[News] Seven Steps to a Homeland Security Campus

[Anti-Imperialist News]

     Repress U, Class of 2012
     Seven Steps to a Homeland Security Campus

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175519/tomgram%3A_michael_gould-wartofsky%2C_class_of_2012_meet_the_class_of_1984/#more
     By Michael Gould-Wartofsky

     Campus spies. Pepper spray. SWAT teams. 
Twitter trackers. Biometrics. Student security 
consultants. Professors of homeland security 
studies. Welcome to Repress U, class of 2012.

     Since 9/11, the homeland security state has 
come to campus just as it has come to America’s 
towns and cities, its places of work and its 
houses of worship, its public space and its 
cyberspace.  But the age of (in)security had 
announced its arrival on campus with considerably 
less fanfare than elsewhere -- until, that is, 
the “less lethal” weapons were unleashed in the fall of 2011.

     Today, from the City University of New York 
to the University of California, students 
increasingly find themselves on the frontlines, 
not of a war on terror, but of a war on 
“radicalism” and “extremism.”  Just about 
everyone from college administrators and 
educators to law enforcement personnel and 
corporate executives seems to have enlisted in 
this war effort.  Increasingly, American students are in their sights.

     In 2008, I laid out seven steps the Bush 
administration had taken to create a homeland 
security campus.  Four years and a president 
later, Repress U has come a long way.  In the 
Obama years, it has taken seven more steps to 
make the university safe for plutocracy.  Here is 
a step-by-step guide to how they did it.

     1. Target Occupy

     Had there been no UC Davis, no Lt. John 
Pike, no chemical weapons wielded against 
peacefully protesting students, and no cameras to 
broadcast it all, Americans might never have 
known just how far the homeland security campus 
has come in its mission to police its 
students.  In the old days, you might have called 
in the National Guard.  Nowadays, all you need is 
an FBI-trained, federally funded, and “less 
lethally” armed campus police department.

     The mass pepper-spraying of students at UC 
Davis was only the most public manifestation of a 
long-running campus trend in which, for officers 
of the peace, the pacification of student protest 
has become part of the job description.  The 
weapons of choice have sometimes been blunt 
instruments, such as the extendable batons used 
to bludgeon the student body at Berkeley, Baruch, 
and the University of Puerto Rico.  At other 
times, tactical officers have turned to 
“less-lethal” munitions, like the CS gas, beanbag 
rounds, and pepper pellets fired into crowds at 
Occupy protests across the University of California system this past winter.

     Yet for everything we see of the homeland 
security campus, there is a good deal more that 
we miss.  Behind the riot suits, the baton 
strikes, and the pepper-spray cannons stands a 
sprawling infrastructure made possible by 
multimillion-dollar federal grants, “memoranda of 
understanding” and “mutual aid” agreements among 
law enforcement agencies, counter-terrorism 
training, an FBI-sponsored “Academic Alliance,” 
and 103 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (which 
provide “one-stop shopping” for counterterrorism 
operations to more than 50 federal and 600 state and local agencies).

     “We have to go where terrorism takes us, so 
we often have to go onto campuses,” FBI Special 
Agent Jennifer Gant told Campus Safety Magazine 
in an interview last year.  To that end, campus 
administrators and campus police chiefs are now 
known to coordinate their operations with 
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “special 
advisors,” FBI “campus liaison agents,” an 
FBI-led National Security Advisory Board, and a 
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which 
instructs local law enforcement in everything 
from “physical techniques” to “behavioral 
science.”  More than half of campus police forces 
already have “intelligence-sharing agreements” 
with these and other government agencies in place.

     2. Get a SWAT team

     Since 2007, campus police forces have 
decisively escalated their tactics, expanded 
their arsenals, and trained ever more of their 
officers in SWAT-style paramilitary 
policing.  Many agencies acquire their arms 
directly from the Department of Defense through a 
surplus weapons sales program known as “1033,” 
which offers, among other things, “used grenade 
launchers (for the deployment of less lethal 
weapons)... for a significantly reduced cost.”

     According to the most recent federal data 
available, nine out of 10 campus agencies with 
sworn police officers now deploy armed patrols 
authorized to use deadly force.  Nine in 10 also 
authorize the use of chemical munitions, while 
one in five make regular use of Tasers.  Last 
August, an 18-year old student athlete died after 
being tased at the University of Cincinnati.

     Meanwhile, many campus police squads have 
been educated in the art of war through regular 
special weapons training sessions by “tactical 
officers’ associations” which run a kind of SWAT 
university.  In October, UC Berkeley played host 
to an “Urban Shield” SWAT training exercise 
involving local and campus agencies, the 
California National Guard, and special police 
forces from Israel, Jordan, and Bahrain.  And 
since 2010, West Texas A&M has played host to 
paramilitary training programs for police from Mexico.

     In October, the University of North Carolina 
at Charlotte got its very own SWAT team, equipped 
with MP-15 rifles, M&P 40 sidearms, and Remington 
shotguns.  “We have integrated SWAT officers into 
the squads that serve our campus day and night,” 
boasted UNC Charlotte Chief of Police Jeff 
Baker.  The following month, in Chapel Hill, 
North Carolina, a SWAT team staged an armed raid 
on an occupied building, pointing assault rifles 
at the heads of activists, among them UNC students.

     3. Spy on Muslims

     The long arm of Repress U stretches far 
beyond the bounds of any one campus or college 
town. As reported by the Associated Press this 
winter, the New York City Police Department 
(NYPD) and its hitherto secret “Demographics 
Unit” sent undercover operatives to spy on 
members of the Muslim Students Association at 
more than 20 universities in four states across 
the Northeast beginning in 2006.

     None of the organizations or persons of 
interest were ever accused of any wrongdoing, but 
that didn’t stop NYPD detectives from tracking 
Muslim students through a “Cyber Intelligence 
Unit,” issuing weekly “MSA Reports” on local 
chapters of the Muslim Students Association, 
attending campus meetings and seminars, noting 
how many times students prayed, or even serving 
as chaperones for what they described as 
“militant paintball trips.”  The targeted 
institutions ran the gamut from community colleges to Columbia and Yale.

     According to the AP’s investigation, the 
intelligence units in question worked closely not 
only with agencies in other cities, but with an 
agent on the payroll of the CIA.  Police 
Commissioner Ray Kelly, facing mounting calls to 
resign, has issued a spirited defense of the 
campus surveillance program, as has Mayor Michael 
Bloomberg.  “If terrorists aren't limited by 
borders and boundaries, we can't be either,” 
Kelly said in a speech at Fordham Law School.

     The NYPD was hardly the only agency 
conducting covert surveillance of Muslim students 
on campus.  The FBI has been engaging in such 
tactics for years.  In 2007, UC Irvine student 
Yasser Ahmed was assaulted by FBI agents, who 
followed him as he was on his way to a campus 
“free speech zone.”  In 2010, Yasir Afifi, a 
student at Mission College in Santa Clara, 
California, found a secret GPS tracking device 
affixed to his car.  A half-dozen agents later 
knocked on his door to ask for it back.

     4. Keep the undocumented out

     Foreign students are followed closely by 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through 
its Student and Exchange Visitor Information 
System (SEVIS).  As of 2011, the agency was 
keeping tabs on 1.2 million students and their 
dependents.  Most recently, as part of a 
transition to the paperless SEVIS II -- which 
aims to “unify records” -- ICE has been linking 
student files to biometric and employer data 
collected by DHS and other agencies.

     “That information stays forever,” notes 
Louis Farrell, director of the ICE program.  “And 
every activity that’s ever been associated with 
that person will come up.  That’s something that 
has been asked for by the national security 
community... [and] the academic community.”

     Then there are the more than 360,000 
undocumented students and high-school graduates 
who would qualify for permanent resident status 
and college admission, were the DREAM Act ever 
passed.  It would grant conditional permanent 
residency to undocumented students who were 
brought to the U.S. as children.  When such 
students started “coming out” as part of an 
“undocumented and unafraid” campaign, many 
received DHS notices to appear for removal 
proceedings.  Take 24-year old Uriel Alberto, of 
Lees-McRae College, who recently went on hunger 
strike in North Carolina’s Wake County jail; he 
now faces deportation (and separation from his 
U.S.-born son) for taking part in a protest at the state capitol.

     Since 2010, the homeland security campus has 
been enlisted by the state of Arizona to enforce 
everything from bans on ethnic studies programs 
to laws like S.B. 1070, which makes it a crime to 
appear in public without proof of legal residency 
and is considered a mandate for police to detain 
anyone suspected of being undocumented.  Many 
undocumented students have turned down offers of 
admission to the University of Arizona since the 
passage of the law, while others have stopped 
attending class for fear of being detained and deported.

     5. Keep an eye on student spaces and social media

     While Muslim and undocumented students are 
particular targets of surveillance, they are not 
alone.  Electronic surveillance has expanded 
beyond traditional closed-circuit TV cameras to 
next-generation technologies like IQeye HD 
megapixel cameras, so-called edge devices 
(cameras that can do their own analytics), and 
Perceptrak’s video analytics software, which 
“analyzes video from security cameras 24x7 for 
events of interest,” and which recently made its 
debut at Johns Hopkins University and Mount Holyoke College.

     At the same time, students’ social media 
accounts have become a favorite destination for 
everyone from campus police officers to analysts 
at the Department of Homeland Security.

     In 2010, the DHS National Operations Center 
established a Media Monitoring Capability 
(MMC).  According to an internal agency document, 
MMC is tasked with “leveraging news stories, 
media reports and postings on social media sites
 
for operationally relevant data, information, 
analysis, and imagery.”  The definition of 
operationally relevant data includes “media 
reports that reflect adversely on DHS and 
response activities,” “partisan or agenda-driven 
sites,” and a final category ambiguously labeled “research/studies, etc.”

     With the Occupy movement coming to campus, 
even university police departments have gotten in 
on the action.  According to a how-to guide 
called “Essential Ingredients to Working with 
Campus Protests” by UC Santa Barbara police chief 
Dustin Olson, the first step to take is to 
“monitor social media sites continuously,” both 
for intelligence about the “leadership and 
agenda” and “for any messages that speak to violent or criminal behavior.”

     6. Coopt the classroom and the laboratory

     At a time when entire departments and 
disciplines are facing the chopping block at 
America’s universities, the Department of 
Homeland Security has proven to be the 
best-funded department of all.  Homeland security 
studies has become a major growth sector in 
higher education and now has more than 340 
certificate- and degree-granting programs.  Many 
colleges have joined the Homeland Security and 
Defense Education Consortium, a spinoff of the 
U.S. Northern Command (the Department of 
Defense’s “homeland defense” division), which 
offers a model curriculum to its members.

     This emerging discipline has been directed 
and funded to the tune of $4 billion over the 
last five years by DHS.  The goal, according to 
Dr. Tara O’Toole, DHS Undersecretary of Science & 
Technology, is to “leverag[e] the investment and 
expertise of academia
 to meet the needs of the 
department.”  Additional funding is being made 
available from the Pentagon through its 
blue-skies research arm, the Defense Advanced 
Research Projects Agency, and the “intelligence 
community” through its analogous Intelligence 
Advanced Research Projects Activity.

     At the core of the homeland 
security-university partnership are DHS’s 12 
centers of excellence. (A number that has doubled 
since I first reported on the initiative in 
2008.)  The DHS Office of University Programs 
advertises the centers of excellence as an 
“extended consortium of hundreds of universities” 
which work together “to develop customer-driven 
research solutions” and “to provide essential 
training to the next generation of homeland security experts.”

     But what kind of research is being carried 
out at these centers of excellence, with the 
support of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars 
each year?  Among the 41 “knowledge products” 
currently in use by DHS or being evaluated in 
pilot studies, we find an “extremist crime 
database,” a “Minorities at Risk for 
Organizational Behavior” dataset, analytics for 
aerial surveillance systems along the border, and 
social media monitoring technologies.  Other 
research focuses include biometrics, “suspicious 
behavior detection,” and “violent radicalization.”

     7.  Privatize, subsidize, and capitalize

     Repress U has not only proven a boon to 
hundreds of cash-starved universities, but also 
to big corporations as higher education morphs 
into hired education.  While a majority of the 
$184 billion in homeland security funding in 2011 
came from government agencies like DHS and the 
Pentagon, private sector funding is expected to 
make up an increasing share of the total in the 
coming years, according to the Homeland Security 
Research Corporation, a consulting firm serving the homeland security industry.

     Each DHS Center of Excellence has been 
founded on private-public partnerships, corporate 
co-sponsorships, and the leadership of “industry 
advisory boards” which give big business a direct 
stake and say in its operations. Corporate giants 
allied with DHS Centers of Excellence include:

     *Lockheed Martin at the Consortium for the 
Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism 
(START), based at the University of Maryland at College Park.

     *Alcatel-Lucent and AT&T at the Rutgers 
University-based Command, Control, and 
Interoperability Center for Advanced Data Analysis (CICADA).

     *ExxonMobil and Con Edison at the Center for 
Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events 
(CREATE), based at the University of Southern California.

     *Motorola, Boeing, and Bank of America at 
the Purdue University-based Center for Visual 
Analytics for Command, Control, and Interoperability Environments (VACCINE).

     *Wal-Mart, Cargill, Kraft, and McDonald’s at 
the National Center for Food Protection and 
Defense (NCFPD), based at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

     What’s more, universities have struck 
multimillion-dollar deals with multinational 
private security firms like Securitas, deploying 
unsworn, underpaid, often untrained “protection 
officers” on campus as “extra eyes and 
ears.”  The University of Wisconsin-Madison, in 
one report, boasts that police and private 
partners have been “seamlessly integrated.”

     Elsewhere, even students have gotten into 
the business of security.  The private 
intelligence firm STRATFOR, for example, recently 
partnered with the University of Texas to use its 
students to “essentially parallel the work of
 
outside consultants” but on campus, offering 
information on activist groups like the Yes Men.

     Step by step, at school after school, the 
homeland security campus has executed a silent 
coup in the decade since September 11th.  The 
university, thus usurped, has increasingly become 
an instrument not of higher learning, but of 
intelligence gathering and paramilitary training, 
of profit-taking on behalf of America’s increasingly embattled “1%.”

     Yet the next generation may be otherwise 
occupied.  Since September 2011, a new student 
movement has swept across the country, making 
itself felt most recently on March 1st with a 
national day of action to defend the right to 
education. This Occupy-inspired wave of on-campus 
activism is making visible what was once 
invisible, calling into question what was once 
beyond question, and counteracting the logic of 
Repress U with the logic of nonviolence and education for democracy.

     For many, the rise of the homeland security 
campus has provoked some basic questions about 
the aims and principles of a higher education: 
Whom does the university serve? Whom does it 
protect? Who is to speak? Who is to be silenced? 
To whom does the future belong?

     The guardians of Repress U are uninterested 
in such inquiry. Instead, they cock their 
weapons.  They lock the gates.  And they prepare to take the next step.

     Michael Alexander Gould-Wartofsky is a 
writer from New York City and a MacCracken Fellow 
in Sociology at New York University.  His writing 
has received Harvard’s James Gordon Bennett Prize 
and the New York Times James B. Reston Award, and 
has appeared in the Nation, the Harvard Crimson, 
The Huffington Post, and Monthly Review, along 
with TomDispatch.  He is currently writing a book 
about Occupy Wall Street. His website is http://www.michaelgouldwartofsky.com.

     Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook.

     Copyright 2012 Michael Gould-Wartofsky




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