Demilitarize Our Education
Where to email
Click Here or look at our example letters below:
Or address an email like this:
To: iupres@iu.edu,
CC: mumper@iu.edu, jmillunc@iu.edu
What to say
It should include:
- These Specifics
- IU must end its partnership with NSWC Crane and provide non-militarized funding options for its students and faculty.
- Your perspective
- You could identify a value that you hold that IU’s investments in surveillance, weapons, and military technology conflict with.
- You can talk about something you’ve learned at IU, and how it is contradicted by IU’s military partnerships.
If you don’t know where to start you can read some of our example letters or read more background information on why we’re calling for this policy
Background
The world is witnessing the appalling results of US and Israeli military rampages all over the middle east. The endless wars, escalating occupation, and increasing devastation have their roots in the political economy of the US. Intentional structures have been built to make us dependent on the military spending for meeting our basic needs. IU’s partnership with NSWC Crane, including recent investments of $111 million, is an alarming escalation of that process, and IUDC is organizing to create an alternative vision for our education that doesn’t rely on using our professional lives to maim and murder.
In 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous speech warning of the dangers of the establishment of a military industrial complex that threatened to swallow up the rest of society. Eisenhower, whatever his late reservations were, understood the system he helped architect, saying,
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. … Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”
This expresses the basic logic of US military development. It is finely intertwined in every region of the country and in many basic economic processes. Everyone who lives here interacts with the military economy in some way. The role of education and research in military development is central. In a passage that has received less attention, Eisenhower opines,
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. … In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
No less important than the basic fact of money’s influence on science is the aims at which it is directed. Since the 1950s, science funding has always been closely related with military research. But over time, the funding of humanities, basic science research, and scientific inquiry into other topics has come under threat. Indiana University is one of the premier examples of this shift. An institution that has historically been a crown jewel of the US public university system for its rich engagement with humanities, sociology, foreign language and regional studies, and more, producing and publishing cornerstones of whole fields, is being transformed into another technology finishing school. Of course any robust university should support information technology and related fields. But the vicious cuts of 249 degree programs concentrated in the College of Arts and Sciences while heavily investing in its partnership with Crane makes the administration’s intentions clear. IU’s administration thinks that IU graduates should be making more defense technology and less science, art and literature, regardless of what the market demands today.
A militarized economy quickly turns into disaster after disaster for the planet. It’s not just the diminishing horizons for us as students and staff, where we have fewer options for study. These structural shifts fuel a negative cycle of military aggression and violence throughout the world. The formation of a military economy has also created powerful interest groups that distort US politics. In the last 70 years, US military power has circled the globe. And whenever the US foments conflict or directly joins wars, the military industrial complex profits. Like clockwork, when tensions rise and wars break out, defense companies’ stocks surge. In particular, the US’s “special partnership” with Israel is aimed at projecting US military power in the Middle East. Making consistent yearly commitments to send military aid to Israel (in coupons to spend at US defense companies), sending arms and ammunition to a rotating cast of military groups to fuel endless conflict, backing up Israel’s aggression against Palestine and other neighboring countries, and directly joining destabilizing wars, the US forges an endless market for weapons and death. If our political leaders have their way, they plan on increasing the economic links between our community in Bloomington with forever wars.
IU’s partnership with Crane is an unprecedented commitment to creating deeper links between IU and the US military. NSWC Crane houses myriad research labs that have historically had low levels of cooperation with IU Bloomington. Increasing Crane’s economic integration in both IU and Bloomington’s nascent tech economy (facilitated by the Dimension Mill in downtown Bloomington) has been a major priority in the last few years. In 2023, IU announced a $111 million investment with Crane, funding labs, tenure track faculty, graduate student positions, and more. This comes despite the fact that Crane researches and develops technologies that are used to surveil and kill people around the world. Sometimes, the connection is direct. NSWC Crane also warehoused some of the 2,000lb bombs used in Gaza, which are some of the most indiscriminate weapons used by the IDF. Such bombs have been a primary driver of the extreme rate of civilian death and infrastructure destruction in Palestine since 2023.
IU’s community deserves a chance to learn and study freely. We need educational opportunities that don’t come at the cost of war and immiseration, not least because of how many of our students are from regions devastated by US and its allies’ wars. The University contains the promise of education, freedom, liberation, and development. But those promises are squandered when the opportunities given to us are narrowed to supporting a military industrial complex that oppresses and kills others.
IUDC is organizing a campaign to highlight the negative influence NSWC Crane’s partnership has on our university. We are organizing an email campaign directed at IU’s president, the Vice Provost of Research, and the Dean of the Luddy School. By sending our message with hundreds of unique voices, we can make sure our administration understands the stakes of their funding decisions.