THE MILITARIZATION OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY

 Harry Targ 

Now it is Lockheed-Martin. Purdue continues to expand its integration into the military-industrial complex:

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/2026/Q3/purdue-applied-research-institute-lockheed-martin-sign-agreement-to-expand-defense-technology-collaboration/?utm_source=sfmcPT&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=260922PurdueToday+-+External&utm_term=Purdue+Applied+Research+Institute%2c+Lockheed+Martin+sign+agreement+to+expand+defense+technology+collaboration&utm_id=1376562

(In this November 15, 2025 interview William Hartung below discusses the trillion-dollar military budget and how the economy and universities have become centerpieces of the wasteful and dangerous military/industrial complex. And the material that follows is a 2024 update about Purdue and the military.

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/11/14/war_machine?fbclid=IwY2xjawOEbbNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe2ZAB7nwx2A668rwFSXnAOxefp-5tmqpv8moWHqftSV5wcjpch3Pd1_oxzro_aem_h5harpaMo2nJ3PfhBskAMA)

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.”

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

 

Andrew Bacevich, the Quincy Institute, has referred to a “permanent war economy” which was established in 1945 and still exists today. Presumably, it has been revitalized since the book first appeared in 2010 by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the stagnating U.S. economy and the leadership in institutions of higher education who seek greater resources from the Department of Defense and military contractors. Bacevich in Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, “forcefully denounces the militarization that he says has already become a routine, unremarked-upon part of our daily lives … He rips into what he calls a postwar American dogma ‘so deeply embedded in the American collective consciousness to have all but disappeared from view.”

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

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

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

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.

 

 

The Corporate Media Did Not Cover the New Poor Peoples Campaign Rally Last Weekend!

 https://www.commondreams.org/news/poor-peoples-campaign-voters?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1TanhrQrKsUtftxhGxv1dgwaNjrAXiVR0SuYv8IlDo5CD29F7ldxMtOWc_aem_obT2dFdZYQYeuw0jJv10SA

Originally Posted Tuesday, May 24, 2022

CONNECTING FOREIGN POLICY TO DOMESTIC NEEDS

Harry Targ

As the tragedy of the Russian invasion and the devastation of Ukraine unfold, the war machines (policymakers, arms manufacturers, educators, media propagandists) of various countries-Russian, NATO alliance partners, and the US-ramp up their calls for more war. These advocates for more violence, more nuclear threats, and more great power chauvinisms increasingly take center stage. Rumors of “back channel” negotiations are demeaned. Feelers for negotiation articulated by key leaders are ignored.  And hints of negotiations and compromises and concessions are ridiculed. Finally, any suggestions that China, an “authoritarian state” could play a role in deescalating the crisis are condemned.

And, in the midst of the escalating tensions and finally the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the significant Biden program of substantial social, economic, and environmental changes has been allowed to flounder and die. Now Congress and the Administration eagerly legislate more money for the military and more money for our beleaguered Ukrainian ally (the latest over $40 billion) and increasingly remind the population that China, the real enemy, is lurking in the global background. Biden’s efforts this week to resuscitate an Asian trade bloc and warnings about the US commitment to defend Taiwan are the most recent examples. Health care, debt relief for students, shifts to a Green Jobs Agenda, tax reform, raising the minimum wage all need to be put off for another day.

Last year the New Poor Peoples Campaign showed in an informative flyer how money projected for the military could be used for human needs. 

https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/PPC-BBB-fact-sheet.pdf

And elsewhere the NPPC pointed out that:

“Since Vietnam, the United States has waged an ongoing war against diffuse enemies, siphoning massive resources away from social needs. Out of every dollar in federal discretionary spending, 53 cents [go] towards the military, with just 15 cents on anti-poverty programs.”

 

Many of us remember the dramatic policies proposed, some implemented, of the Great Society. And twenty-five years earlier, during World War and before “the Great Society,” Henry Wallace, spoke of the the prospect of creating the “Century of the Common Man,” the absence of war, social and economic justice, and freedom. President Roosevelt called for a “New Economic Bill of Rights,” in 1944 embodying economic security and justice for all, and even Harry Truman advocated for a national health care system.

And what happened every time, the 1940s, the 1960s, the 1990s, and now-threats of war, demands for preparations for war, escalating military expenditures. The tragedy of how war and the mythology of its inevitability is vividly reflected in the defeat of the Great Society programs.

In sum, since the establishment of the permanent war economy in the 1940s millions of proclaimed “enemies” have been killed and seriously injured, mostly in the Global South. Permanent physical and psychological damage has been done to U.S soldiers, predominantly poor and minorities as they too are victims of war.

In addition, military spending has distorted national priorities and invested U.S. financial resources in expenditures that do not create as many jobs as investments in construction, education, or healthcare. And, as Andrew Bacevich, Seymour Melman and others have called it, “the permanent war economy” has created a culture that celebrates violence, objectifies killing, dehumanizes enemies, and exalts super-patriotism through television, music, video games, and educational institutions.

There is no doubt that there is an inextricable connection between war-making abroad and human suffering at home. Now is the time for peace and justice movements to act on these connections.

 

Debate Lies Concerning Covid Remind Us of the Rightwing Threat to Democracy and Well-being

Orignally posted on Thursday, May 7, 2020

REFLECTIONS ON ASPECTS OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE COVID 19 PANDEMIC

Harry Targ

There are political, economic, ideological dimensions about how the pandemic is playing out in American life. First, the crisis is being framed in diametrically opposed ways. One frame says the crisis is really former President Obama’s fault and current President Trump, coming into office in the face of errors, is now rectifying the situation. He is in the process of saving the lives of thousands of Americans as the pandemic winds down. The legacy of the Obama era, Trump argues, is magnified by the incompetence or duplicity of the Chinese.

A second, and more accurate frame, is that the Trump administration is riddled with incompetence. As a result he ignored the early warning signs of crisis, fired experts on pandemics, and bungled efforts to ameliorate the worst effects of it. Governors, burdened with rising numbers of victims of the virus in their states, are desperately establishing health and safety rules, purchasing necessary equipment for first responders and citizens, and  trying within limits of interest and ideology to provide for the social welfare of  citizens.

These state policies pit the governors against a federal government that regards the playing out of the crisis as part of a political drama. For the president, the crisis, his denigration of responses in the states to the pandemic, and criticisms of those who call for more concerted action to reverse the incidences of the disease, is all about him. Ultimately for Trump, much more than his opponents, policy decisions are shaped by the upcoming elections.

Second, while 2020 politics shape the policy decisions during the crisis so do economics and ideology. With the spread of disease and death Trump was forced to accept modest but necessary state policies that sequestered people to slow the dramatic increases in those affected by the virus and deaths resulting from it. However, these policies have brought the economy to a halt. And as of May, the public debate has been  shifting from “is the crisis real” and “do we have to employ radical measures to reduce the incidence of the virus” to “when should we reopen the economy.”

Most of the scientific evidence points to the need to continue the social and economic lockdown of the nation. But Trump, the rightwing sectors of the capitalist class, and the gun-toting base of Trump’s support are advocating an end to the policies of quarantining. Many mainstream politicians, CEOs and administrators of public institutions (for example university presidents) have indicated that the risk of not returning to economic activity as usual is more important than the risk that the pandemic might continue and grow. Concretely, among significant sectors of the ruling class, profit takes priority over public health.

Third, the ideological justification of the profound danger to the survival of society as we know it comes down to arguments about the “magic of the marketplace” versus “government intervention” and  “governments’ trampling on personal freedom.” As the godfather of this ideology, Ronald Reagan, said: “Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.” And, to the extent that public policies have been based on science, science as an enterprise is being subjected to scorn and disbelief.

In addition, some specific elements of this drama worth mentioning are:

--Rightwing racists and militias are mobilizing to defend Trump while others party in public, refuse to wear masks, and in other ways show their defiance in the face of health risks

--These public manifestations of protest against governmental efforts to mute the worst effects of the pandemic are being promoted with money, propagandizing, and staffing  by rightwing sectors of the ruling class. Most prominent in these prompts to mobilization are organizations well known by now: Charles Koch funded organizations such as ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, the State Policy Network, and the Heritage Foundation, and the NRA. Protests are not just spontaneous uprisings of ill-informed workers but well-planned efforts to reverse public policies designed to protect the health of the population. And they are targeted against those politicians Trump himself has attacked.

But it is important to remember that vast majorities of those polled believe that the policies of reducing public activity and business as usual should be continued, Most Americans reject the calls for ending “government interference.” They accept the conclusions of scientists that the pandemic remains life-threatening.

--Public policies that have passed to mute the growing economic pain and suffering of average citizens, workers and small business persons, have redistributed enormous wealth to the largest corporations in the United States. Much needed bailout packages passed by Congress have not addressed enough the healthcare, food, housing, and other needs of the American people.

--This critical moment of the political, economic, and ideological struggle requires serious attention. As Naomi Klein has pointed out, the outcome of this crisis will determine the future of the United States and perhaps the global political economy. The forces of the libertarian right, sectors of neoliberalism, and white nationalism are working to return the United States to the Gilded Age, when the accumulation of wealth and the immiseration of the masses was extreme,  Jim Crow was law in the South and racist social practices predominated throughout the United States.

Alternatively, the pandemic has made clear to all that the capitalist economy and the US political system are broken. It is this awareness that could trigger the mobilization of masses of people to create another world: a world of democratic socialism.  This is the project that more and more people in the US and around the world are embracing. The time for rebuilding our mass movements and our left political parties in unity and expanding international solidarity is now. Another World is Still Possible.

 

ELECTION SEASON AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CAPITALISM: a repost

 

Originally posted on Saturday, November 17, 2012

from The Rag Blog

Harry Targ

The War On Women has many dimensions—social, cultural, psychological—but in many ways women’s issues are class issues. That makes the war on women a class war, among other things. (Richard Eskow, Campaign for America’s Future Blog, November 16, 2012)

I was planning my latest blog entry when I saw an essay by Richard Eskow entitled “The War on Women is a Class War.” Coincidentally the subject of the political consequences of class, race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual preference was precisely the subject I wished to address.

Eskow presented compelling data to show that as income levels rise the percentage of women in the higher categories declines, cuts in anti-poverty programs disproportionately affect women, on a worldwide basis austerity measures disproportionately hurt women, cuts in Social Security and Medicare in the U.S. would punish women more than men, and finally reductions in taxes and growing inequality in wealth and income over the last decade have disproportionately benefited men over women.

As I was planning my essay I was thinking about the central features of the capitalist mode of production that has dominated most of the world since the sixteenth century and how, politically, it has made maximum use of differences to protect its fundamental features.

First, capitalism is a system based on the private ownership of the means of production. Workers are paid to come to work to produce goods that are sold by capitalists in the marketplace. The workers are paid a wage that is less than the value of the products that are sold in the market. The difference between the market price of the products and workers’ wages is where profits come from. Marx used the term “exploitation” to refer to that system of production in which the workers produced value based upon their time and energy and the capitalists sold the products of their labor above the cost of labor.

Second, capitalism is a system that exists in history. Over the years and centuries capitalist enterprises grew and grew. Small enterprises consolidated. Huge ones emerged. When demand for one kind of product declined others were produced. When markets in one geographic area declined, capitalists moved elsewhere. When the demand for goods declined, capitalists invested in services.

There has always been conflict over how much workers were to be paid and ultimately who would control the work process, the technology, and the profit. Marx called this “class struggle.” Because of unequal political power there was a tendency for wages to decline except when workers joined together and fought for the improvement of their lives. Creating divisions among male and female workers and workers of different races and ethnic backgrounds often weakened workers’ struggles to achieve economic justice.

Capitalism regularly endured crises as demand for products and places to invest profits declined and profits became so large that capitalists could not figure out how to invest them to gain more profit. In our own day, capitalists shifted dramatically from producing goods and services to financial speculation and promoted political institutions to serve the needs of financialization. And politics entered the picture when the largest capitalists more or less successfully shaped political institutions to maximize their interests.

Libraries of books describe the historical development of capitalism and debate about how the system works and who benefits from it. However, what remains basic to understanding capitalism as an economic system is that it creates workers who dig the coal, harvest the crops, clean the hotel rooms, teach the kids, and do everything else to keep the system going. In a capitalist system almost everybody is a worker and, as the system requires ever-expanding profits, the system strives to reduce the differences among the kinds of work that people do to basic units of physical and mental labor. Marx called this “proletarianization.”

A central feature of the “political” economy of capitalism is the drive to divide workers and to use the political process to reduce workers’ realization that they have fundamentally shared experiences; that is they all are in one way or another “exploited.” A signature feature of capitalist political systems is their effort to create and exacerbate differences; differences by race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, and spiritual identities. The old slogan puts this best: “divide and conquer.”

So today as progressives reflect on the recent election and the future, it is important to get beyond narratives that in the main emphasize difference. Eskow’s essay concerning the class war on women serves as a useful reminder that what divides us could also unite us in a common struggle.

In the months ahead we should rediscover the ways in which we share experiences as workers in a capitalist system, at the same time as we recognize different experiences based on race, gender, sexual preference, and ethnicity.

One of the intriguing ideas embedded in the notion of  “21^st century socialism,” is that in a capitalist system workers are exploited in different ways and suffer different degrees of pain but the process of exploitation has a common structure and purpose. And after long years of reflection and political practice, and many false starts, we can now integrate our awareness and respect for difference into our conceptualization of what in human experience unites us.