally sensitive and respectful comments from those who spoke for the Cease Fire resolution, particularly young people.

On the Misuse of Antisemitism (April 23, 2024)

Today the corporate media and lobby groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are seeking to squash debate concerning Israel’s war on Gaza and the US three billion dollars a year perpetual military aid to Israel. Criticism of Israel’s brutal bombing of Gaza is defined as threatening to Jewish students and more generally is defined as antisemitism. Using charges of antisemitism as the excuse for repressing dissenting views and protest on campuses all across the United States has become common. Charges of antisemitism have become the McCarthyite “threat of communism” of our own day.

Last week the Congress, the media, politicians everywhere have reignited claims about the threat of antisemitism.  The House Committee on Education and the Workforce reassembled to interrogate th President of Columbia University for four hours. And, in response, university authorities arrested 100 students protesting Columbia’s complicity with the state of Israel.

A Congress, a media, politicians who historically ignore the sensitivities of those who are not Christian, and at various points in time in US history have refused to admit Jews fleeing oppression and threats of massacre, wax eloquent about how Jews are being made ‘uncomfortable.” USA Today reported on the dramatic increase in antisemitism in all states of the US. Their “proof” included someone punched in the nose, or a person feeling that she must cover up the mezuzah on her door. Of course, no one should be made to feel uncomfortable in their daily lives but paradoxically that discomfort is being fueled by this nefarious campaign of warnings of antisemitism.

https://www.usatoday.com/.../antisemitism.../73165421007/

And who is making the claims of antisemitism? The Anti-Defamation League is one such publicist. The ADL in recent years has become an organization pursuing antisemitism and defending Israel. Other groups, whose task is primarily to defend the state of Israel, such as The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have been fueling the nationwide hysteria.

And why the hysterical campaign now? First, the charges are designed to cover up and distort criticisms of the state of Israel’s genocidal bombings and starving of the people of Gaza and the growing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Second, while there is no necessary connection to antisemitism at home, it is claimed, that to combat antisemitism in the United States greater military support of Israel is necessary (incidentally military aid to Israel leads to their purchase of guns, bombs, tanks, and drones, from US military contractors such as Lockhead Martin and Raytheon).

Third, control of the Middle East and Eastern Europe has been central to the geopolitical thinking of British and then US policymakers. Western militarists and diplomats have theorized that the imperial country (or its proxy) that controls the Middle East and Eastern Europe (the gateways to Asia) can control the international system. Both Israel and Ukraine are key US proxies in the worldwide struggle of the West to maintain global hegemony.

Finally, U,S, electoral politics has always been ethnic and racial. Raising the specter of antisemitism trumps (the pun intended) the vicious attacks on emigres from Latin America, Muslims, and Asians. The outrage against antisemitism shows the world that politicians are not racists.

And again, those of us from the Jewish community who speak out against the genocidal policy of Israel are outraged when we, as others, are criticized as being “antisemitic.” For us, the historic pain and suffering of our ancestors is being used to justify global imperialism, racism, and militarism.

 

IN TIMES LIKE THESE (a repost)

Harry Targ 

 

 

(Thinking about 2024 and the year ahead, I remembered Arlo Guthrie’s poignant song and what I previously had written about it.)

-- Arlo Guthrie, “In Times Like These.”
http://youtu.be/nk3Iqgv56Hk

In times like these when night surrounds me

And I am weary and my heart is worn
When the songs they’re singing don’t mean nothing
Just cheap refrains play on and on...

When leaders profit from deep divisions
When the tears of friends remain unsung
In times like these it’s good to remember
These times will go in times to come

I see the storm clouds rise above me
The sky is dark and the night has come
I walk alone along this highway
Where friends have gathered one by one

I know the storm will soon be over
The howling winds will cease to be
I walk with friends from every nation
On freedom’s highway in times like these.

All year (originally written in 2012) we have been celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie. “This Land is Your Land” has become the new national anthem, particularly for the 98 per cent of the population, mostly the American working class.

Singers now sing the forbidden verses challenging the rights of private property and choruses of cheering people, young and old, black and white, straight and gay, join in. It is a song of struggle, pride, and recognition that this world belongs to everybody.

Although the song has inspired us all as we sing it, sometimes we forget that the trajectory toward progressive change is not smooth. Guthrie’s friend and voice of our times, Pete Seeger, reminds us that “it is darkest before the dawn.”

Perhaps the anthem of these times, after hundreds of domestic instances of violence from Columbine to Newtown, from Trayvon Martin to Jordan Davis, to the streets of Chicago, is most poignantly articulated by Arlo Guthrie. And it is an anthem that activists should sing as we struggle against bombings, drones, economic blockades, covert interventions, assassination lists, killer teams, police violence, wars on drugs, huge appropriations of human resources to kill, violent video games, war toys, endless television shows and films that portray and normalize killings, as well as the tragedies such as at Newtown (and New York, Ferguson, Chicago, Charleston, San Bernardino and on and on).

Major targets of violence and murder are educational institutions and particularly young people, Black and white, men and women, and gay and straight, often students. It is ironic that it is in these institutions and among young people in general that some of the most creative debates ensue around direct physical violence and structural violence, economic, sexual, and racial.

Therefore, in the midst of our deep sorrow, we remember Arlo Guthrie’s words. “In times like these,” despite the emotional energy and time spent achieving some electoral, labor and Occupy victories (and now in opposition to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East), we get weary and our “heart is worn.” While we see the “storm clouds rise above,” we should remember that “the storm will soon be over.” Why?  Because “I walk with friends from every nation, on freedom’s highway in times like these.”

 

RACISM, CORRUPTION, MASS INCARCERATIONS, SUPER PROFITS FOR A SHRINKING BUT MORE POWERFUL ECONOMIC RULING CLASS, MILITARY SPENDING, AND MASS MURDER AND STARVATION ALL ACROSS THE GLOBE

AND WE ARE TALKING ABOUT ALLEGED ANTISEMITISM   

 

HARRY TARG

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

                 –Mario Savio December 2, 1964, University of California, Berkeley

In early December, 2023 three university presidents, all women, were called before the House of Representative Committee on Education and the Workforce to explain their defense of academic freedom and the first amendment on their campuses. President Claudine Gay, Harvard, when asked about whether claims of calling for “the genocide of Jews” on her campus violated Harvard’s rules, she said “it depends on the context.” Of course, the claims about the calls on campus were never verified, and the politicians ignored the fact that President Gay was merely defending academic freedom.  

While President Gay was defending the hallowed right of free speech and the university as a haven for the “marketplace of ideas.” she correctly implied about the campus and free speech in general that there were limits (the “context”).

As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes suggested about the question of the first amendment to the constitution, freedom of speech is not absolute. As he wrote in the famous Schenck versus the United States case in 1919, speech may be restricted when “shouting fire in a crowded theater,” where there was a “clear and present danger" that such speech could cause harm. In short, paralleling the doctrine of academic freedom, if words are contentious and stimulate debate on campuses they should be protected. If, however, they have the potential to incitement to action endangering people they can be restricted.

Now, in April, 2024, the corporate media and lobby groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are seeking to squash debate concerning Israel’s war on Gaza and the US three billion dollars a year perpetual military aid to Israel. Criticism of Israel’s brutal bombing of Gaza is defined as threatening to Jewish students and more generally is defined as antisemitism. Using charges of antisemitism as the excuse for repressing dissenting views and protest on campuses all across the United States has become common. Charges of antisemitism have become the McCarthyite “threat of communism” of our own day.

And this week the Congress, the media, politicians everywhere have reignited claims about the threat of antisemitism.  The  House Committee on Education and the Workforce reassembled to interrogate the President of Columbia University for four hours. And, in response, university authorities arrested 100 students protesting Columbia’s complicity with the state of Israel.

A Congress, a media, politicians who historically ignore the sensitivities of those who are not Christian, and at various points in time in US history have refused to admit Jews fleeing oppression and threats of massacre, wax eloquent about how Jews are being made ‘uncomfortable.” USA Today reported on the dramatic increase in antisemitism in all states of the US. Their “proof” included someone punched in the nose, or a person feeling that she must cover up the mezuzah on her door. Of course, no one should be made to feel uncomfortable in their daily lives but paradoxically that discomfort is being fueled by this nefarious campaign of warnings of antisemitism.

https://www.usatoday.com/.../antisemitism.../73165421007/

And who is making the claims of antisemitism? The Anti-Defamation League is one such publicist. The ADL in recent years has become an organization pursuing antisemitism and defending Israel. Other groups, whose task is primarily to defend the state of Israel, such as The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have been fueling the nationwide hysteria.

And why the hysterical campaign now? First, the charges are designed to cover up and distort criticisms of the state of Israel’s genocidal bombings and starving of the people of Gaza and the growing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Second, while there is no necessary connection to antisemitism at home, it is claimed, that to combat antisemitism in the United States greater military support of Israel is necessary (incidentally military aid to Israel leads to their purchase of  guns, bombs, tanks, and drones, from US military contractors such as Lockhead Martin and Raytheon).

Third, control of the Middle East and Eastern Europe has been central to the geopolitical thinking of British and then US policymakers. Western militarists and diplomats have theorized that the imperial country (or its proxy) that controls the Middle East and Eastern Europe (the gateways to Asia) can control the international system. Both   Israel and Ukraine are key US proxies in the worldwide struggle of the West to maintain global hegemony.

Finally, U,S, electoral politics has always been ethnic and racial. Raising the specter of antisemitism trumps (the pun intended) the vicious attacks on emigres from Latin America, Muslims, and Asians. The outrage against antisemitism shows the world that politicians are not racists.

In sum, those of us from the Jewish community who speak out against the genocidal policy of Israel are outraged when we, as others, are criticized as being “antisemitic.” For us, the historic pain and suffering of our ancestors is being used to justify global imperialism, racism, and militarism.