Part 1: Carnegie Mellon University and the federalization of academia
By Joyce Lynn
Online Journal Contributing Writer
February 6, 2003—The story of the benefits the Bush administration has reaped in the wake of 9–11 is more than a political or even a geo-political one. It is a fabric woven of historical, social, and spiritual threads as this two-part series on the federalization, fear and academia shows.
The federal government is extending its control into academia and into yet another arena of our lives.
Government power has already co-opted media as large conglomerates with defense holdings also own networks, and newspapers curry favorable government rulings on mergers. The government has already made it difficult for ordinary citizens to seek redress from industry wrongdoing, granting liability exemptions for drug and insurance companies and pandering to corrupt corporate leaders.
If your child attends a higher education institution, you're paying $40,000 a year to a school that is likely receiving huge defense and other government contracts.
For example, within the first five months of 2002, Carnegie Mellon received a huge NASA research grant, a $750,000 Centers for Disease Control grant, and, in June, G.W. Bush named the Carnegie Mellon president to a Homeland Security post.
The "federalization" of college campuses has a myriad of consequences:
Recent silencing of student protests at Ohio State University and the New School of Social Research, where the president of the latter, former US Senator Bob Kerrey, a Democrat, has named big defense contractors including United Technologies, Honeywell, and Lockheed Martin to the board.
Kerrey has also joined a committee to "liberate" Iraq, and, according to students, banned speakers who question the government's war policies from speaking on the college founded to promote free speech.
Harvard University's budget includes Department of Defense grants amounting to more than $300 million, guaranteeing military recruiters a prime place on campus.
*M.I.T. has a budget-sustaining federally financed research center to develop technology for the U.S. missile defense system, a.ka. Star Wars. Recently, an MIT physicist alleged a cover-up of problems with the system that is at the core of the Bush administration's foreign policy.
Fears of federal and industry funding repercussions are "why they get (angry) at me at Stanford when I hang my banner," says activist Carol Brouillet. Her banner reads: "Guilty of 9–11, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld. You ask why: Drugs, Oil, Power. See tenc.net." In November, Stanford University announced a $225 million, 10-year grant from Exxon Mobil, General Electric, and other industries to fund a Global Climate and Energy Project at the Palo Alto, Calif., university.
As college endowments shrink with the declining stock market, pressure increases on college administrators to fill their coffers with industry and government funding.
Federal grants often come with strings, such as demands to approve foreign nationals and others working on the projects.
According to its web site, Carnegie Mellon University is a "research university" of 7,500 students and 3,000 faculty and staff.
The school bears the last names of two Andrews, both huge business forces. Andrew Carnegie founded Carnegie Steel Company. In 1901, he sold the company to J.P. Morgan for $400 million ($4.5 billion today). Along the way, he broke the steel unions. He gave to charitable causes, one biographer wrote, hoping his philanthropy would "mitigate the grimy details of accumulating his money."
After Andrew Mellon (1855–1937), financier and industrialist, took control of his father's banking interests, he created Union Trust Co. He expanded his holding into industries like Gulf Oil. He became secretary of the Treasury in 1921 and served three presidents. Some say his tax and other policies favored the wealthy and led to the Great Depression.
Mellon also was the driving force behind the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Mellon family holdings include Mellon Bank, Mellon Financial Corporation, and the Dreyfus Group. It was Richard Mellon Scafe, who bankrolled the right-wing opposition to President Clinton.
In 1900, Carnegie donated funds to create Carnegie Technical Schools. His vision: a vocational training school for the children of Pittsburgh's working class.
Renamed Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912, the school grew into a leading private research university. In 1967, Carnegie Tech merged with Mellon Institute to become Carnegie Mellon University. Today, Carnegie Mellon is a national leader in computer science, robotics, and engineering.
In the past decade, decreasing government grants caused Carnegie Mellon to turn to industry for research funding. Now, Carnegie Mellon is experiencing an up surge in federal research money.
In 1997, Jared L. Cohon, former dean of Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental studies, was named Carnegie Mellon University president.
On February 5, 2002, NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, in the Silicon Valley, awarded Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science a five-year, $23 million research grant to measure and improve the dependability of NASA's systems.
NASA scientists will collaborate with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Maryland, University of California, University of Washington, and the University of Wisconsin.
Carnegie Mellon has worked for two years to establish a presence in Silicon Valley, including formation of a consortium with NASA and 15 Silicon Valley companies focused on reducing computing system failures.
The CIA is also building a new facility in Palo Alto to "get Silicon Valley on board." The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has long been a big defense force in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon is considered a leader in computing and robotics. Founded in 1984 with funding from the U.S. Defense Department, the SEI administers 109 programs including robotics, artificial intelligence, and software engineering.
Last March 8, G.W. Bush visited Carnegie Mellon president Cohon and praised the University for its work with computers. Subsequently, Bush appointed Cohon to the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
Tom Ridge, Homeland Security chief and a former Pennsylvania governor, delivered the keynote address at Carnegie Mellon's commencement ceremonies last May 19.
That is only the tip of the iceberg.
Last July, the National Robotics Engineering Consortium (NREC), part of the Robotics Institute in the School of Computer Science, announced a $5.5 million, 18-month "award" from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to build and test a prototype robotic unmanned all-terrain combat vehicle.
NREC researchers have been working with subcontractors Boeing Co. (Chicago), PEI Electronics (Huntsville, Alabama) and Timoney Technology (Meath, Ireland) for a year and a half to develop the crewless vehicle.
The statement of PEI president and CEO Tom Keenan makes clear the tilt toward the business of war. Carnegie Mellon's press release quotes Keenan as saying this project will "enhance the effectiveness of tomorrow's war fighter. We . . . stand ready to successfully meet the challenges associated with the future battle space."
Carnegie Mellon President Cohon's ascendancy to the Homeland Security advisory board was only a small step toward a larger role for Carnegie Mellon in the "security" arena.
Last fall, Carnegie Mellon announced the creation of the Center for Computer and Communications Security (C3S) and a $35.5 million five-year grant. The benefactor—the U.S. taxpayer—by way of the Department of Defense.
Again, the Carnegie Mellon press release tells the story: This grant will create "a new network security paradigm to tackle the challenges related to Internet security, data storage, and privacy issues stemming from America's ongoing war against terrorism."
Pradeep Khosla, head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the new C3S, is cited as saying the crucial role that information technology plays in warfare and homeland security inspired Carnegie Mellon to create the new center.
The National Security Agency, one the nation's intelligence cops, has approved the Carnegie Mellon institute that will manage a graduate degree program in information security as part of the grant.
The events of 9–11 gave the Bush administration justification to launch its "war on terrorism." The tentacles of military federalization—as the Carnegie Mellon grants show—reach far and wide.
Carnegie Mellon's website praises its arts and humanities leadership. However, except for a grant from several foundations to develop a database for arts organizations in southwest Pennsylvania, there were no listings for grants supporting the arts in 2002. Carnegie Mellon did announce the release of an opera CD and the appearance of a few filmmakers and writers.
The School of Engineering, one of the beneficiaries of the technology largesse, hosted a panel on 9–11 last August. Several journalists appeared on the panel titled, "Running Toward Danger," which told stories of bravery, underscoring the patriotic themes that feed war fever.
Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute and its associated Vision and Autonomous System Center design space robots, autonomous navigation systems, virtual reality, and intelligent manipulations. The Robotics Institute was founded in 1971 to conduct basic and applied research relevant "to industrial and societal" needs. It received $24 million in funding in fiscal 2001 from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and other sources.
Some 9–11 investigators have theorized that the World Trade Center and/or Pentagon planes were robotically controlled, which, could explain how the hijackers that had flunked out of flight school could hit their targets so successfully.
Recently, robotically controlled vehicles have made headlines, including stories about unmanned space vehicles, the unmanned Predator that the Iraqis shot down, the U.S. forces' remote-controlled assassination of alleged terrorists in Yemen, and a Global Hawk test flight from Australia.
The capacity to remotely direct planes has been around since World War II. A Robotics Institute associate stated that Carnegie Mellon scientists develop a myriad of technologies and how those technologies are used is "beyond" the control of the scientists' who develop them.
Next: Part 2, A Dialogue With Activist Carol Brouillet About the Federalization of Academia
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