New report reveals militarization of colleges

Last Monday, VICE News released a list of the top 100 militarized universities in America. The rankings were determined by a dataset of 90,000 workers in the U.S. Intelligence Community since 9/11, analyzing factors such as the distribution of students’ college majors to Department of Defense research funding.

As a major source of defense and information systems engineers, as well as huge sink for military research grants, it was unsurprising that USC ranked 21st on the list. Research centers such as the Institute for Creative Technologies and the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events were cited as large recipients of Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security money. The change in funding, however, highlights a decade’s upgrade in the military landscape into the information age, but still fails to deliver improvements across international communities. Moreover, post 9/11, higher education has become increasingly militarized, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.

For instance, in a military dominated by Middle Eastern operations, fewer than 100 people from the heaviest academic pipelines into security intelligence actually have degrees in Middle Eastern Studies. Of the total, less than 1,000 actually identify as fluent in Arabic, and of those, 60 percent are national security contractors, not internal staff. For an institution that stores massive amounts of data about the Middle East and consistently espouses intervention rhetoric, it’s shameful how few actually understand Middle Eastern cultures and values.

Rather, personnel are focused in fields of information technology, computer science, criminology and business administration. Tools of asymmetrical warfare such as GIS, drones and big data analysis have demanded talent in IT and engineering but distanced military agencies even further from the social landscapes of these areas. Employees from those fields tend to come from highly specialized degree programs at schools such as the online for-profit Phoenix and American Military Universities but lack the general education necessary to approach these committees tactfully. In addition, recruitment continues to focus on engineers who develop the systems to manage this intelligence.

This skewed relationship between research universities and the military isn’t just an isolated case; military innovations have dominated academic pursuit in STEM fields as early as the 1950s, while hiring for regional studies has remained stagnant. Those with bachelor’s degrees in area studies tend to pursue careers in NGOs, journalism or translation — fields far removed from military strategic purposes. The few large-scale systems for social science performance and research have been beleaguered with internal bias and organizational failure. While research partnerships between governments and academia produce positive technical results that have huge trickle-down effects on civilian life, the pattern of militarization in our own universities belie an approach that ignores its societal effects.

This has real consequences. American troops stationed in Iraq are famous for egregious acts of misconduct that disrupt local communities and inflict trauma on the local populace. It’s not uncommon to hear accusations of institutional racism at the hands of American soldiers on counter-insurgency missions. Time and time again, political leaders are pressured into apologizing for far-too-common mistakes during symmetrical tactics like drone strikes. Counterinsurgency efforts by western troops have consistently escalated resentment from community leaders while failing to actually reform these environments.

It’s been more than 14 years since the night almost 3,000 people were killed on 9/11. Since then, defense growth has burgeoned, from the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 to the creation of the U.S. Africa Command in 2007. Classified research at national universities, a once controversial and protested measure, has now become commonplace and even accepted as a symbol of academic prestige. It’s clear that military institutions have the money and the power to change the landscape of higher education, but the federal government has not come closer to truly understanding the communities at hand. Complex warehouses of international data and an army of information scientists only further highlight an international community that is just as chaotic as it was before.

At USC, it’s all too common to see disciplines in the arts and letters downplayed in favor of the applied disciplines. The huge disparities in research funding only highlight our failure to study the consequences and impacts of these applied disciplines. Developing skills for an evolving job market is an important goal in pursuing higher education, but the post-9/11 military narrative only exemplifies how the reason for our chosen work may be more important than the job itself.