BY JOHN STREAMAS
I have been better treated by university police than by administrators. But then, as a biracial Asian immigrant, I could pass for white.
Several students of color—mostly black students but some Latinx and a few Asian Pacific and indigenous students as well—have reported to me harassment by local police. Some black male students have told me about casually going to class when a cop, in the middle of campus in the middle of day, roughly pulled them aside and demanded to know their whereabouts on a particular night. Police were looking for the generic “black male.” One student said that, days later, when a real suspect was arrested, he knew he resembled that suspect as much as Tom Cruise resembles Bob Marley. In other words, the harassment was based on racial profiling. One day a student rushed into my office and dropped off a video of his harassment by cops because he, too, was the generic “black male.” He trusted me with his evidence. Women of color have also confided episodes of harassment—several of them gendered as well as racial harassment—involving not only cops but also, in one case, a judge. As an employee of a state university, I urge students to file formal complaints, but of course they do not, reasoning that the system cannot be trusted. They know history.
For years we have taught about the military-industrial complex. Recent critics have added to the name, as in, for example, “military-industrial-academic complex,” but no tweaking is needed when many big-city police get training and equipment from the military, or when the president of the United States brings together police and military to quell protests. And when that same president evokes images of Bull Connor’s attack dogs tearing into black marchers, then the military-industrial complex is also an apt name for the institutional side of the race war or racist white America’s romanticized prolongation of the Civil War.
What is happening today, in early June 2020, differs from past periods of protest because it is so widespread. Friends in the Pacific report that on Guam alone three protests are scheduled almost simultaneously. Friends in Japan report a scheduled anti-police protest there too. All over the world people have watched images of black women and men murdered by cops and have decided not only to protest the violence but also to express solidarity with its victims. Yeats’s doomsaying vision of a center’s refusing to hold seems to be getting realized now. And the chickens are coming home to roost.
In anticipation, activists have long worked for an abolition of prisons, but now voices loudly call for a defunding of police. The University of Minnesota seems ready to redefine its relationship with police, and student groups elsewhere are demanding that their colleges and universities sever their ties with police. Even the several cases in which police claim to express solidarity with protesters by kneeling with them have been undermined by subsequent violence, as noted by journalist Stacey Patton and my colleague David Leonard in their article in theGrio, warning in their title “Don’t Be Fooled by Seemingly Good Cops Kneeling at Protests—It’s a Stunt.”
We are now long past lessons in white privilege. The race war is on—or maybe it never really ended in 1865. Faculty, further disempowered by the pandemic in recent months, can only hope that administrators will recognize the implications of this war and will adapt the curriculum and campus culture to the new reality. Austerity budgeting and programming are knee-jerk reactions to crisis, the exact opposite of what we need now. Enormous investment in human capital—in the promise of the very students who, liberated from racial profiling and police harassment, can deliver a world with no need for a military-industrial or any other kind of institutional complex—must become a priority for our universities. It is as necessary as the very air we breathe—or, as is the case for too many people, cannot breathe.
Guest blogger John Streamas is an associate professor of critical ethnic studies and American studies at Washington State University.
The writer states “For years we have taught about the military-industrial complex. Recent critics have added to the name, as in, for example, “military-industrial-academic complex.”
The author is misinformed. The “MIAC” or “MIUC” (university) phrase has been in use for decades. What is “recent” is the university’s radical escalation since 2001, in the creation and especially credentialization and dissemination, of State narratology. From the public domain:
“The phrase was thought to have been “war-based” industrial complex before becoming “military” in later drafts of Eisenhower’s speech, a claim passed on only by oral history. Geoffrey Perret, in his biography of Eisenhower, claims that, in one draft of the speech, the phrase was “military–industrial–congressional complex”, indicating the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry, but the word “congressional” was dropped from the final version to appease the then-currently elected officials. James Ledbetter calls this a “stubborn misconception” not supported by any evidence; likewise a claim by Douglas Brinkley that it was originally “military–industrial–scientific complex.” Additionally, Henry Giroux claims that it was originally “military–industrial–academic complex.” The actual authors of the speech were Eisenhower’s speechwriters Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos”
Indeed, see Giroux, Henry (June 2007). “The University in Chains: Confronting the Military–Industrial–Academic Complex”. Paradigm Publishers.
I would say it is more the “student in chains.”
The author otherwise may ratify both the “complex,” itself, and the calculus for decreased Fall enrollments as parents and students become more savvy as to bias, relevance and competence.
I wrote that “Recent critics have added to the name, AS IN…..”
I didn’t focus entirely on “military-industrial-academic complex,” since I have seen other examples, and those HAVE been recent. I know and admire Giroux’ work, and though I wish it were much better known, in fact it isn’t widely known and cited. The critics to whom I refer are recent. So I am not misinformed, and I did not misspeak.
But your picking on such a small point reminds me of the story of the man who, as the Titanic was sinking, paused to straighten his necktie. If I’m right about race, then does it matter who wrote Eisenhower’s speech?