ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (12/19/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Friday, December 19, 1986 9:46AM
Volume 7, Issue 87
Today's Topics:
Special Issue: Bounds for Debate, Speech from Fulbright on the nature
of the military-industrial-academic complex.
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Date: Thursday, 18 December 1986 10:59-EST
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN>
Herb,
If our discussion were just going to be a semantic debate of the
meaning of "political," I'd say we should keep it private. That's the
direction I thought it was going before. But I think there are some
different and relevant points -- the problem is that they may be
obscured in semantic nitpicking that is tiresome to read. This
does not mean that the nitpicking is unimportant, as it often
reveals our key differences.
So I propose that we put our conversation on a "tape-delay." I will
edit my last message to you to make it stand on its own a bit more for
the digest (I'll add an introduction which may explain that we will
get back to the "real issues,"and no longer discuss the point of what
is "political.") Then you can respond to me, and I'll be happy to
give you my objections if you wish to edit your reply before you post
it. Several people have pointed out that what we are talking about
is relevant, so as long as we keep it from being tedious, we shouldn't
stop now.
But first, let's have a moratorium. I'm going to post a speech
by William J. Fulbright with an open ended question to engage other
opinions for a week or so before sending another message.
-rich
[feel free to post parts or all of this. ]
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Date: Thursday, 18 December 1986 11:39-EST
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN>
While Herb Lin and I continue part of our conversation privately, I
wanted to give the rest of you something to read, and ask some fairly
open-ended questions to generate some discussion. If you are reading
this in 1987, I am still interested in your comments. [we may summarize
the "bounds for debate" messages for general consumption after X-mas.]
The following is a Senate speech on the "military-industrial-academic
complex" from the 1960's (referred to me by Aaren Perry of the
American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia).
I *think* the speech will ring true for some of you. If it does, I
ask, why do you think (and I emphasize, *think*) that what Fulbright
is saying is right? Is it from first-hand experience? "Grassroots"
discussions with colleagues? Perceptions as presented in the media or
advertising? *Seeing through* these perceptions? Is there little
evidence for what Fulbright says? Is there lots of evidence that is
simply never shared? (If this is the case, please share some!)
Does Fulbright discuss those things which are difficult to quantify,
and is there a tendency to omit these things from the debate? Are all
forms of bias difficult to quantify?
And if you disagree, *why* do you think that Fulbright is wrong?
Rich (Cowan@xx)
__________________________________
[The following is part I of the second half of a famous speech by Senator
William Fulbright entitled "The War and Its Effects." It appears in the
Senate Congressional Record of December 13, 1967, page 36181.]
Mr. President, today I resume my comments on the Vietnamese war and
its far-ranging effects. In the first half of my statement I
questioned the assumption on which the American war policy is based
and suggested what seem to me to be the principal causes of the deep
and widening division among the American people. Today I shall point
to some of the destructive effects of the war upon our domestic life
-- to the growing militarization of the economy and the universities,
to the deepening crisis of poverty and race, and to the underlying
question of America's concept of herself, either as a traditional
world empire as we seem to be becoming, or as an example of creative
democracy, as we have traditionally regarded ourselves.
I. THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-ACADEMIC COMPLEX
While young dissenters plead for resurrection of the American
promise, their elders continue to subvert it. As if it were
something to be proud of, it was announced not long ago that the war
in Vietnam had created a million new jobs in the United States. Our
country is becoming conditioned to permanent conflict. More and more
our economy, our Government, and our universities are adapting
themselves to the requirements of continuing war -- total war, limited
war, and cold war. The struggle against militarism into which we were
drawn 26 years ago has become permanent, and for the sake of
conducting it, we are making ourselves into a militarized society.
I do not think the military-industrial complex is the conspiratorial
invention of a band of "merchants of death." One almost wishes that
it were, because conspiracies can be exposed and dealt with. But the
components of the new American militarism are too diverse,
independent, and complex for it to the result of a centrally directed
conspiracy. It is rather the inevitable result of the creation of a
huge, permanent military establishment, whose needs have given rise to
a vast private defense industry tied to the Armed Forces by a natural
bond of common interest. As the largest producer of goods and
services in the United States, the industries and businesses that fill
military orders will in the coming fiscal year pour some $45 billion
into over 5,000 cities and towns where over 8 million Americans,
counting members of the Armed Forces, comprising approximately 10
percent of the labor force, will earn their living from defense
spending. Together, all these industries and employees, drawing their
income from the $75 billion defense budget, form a giant concentration
of socialism in our otherwise free enterprise economy.
Unplanned though it was, this complex has become a major political
force. It is the result rather than the cause of American military
involvements around the world; but, composed as it is of a vast number
of citizens -- not tycoons or "merchants of death" but ordinary, good
American citizens -- whose livelihood depends on defense production,
the military industrial complex has become an indirect force for the
perpetuation of our global military commitments. This is not -- and I
emphasize "not" -- because anyone favors war but because every one of
us has a natural and proper desire to preserve the sources of his
livelihood. For the defense worker this means preserving or obtaining
some local factory or installation and obtaining new defense orders;
for the labor union leader it means jobs for his members at abnormally
high wages; for the politician it means preserving the good will of
his constituents by helping them to get what they want. Every time a
new program, such as Mr McNamara's $5 billion "thin" antiballistic
missile system, is introduced, a powerful new constituency is created
-- a constituency that will strive mightily to protect the new program
and, in the case of the ABM, turn the "thin" system into a "thick"
one, a movement already underway according to reports in the press.
The constituency-building process is further advanced by the
perspicacity of Defense officials and contractors in locating
installations and plants in the districts of influential key Members
of Congress.
In this natural way generals, industrialists, businessmen, labor
leaders, workers, and politicians have joined together in a
military-industrial complex -- a complex which, for all the
inadvertency of its creation and the innocent intentions of its
participants, has nonetheless become a powerful new force for the
perpetuation of foreign military commitments, for the introduction and
expansion of expensive weapons systems, and as a result, for the
militarization of large segments of our national life. Most interest
groups are counterbalanced by other interest groups, but the defense
complex is so much larger than any other that there is no effective
counterweight to it except concern as to its impact on the part of
some of our citizens and a few of our leaders, none of whom have
material incentive to offer.
The universities might have formed an effective counterweight to the
military-industrial complex by strengthening their emphasis on the
traditional values of our democracy, but many of our leading
universities have instead joined the monolith, adding greatly to its
power and influence. Disappointing though it is, the adherence of the
professors is not greatly surprising. No less than businessmen,
workers, and politicians, professors like money and influence. Having
traditionally been deprived of both, they have welcomed the contracts
and consultantships offered by the Military Establishment.
The great majority of American professors are still teaching
students and engaging in scholarly research, but some of the most
famous of our academicians have set such activities aside in order to
serve their government, especially those parts of the government which
are primarily concerned with war.
The bonds between the Government and the universities are no more
the results of a conspiracy than those between Government and
Business. They are an arrangement of convenience, providing the
Government with politically usable knowledge and the universities with
badly needed funds. Most of these funds go to large institutions
which need them less than some smaller and less well-known ones, but
they do on the whole make a contribution to higher learning, a
contribution, however, which is purchased at a high price.
That price is the surrender of independence, the neglect of
teaching, and the distortion of scholarship. A university which has
become accustomed to the inflow of government contract funds is likely
to emphasize activities which attract those funds. These,
unfortunately, do not include teaching undergraduates and the kind of
scholarship which, though it may contribute to the sum of human
knowledge and to man's understanding of himself, is not salable to the
Defense Department or the CIA. As Clark Kerr, former president of the
University of California, expressed it:
The real problem is not one of Federal control but of
Federal influence. A Federal agency offers a project.
The university need not accept, but as a practical
matter, it usually does... Out of this reality have
followed many of the consequences of Federal aid for the
universities; and they have been substantial. That
they are subtle, slowly cumulative and gentlemanly
makes them all the more potent. <1>
From what one hears the process of acquiring Government contracts is
not always passive and gentlemanly.
One of the dismal sights in American higher education --
Writes Robert M Rosenzweig, associate dean of the Stanford University
graduate division --
is that of administrators scrambling for contracts for
work which does not emerge from the research or
teaching interests of their faculty. The result of
this unseemly enterprise is bound to be a faculty
coerced or seduced into secondary lines of interest, or
a frantic effort to secure nonfaculty personnel to meet
the contractual obligations. Among the most puzzling
aspects of such arrangements is the fact that
Government agencies have permitted and even encouraged
them. Not only are they harmful to the universities --
which is not, of course, the Government's prime concern
-- but they insure that the Government will not get
what it is presumably buying; namely, the intellectual
and technical resources of the academic community. It
is simply a bad bargain all the way around. <2>
Commenting on these tendencies, a special report on government, the
universities and international affairs, prepared for the U.S. Advisory
Commission on International Educational and Cultural Affairs, points
out that --
The eagerness of university administrations to
undertake stylized, Government-financed projects has
caused a decline in self-generated commitments to
scholarly pursuits, has produced baneful effects on the
academic mission of our universities, and has, in
addition, brought forward some bitter complaints from
the disappointed clients. <3>
Among the baneful effects of the Government-university contract
system, the most damaging and corrupting are the neglect of the
university's most important purpose, which is the education of its
students, and the taking into the Government camp of scholars,
especially those in the social sciences, who ought to be acting as
responsible and independent critics of their Government's policies.
The corrupting process is a subtle one: no one needs to censor,
threaten, or give orders to contract scholars; without a word being
uttered, it is simply understood that lucrative contracts are awarded
not to those who question their Government's policies but to those who
provide the Government with the tools and techniques it desires. The
effect, in the words of the Advisory Commission on International
Education, is --
To suggest the possibility to a world -- never
adverse to prejudice -- that academic honesty is no
less marketable than a box of detergent on the grocery
shelf. <4>
The formation of a military-industrial complex, for all its baneful
consequences, is the result of great numbers of people engaging in
more or less normal commercial activities. The adherence of the
universities, though no more the result of a plan or conspiracy,
nonetheless involves something else: the neglect, and if carried far
enough, the betrayal, of the university's fundamental reason for
existence, which is the advancement of man's search for truth and
happiness. It is for this purpose, and this purpose alone, that
universities receive -- and should receive -- the community's support
in the form of grants, loans, and tax exemptions.
When the university turns away from its central purpose and makes
itself an appendage to the Government, concerning itself with
techniques rather than purposes, with expedients rather than ideals,
dispensing conventional orthodoxy rather than new ideas, it is not
only failing to meet its responsibilities to its students; it is
betraying a public trust.
This betrayal is most keenly felt by the students, partly because it
is they who are being denied the services of those who ought to be
their teachers, they to whom knowledge is being dispensed wholesale in
cavernous lecture halls, they who must wait weeks for brief audiences
with important professors whose time is taken up by travel and
research connected with Government contracts. For all these reasons
the students feel themselves betrayed, but it is doubtful that any of
these is the basic cause of the angry rebellions which have broken out
on so many campuses.
It seems more likely that the basic cause of the great trouble in
our universities is the student's discovery of corruption in the one
place besides perhaps the churches, which might have been supposed to
be immune from the corruptions of our age. Having seen their
country's traditional values degraded in the effort to attribute moral
purpose to an immoral war, having seen their country's leaders caught
in inconsistencies which are politely referred to as a "credibility
gap," they now see their universities -- the last citadels of moral
and intellectual integrity -- lending themselves to ulterior and
expedient ends, and betraying their own fundamental purpose, which, in
James Bryce's words, is to "reflect the spirit of the times without
yielding to it."
<1> Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1964), pp. 57-8.
<2> Quoted in: Walter Adams and Adrian Jaffe, "Government, The
Universities, and International Affairs: A Crisis in Identity,"
Special Report Prepared for the U.S. Advisory Commission on
International Educational and Cultural Affairs, 90th Congress, 1st
Session, House Document No. 120 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1966), pp. 5-6.
<3> Ibid., p. 6.
<4> Ibid., p. 8.
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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