Academia and Armaments

On May 2^nd, the prestigious Time Magazine wrote about the ongoing students' protest plaguing the American college scene across the continent. The driving theme of the protests has been a call for divestment from Israeli companies and those with ties with Israel. Citing the U.S. Department of Education database, the magazine claimed that as many as 100 top U.S. colleges have reported gifts or contracts from Israel amounting to $ 357 over the past two decades. American companies cited in the article include Boeing, Amazon, and Lockheed Martin.

Yale Students Demand Action (a group working on gun violence prevention) prompted the review of its investor policy by bringing the proposal to the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) for divestment in the spring of last year. University President Peter Salovey reportedly told the news last November that the Ivy would revisit its investments in arms manufacturing amidst student protests.

So far, the university boards have held their grounds and refused to be pressurised on their investments by student protests.

Itself under criticism for handling the student protests in the JNU with a heavy hand four years back, the Indian government did not waste any time in sniping at the U.S. administration. Calling for a right balance between freedom of expression, a sense of responsibility, and public safety in every democracy, a spokesperson of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs advised prudence. As per the Hindu (26 April), an Indian-origin female student studying at the prestigious Princeton University was among the arrested.

Background

The student protests have rapidly grown in size and expanse and have spread to nearly all major academic centres in the United States. In some cases, alumni, parents, and faculty have joined in, and there have been allegations by college administrations that outsiders with no link to the colleges have been arrested. When the students established ‘encampments’ in the heart of colleges like UCLA and Columbia University, the university administration called in the police to clear the protestors occupying college buildings. Media reports that over 2500 arrests have been made. Many students, especially international students, run the risk of expulsion, which would result in the cancellation of their student visas and deportation.

The protests took an ugly racial undertone when the pro-Palestine protestors were attacked by pro-Israel supporters on the campuses, accusing the former of antisemitism.

The University of Texas and Texas A&M Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) is a non-profit institutional investors corporation modelled after Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Duke Universities’ investment management companies. Their strategy reportedly aims to provide greater purchasing power levels for scholarships, teaching, research, and other educational programs at The University of Texas and The Texas A&M University Systems. Some of their stocks and bonds were put in weapons manufacturing companies and defence contractors - Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, BAE Systems, and more. The UTIMCO Permanent University Fund (operating off of income from oil and gas drilling, mineral mining, and grazing) has around $35 million worth of debt and equity securities invested in 13 different major weapons manufacturers as of August 2022. In 2021, the number was around $63 million. These companies have had critical international controversy and condemnation of their hand in human rights violations and weapon proliferation in conflict-stricken regions.

BAE Systems (a British multinational aerospace, defence and information security company) had been investigated for corrupted aid in selling arms to Chile, the Czech Republic, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania and Qatar by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). Lockheed Martin, a leading American global security and aerospace company and top federal contractor in 2019, had 91 misconduct instances since 1995 and 8 additional instances of misconduct pending resolution. In the past five years, Raytheon (the American multinational aerospace and defence conglomerate) sold over 120,000 precision bombs and been connected to lives lost at the Arhab Water Drilling Site in Sanaa, Yemen, where 31 civilians were killed by its Paveway II Laser bombs.

A 2017 report by Demilitarise Education revealed that UK universities, defence, and the military have partnerships valued at over £1 billion. These partnerships are primarily academic and research, with significant involvement in the arms trade. Sheffield University received the most defence funding, followed by Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, and Birmingham. The Australian government committed to an 81% increase in the Defence budget and a $3.8 billion investment in the arms manufacturing industry to achieve these goals. The government focuses on higher education and academic research for military technology development.

Despite the student presentations, Yale University responded on 17 April, saying it would not divest. As per the policy notes, the Corporation Committee on Investor Responsibility (composed of trustees providing investing guidance to the full Corporation) "gave special consideration" to certain perspectives that ACIR recommended while reviewing the policy for the Corporation. According to the Yale Daily News, The ACIR updated its policy this year covering all assault weapons manufacturers that “engage in retail activities to the general public” but not military weapons manufacturers for “sanctioned purposes”. Yale stated that weapons manufacturing “supports socially necessary uses, such as law enforcement and national security.” ACIR concluded that military weapons manufacturing for authorised sales did not meet the threshold of grave social injury, a prerequisite for divestment, wrapping up the statement by Yale.

However, there is a dissenting voice also, albeit much more muted. The case against divestment has been acknowledged in a letter to the current president of Yale University, Peter Salovey wherein 161 students, parents, alumni and professors across Yale’s Colleges and graduate schools opposed the divestment protests. It argues that Yale’s investments should support the national military defence of nations like Israel and Ukraine.

Analysis

War and violence do not discriminate, and neither do the weapons used in them. However, the university's indirect method of considering the public's ethical investment dilemma and secretive nature towards disclosing the extent of their holdings inevitably complicates matters.

Research conducted by the World Peace Foundation and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that universities downplay the nature and purpose of these companies, their research and their products. Weapons manufacturers promote themselves as "advanced technology companies" focused on innovating "cutting-edge technology" while rarely mentioning war and surveillance. As per the report titled 'Weaponising Universities: Research Collaborations between UK Universities and the Military Industrial Complex', the arms industry is using academic research to greenwash the impact of military activities. Another report, 'Militarised Environmental Technologies,' examined how technologies (Solar-powered submarines, smart grids, drones, etc) developed to reduce the environmental impact of military activities while gaining a military advantage are also used as tools to display the 'fundamentally unsustainable business of war' as more appealing. University admins continue to cite "contractual obligations" and their need to "maintain [a] competitive advantage" as they decline to disclose these investments publicly.

According to a new report by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and Demilitarise Education (dED), privatisation, commercialisation of universities, and the academic funding crisis have welded the ties between the arms companies, the military and academia. A study illustrating the relationship between GDP per capita and universities reveals that an increased supply of human capital and innovations partly bridges the effect of universities on national economic growth. The issue is not that the arms industry and universities have been heavily co-dependent. The arms business is a necessary evil that provides jobs, propels economic growth, and contributes to national defence and security. Universities are infinite resource pools for the military for recruitment, R&D and innovation. In fact, the report's author elaborates that since industries and universities precede the frontlines of scientific and technological progress, the military relies on universities for research and development in dual-use tech, cybersecurity, AI, renewable energy and more. According to a study on partnerships between universities and arms manufacturers, many U.S. universities are heavily dependent on Pentagon funding, especially for STEM disciplines, and are into defence lobbying.

Institutional investors in weapons manufacturing often link themselves to militaristic norms, exposing them to legal, reputational, and financial risks. The ties between universities, the Department of Defence, and weapons manufacturers can be explained by the wider militarisation efforts of the governments. - The secrecy within the arms industry makes it tricky to trace weapons and monitor their use, blurring the line between protecting national security and enabling criminal networks.