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David Noble & Paul Hamel on the battle for Canadian universities

See below for articles on the increasing privatization of Canadian universities by David Noble and Paul Hamel, two of the panelists at Counter-Stryker's recent forum on military research in the university.

David Noble - Private Pretensions: The Battle for Canada’s Universities

Paul Hamel - Academics in the Service of War

PANEL ON THE ETHICS OF MILITARY RESEARCH IN THE UNIVERSITY

Counter-Stryker proudly presents:


PANEL ON THE ETHICS OF MILITARY RESEARCH IN THE UNIVERSITY
Monday March 12 at 3:00 PM
UCC Council Chambers, Rm. 315
3rd floor, University Community Centre, UWO


SPEAKERS:

Dr. David Noble, Professor in Department of Social and Political Thought, York University. A critical historian of technology, science and education, and co-founder of the National Coalition of the Universities in the Public Interest

Dr. Paul Hamel, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto.
President of Science for Peace and author of numerous articles on issues of military research and human rights in academia.

Dr. Steve D'Arcy, Huron University College, Philosophy, Dr. D'Arcy is an Assistant Professor in Philosphy. His research interests include the ethics of militant social protest and the politics of identification.

Dr. Ted Hewitt: Vice-President of Research adn International RelationsUWO. Dr. Hewitt is responsible for all aspects of reseach support and promotion at the University and his portfolio includes Reseach Ethics.

Moderator Dr. Sandra Smeltzer, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, UWO.


Counter-Stryker is a group focused on the ethical and political issues of military and corporate research conducted at UWO and at Canadian universities in general. We object to universities becoming integrated into military production by the lure of corporate funding.


Event endorsed by: Centre for Social Concern, People for Peace, Oxfam UWO, Public Interest Reseach Group, London SPHR, London Indymedia, War Resisters Support Group, Huron AWOL, Western New Democrats, Fanshawe Social Justice Club, Global Importune, LaCASA, the Society of Graduate Students UWO, MIT Student Council, Medical Students for Human Rights

Why We Fight film screening

March 16, 3:30pm
University College (UC), Room 84 — at the university

London Indymedia will be offering a free screening of the documentary Why We Fight (2005)

We will then move to another room in the University College to discuss the film.

Film Synopsis:
Dwight D. Eisenhower when leaving the presidency, issued a stern warning about the growing "military industrial complex," foretelling the current state of the world. The film details incestuous relationship between political, corporate, and Defense Department interests that push American foreign policy.

New General Dynamics Contract for "Chargers"

General Dynamics Land Systems has recently concluded a $77 Million contract for 169 armoured vehicles called "Chargers," or "RG-31 Mk5 Mine Protected Vehicles". These are separate from the Stryker contract; Chargers appear to be something of a super-armoured, weaponized jeep. We currently don't have any information on whether there is a connection with UWO Engineering Department research here – but the fact that the selling point of these vehicles is their enhanced armour makes it look very much as if they are benefiting from the research of UWO engineers. As with the Stryker contract, the vast majority of these new vehicles will be supplied to the US army (with a small portion going to the Canadian Army). Strykers are currently part of the Bush Administration's new troop "surge" in Iraq and will be deployed in Baghdad.

For more details, read the GDLS press release here.

Further information on the Charger, including previous Charger contracts between US armed forces and General Dynamics Land Systems, is available here.

Letter to the UWO Gazette

Printed Nov 1, 2006

In his letter of last week, Jan Kool claims that UWO research on Stryker vehicles saves the lives of Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan. In response to this, we at CounterStryker make three observations.

First, the overwhelming majority of 2,131 Strykers produced by General Dynamics are for the US Army, deployed in four brigades serving in Iraq. Only 66 (less than 5% of the total) are for Canada. Contrary to what Mr. Kool asserts, the Stryker is a different vehicle from the LAV more widely used by Canada. The claim that Stryker research saves Canadian lives is thus largely a cover for supplying the Pentagon with a major weapons system used in a catastrophic war of occupation launched on the basis of mis- and dis-information, without justification in international law.

Second, Canadian soldiers are dying in Afghanistan because of this American war. Opinions may differ about the advisedness of Canada’s initial involvement in Afghanistan. Almost all observers, however, recognize that the recent escalation of fighting has occurred because the US, diverting resources to its invasion of Iraq, failed to deliver the promised reconstruction of Afghanistan. Canada is thus paying the costs of a bungled American policy. This deep integration of Canada’s military with an incompetent and interventionist US foreign policy is the underlying source of danger to our service men and women. Such integration is only heightened by tying Canada’s economic and military policy to the fortunes of giant US military-industrial corporations such as General Dynamics. Far from protecting Canadian soldiers, Stryker research increases the long term likelihood they will serve as Pentagon cannon fodder.

Third: contrary to what Mr. Kool suggests, we do not believe that either Canadian or US troops “deserve to die” in Afghanistan or Iraq. Even less so, however, do the tens, and probably hundreds of thousands, of Afghani and Iraqi civilians who are the main and most innocent victims of these wars. Strykers are amongst the weapons systems bringing death and destruction to these people, and UWO’s Stryker research makes this university complicit in the carnage.

CounterStruker’s foundational position and task is to end the integration of military and corporate research within a publicly funded university. That our university participates in the design of these vehicles implicates us all in their future use – including each and every death their use inflicts. At CounterStyker we are working towards making the university population aware of the relationships that already exist between the university and weapons manufacturers, as well as other corporate integration so that such projects do not set a precedent for the future of our university. We all have a responsibility to become critically engaged in the discussion.

Sir! No Sir! Screening

Counter-Stryker presents Sir! No Sir!, a documentary film about American troops resisting war.

Monday October 30th
4:30-7:30pm
NCB Room 113
University of Western Ontario

Stryker Research at University of Western Ontario

In December of 2004 President Davenport announced that members of the UWO Faculty of Engineering had a four year contract with the corporation General Dynamics for research to improve its Stryker Light Armored Vehicles. General Dynamics, with revenues of some $19 billion and 70,000 employees, is amongst the world’s largest arms manufacturers, central to the US military industrial complex. The Stryker, manufactured by General Dynamic at its London plant and at another in Alabama, is an eight wheeled fighting vehicle that carries troops into battle, can operate under conditions of nuclear, biological and chemical war, and mounts a variety of weapons, ranging from machine guns to missiles to 105 mm cannon.

The Canadian government, which also contributes to the UWO grant, has ordered 66 Strykers. But the majority of the 2,131 Strykers General Dynamics will produce are for the US Army; it also sells other LAVs to states such as Saudi Arabia. The US vehicles are currently deployed in Iraq. Stryker battalions in combat in Mosul, Fallujah, Baghdad and the Tigris and Euphrates River Valleys have a direct connection to the London General Dynamics plant, which recently won a $50 million contract for repair and maintenance of vehicles used in these theatres.

Those who support the Bush administration’s foreign policy and wish Canada more closely aligned with it may have no problem with the UWO-General Dynamics link. Those who believe the Iraq war an invasion without sanction of international law, launched on the basis of mis- and dis-information for reasons of realpolitik and waged with an devastating ineptitude that is itself immoral; who support Canada’s abstention from this conflict; who object to the devotion of so many global resources and technological talents to the perfection of ever-more sophisticated instruments of destruction; or who dissent from the torture practiced at Guantanamo, at Abu Ghraib, and by the notorious Saudi Arabia security forces, will likely be aghast at this connection.

UWO administrators have replied to such criticisms by asserting the priority of academic freedom. According to this argument, the intellectual integrity of the academia requires researchers be allowed to pursue inquiries, regardless how perverse they appear, without constraints other than those governing the well-being of human and animal research subjects. Because academic freedom is indeed precious, this is a strong position.

To invoke it in the context of the Stryker research is, however, hypocritical. The claim to academic freedom rests on the university’s status as a place of independent intellectual activity, a sphere distanced from instrumental profit and power pursuits. Academia has always had links to business, and dependencies on the state. But academics’ assertion of specific rights and prerogatives nevertheless rests on the university’s standing as a distinct, scholarly, sphere. Arrangements such as UWO’s with General Dynamics collapse that distinction, making academia an extension of a military-industrial production line. They demonstrate, not academic freedom, but corporate freedom—the freedom of companies such as General Dynamics to utilize public resources while evading accountability.

When universities erase the boundaries that separate them from the private sector, they also erode their claim to academic freedom. A university laboratory ancillary to an arms-manufacturer deserves the heat its paymaster attracts. The Stryker project is, of course, not unique, only--forgive the pun--strikingly symptomatic of intensifying academic-business connections. These arrangements destroy the integrity of the university. The closer the connections to business, the less credible academic claims to an independent social role deserving special immunities. Such projects should expect both the criticisms, and the demands for regulation and limitation, that citizens make against corporations and states when they violate standards of international law and human rights.

One can envisage a process by which research contracts with known, direct military applications would be subject to an ethics review at which proponents and critics debated the merits of university involvement. But administrators are utterly averse to such a possibility, or indeed to anything that interferes with the current “take the money and run” attitude to corporate funding. Critics of such projects must therefore speak directly to the university community. To this end a group, “Counter-Stryker,” has formed to bring the university activities of General Dynamic under scrutiny, to make known our ethical and political objections to the Stryker project, and to raise wider issues of academic corporatization.