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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/price04092010.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/price04092010.html<br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">April 9 - 11,
2010<br><br>
</font><h1><b>A CounterPunch Special Investigation <br><br>
<br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>How the CIA is Welcoming
Itself Back Onto American University Campuses <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Silent Coup </b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By
DAVID PRICE <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">T</font><font size=3>
hroughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, independent grassroots movements to
keep the Central Intelligence Agency off American university campuses
were broadly supported by students, professors and community members. The
ethos of this movement was captured in Ami Chen Mills’ 1990 book,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0896084035/counterpunchmaga">
C.I.A. Off Campus</a>. Mills’ book gave voice to the multiple reasons why
so many academics opposed the presence of the CIA on university campuses:
reasons that ranged from the recognition of secrecy’s antithetical
relationship to academic freedom, to political objections to the CIA’s
use of torture and assassination, to efforts on campuses to recruit
professors and students, and the CIA’s longstanding role in undermining
democratic movements around the world. <br><br>
For those who lived through the dramatic revelations of the congressional
inquiries in the 1970s, documenting the CIA’s routine involvement in
global and domestic atrocities, it made sense to construct institutional
firewalls between an agency so deeply linked with these actions and
educational institutions dedicated to at least the promise of free
inquiry and truth. But the last dozen years have seen retirements and
deaths among academics who had lived through this history and had been
vigilant about keeping the CIA off campus; furthermore, with the attacks
of 9/11 came new campaigns to bring the CIA back onto American
campuses.<br><br>
Henry Giroux’s 2007 book,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594514232/counterpunchmaga">
The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial Academic
Complex</a>, details how two decades of shifts in university funding
brought increased intrusions by corporate and military forces onto
university. After 9/11, the intelligence agencies pushed campuses to see
the CIA and campus secrecy in a new light, and, as traditional funding
sources for social science research declined, the intelligence community
gained footholds on campuses.<br><br>
Post-9/11 scholarship programs like the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars
Program (PRISP) and the Intelligence Community Scholarship Programs today
sneak unidentified students with undisclosed links to intelligence
agencies into university classrooms (both were first exposed by this
author here in
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/price03122005.html">CounterPunch</a>
in 2005). A new generation of so-called flagship programs have quietly
taken root on campuses, and, with each new flagship, our universities are
transformed into vessels of the mitarized state, as academics learn to
sublimate unease. <br><br>
The programs most significantly linking the CIA with university campuses
are the “Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence” (ICCAE,
pronounced “Icky”) and the “Intelligence Advance Research Projects
Activity”. Both programs use universities to train intelligence personnel
by piggybacking onto existing educational programs. Campuses that agree
to see these outsourced programs as nonthreatening to their open
educational and research missions are rewarded with funds and useful
contacts with the intelligence agencies and other less tangible
benefits.<br><br>
Even amid the militarization prevailing in America today, the silence
surrounding this quiet installation and spread of programs like ICCAE is
extraordinary. In the last four years, ICCAE has gone further in bringing
government intelligence organizations openly to American university
campuses than any previous intelligence initiative since World War Two.
Yet, the program spreads with little public notice, media coverage, or
coordinated multi-campus resistance. <br><br>
When the New Infiltration Began<br><br>
In 2004, a $250,000 grant was awarded to Trinity Washington University by
the Intelligence Community for the establishment of a pilot “Intelligence
Community Center of Academic Excellence” program. Trinity was, in many
ways, an ideal campus for a pilot program. For a vulnerable,
tuition-driven, struggling financial institution in the D.C. area, the
promise of desperately needed funds and a regionally assured potential
student base, linked with or seeking connections to the D.C.
intelligence world, made the program financially attractive.<br><br>
In 2005, the first ICCAE centers were installed at ten campuses:
California State University San Bernardino, Clark Atlanta University,
Florida International University, Norfolk State University, Tennessee
State University, Trinity Washington University, University of Texas El
Paso, University of Texas-Pan American, University of Washington, and
Wayne State University. Between 2008-2010, a second wave of expansion
brought ICCAE programs to another twelve campuses: Carnegie Mellon,
Clemson, North Carolina A&T State, University of North
Carolina-Wilmington, Florida A&M, Miles College, University of
Maryland, College Park, University of Nebraska, University of New Mexico,
Pennsylvania State University, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
<br><br>
But the CIA and FBI aren’t the only agencies from the Intelligence
Community that ICCAE brings to American university campuses. ICCAE also
quietly imports a smorgasbord of fifteen agencies – including the
National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Homeland
Security. <br><br>
ICCAE’s stated goals are to develop a “systematic long-term program at
universities and colleges to recruit and hire eligible talent for IC
[Intelligence Community] agencies and components,” and to “increase the
[intelligence recruiting] pipeline of students … with emphasis on women
and ethnic minorities in critical skill areas.” Specifically, ICCAE seeks
to “provide internships, co-ops, graduate fellowships and other related
opportunities across IC agencies to eligible students and faculty for
intelligence studies immersion,” and to “support selective international
study and regional and overseas travel opportunities to enhance cultural
and language immersion.” ICCAE’s aim is to shower with fellowships,
scholarships and grants those universities that are adapting their
curricula to align with the political agenda of American intelligence
agencies; also to install a portal connecting ICCAE campuses with
intelligence agencies, through which students, faculty, students studying
abroad, and unknown others will pass. While ICCAE claims to train
analysts, rather than members of the clandestine service, the CIA
historically has not observed such boundaries.<br><br>
ICCAE-funded centers have different names at different universities. For
example, at the University of Washington (UW), ICCAE funds established
the new Institute for National Security Education and Research (INSER),
Wayne State University’s center is called the Center for Academic
Excellence in National Security Intelligence Studies, and Clark Atlantic
University’s program is the Center for Academic Excellence in National
Security Studies.<br><br>
With the economic downturn, university layoffs became a common ocurrence.
Need breeds opportunism, as scarcity of funds leads scholars to shift the
academic questions they are willing to pursue and suspend ethical and
political concerns about funding sources. Other scholars unwilling to set
aside ethical and political concerns are keenly aware of institutional
pressures to keep their outrage and protests in-house.<br><br>
Covering Up Dissent<br><br>
Despite a lack of critical media coverage of ICCAE programs, traces of
campus dissent can be found online in faculty senate records. When Dean
Van Reidhead at the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA) brought a
proposal for ICCAE to establish a center on campus, some faculty and
graduate students spoke out against the damage to academic freedom that
the program would likely bring. Senate minutes record that faculty
“representatives spoke against and for UTPA submitting a proposal to
compete for federal money to establish an Intelligence Community Center
for Academic Excellence.” At this meeting, graduate students “listed the
following demands: 1) inform the community via press release about the
possible ICCAE proposal, 2) release the proposal draft for public review,
3) establish a community forum on ICCAE, and 4) abolish the process of
applying for ICCAE funds.” At Texas-Pan American, as at other ICCAE
campuses, administrators noted these concerns but continued with plans to
bring the intelligence agencies to campus, as if hearing and ignoring
concerns constituted shared governance.<br><br>
The minutes of the University of Washington’s Faculty Senate and Faculty
Council on Research record shadows of dissent that are so vaguely
referenced that they are easily missed. The minutes for the December 4,
2008, meeting gloss over the issues raised when the American Association
of University Professors, University of Washington chapter, had issued a
strongly worded statement by Executive Board representative Christoph
Giebel, requesting information concerning UW’s INSER contacts with the
Intelligence Community. The minutes simply read: “… both Giebel and
Jeffry Kim [INSER director] answered a series of good questions that
resulted in a fair, tough and serious conversation.” What these “good
questions” were and the nature of this “tough and serious conversation”
are not mentioned in the minutes, as if “good questions” were not
important enough to enter into a public record. Similarly, the nature of
faculty objections to INSER are glossed over in the 1/29/09 UW Senate
minutes, which simply listed the findings of the Faculty Council on
Research that “a number of email communications have come through the
faculty senate that reflect a range in attitude toward the INSER
program.”<br><br>
In fact, a significant portion of this faculty “range in attitudes toward
the INSER program” is most accurately characterized as outraged. I have
heard from faculty at other ICCAE flagship campuses that some form of
internal dissent has occurred on each of their campuses, and professors
at UW have sent me documents, quoted below, clarifying the extent of the
campus’s disquiet over the intelligence agencies insertion into their
campus; an insertion whose success should be described as a silent
coup.<br><br>
Faculty and students’ public silence at ICCAE universities over these
developments needs some comment. The post-9/11 political climate casts a
pall of orthodoxy over critical discussions of militarization and
national security, and the rise of anti-intellectual media pundits
attacking those who question increasing American militarization adds
pressure to muzzle dissent. Faculty at public universities often feel
these pressures more than their colleagues at private institutions. There
are also natural inclinations to try and keep elements of workplace
dissent internal, but two factors argue against this public silence.
First, most of the ICCAE institutions are publicly funded universities
drawing state taxes; the state citizens funding these universities
deserve to be alerted to concerns over the ways these programs can damage
public institutions. Second, university administrators have been free to
ignore faculty’s harsh, publicly silent, internal dissent. Keeping
dissent internal has not been an effective resistance tactic.<br><br>
Inaudible Uproar at UW<br><br>
In a step moving beyond internal private critiques of ICCAE programs,
multiple professors at the University of Washington have provided me
internal memos sent by professors to administrators. These memos document
the breadth of internal faculty dissent over administrators’ October 2006
decisions to bring the CIA and other intelligence agencies to the
UW campus. <br><br>
Initially, the UW administration appeared to appreciate faculty concerns.
In October 2005, David Hodge, UW dean of Arts and Sciences, met with
School of International Studies faculty to discuss proposals to establish
affiliations with U.S. intelligence agencies, after International Studies
faculty wrote the administration, expressing opposition to any
affiliation linking them with the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
This group of faculty wrote that such developments would “jeopardize the
abilities of faculty and students to gain and maintain foreign research
and study permits, visas, and open access to and unfettered interaction
with international research hosts, partners, and counterpart
institutions,” and they worried that any such relationships would
“endanger the safety and security of faculty and students studying and
conducting research abroad as well as their foreign hosts.” One
participant in these meetings told me that the administration initially
acknowledged that there were serious risks that students and faculty
working abroad could lose research opportunities because of the
CIA-linked program on campus, and that these concerns led the
administration initially to decline any affiliation with these
intelligence agency-linked programs. <br><br>
But these concerns did not derail the administration’s interest in
bringing the Intelligence Community on campus, and the following year the
administration of UW decided to establish the ICCAE-funded Institute for
National Security Education and Research. But after INSER’s launch,
concerned internal memos continued to come from faculty across the
campus. In the past year and a half, letters voicing strong protest from
at least five academic units have been sent by groups of faculty to
deans. <br><br>
In October 2008, anthropology professors Bettina Shell-Duncan and Janelle
Taylor drafted a critical memo that was voted on and approved by the
anthropology faculty and then sent to Dean Howard, Dean Cauce, and
Provost Wise, raising fears about the damage INSER could bring to the
University: <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>“As anthropologists, we also have more specific concerns relating to
the nature of our research, which involves long-term in-depth studies of
communities, the majority of which are located outside the United States.
Some of these communities are very poor, some face repressive
governments, and some are on the receiving end of U.S. projections of
military power ... our profession’s Code of Ethics requires first and
foremost that we cause no harm to the people among whom we conduct
research.”<br><br>
</dl>Shell-Duncan and Taylor tied discplinary concerns to anthropology’s
core ethical principles and raised apprehensions that INSER funding
could convert the university into a hosting facility for “military
intelligence-gathering efforts.” <br><br>
They pointed to:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“1) the reports that students are required to submit to INSER at the
end of their studies, and 2) the debriefing that they are required to
undergo upon their return. Although our faculty have already been asked
[to be] academic advisors for students with INSER funding, we have never
been given any information on the guidelines for the reports, or the
nature, scope or purpose of the debriefing process. This is of particular
concern given that National Security is not an academic field of study
but a military and government effort. Unless and until we are provided
with clear and compelling information that proves otherwise, we must
infer that these reports and debriefings are, in fact, military
intelligence-gathering efforts.”<br><br>
</dl>They cited a
<a href="http://www.aaanet.org/pdf/upload/FINAL_Report_Complete.pdf">2007
report (of which I am a co-author) written by an American Anthropological
Association (AAA) commission</a>, evaluating a variety of engagements
between anthropologists and the military and intelligence agencies. The
anthropologists argued that this AAA report found that while, <br>
“…some forms of engagement with these agencies might be laudable, the
Commission also issued cautions about situations likely to entail
violations of the ethical principles of our profession. In particular,
the members of the Commission expressed serious concern about ‘a
situation in which anthropologists would be performing fieldwork on
behalf of a military or intelligence program, among a local population,
for the purpose of supporting operations on the ground.’” <br><br>
Other academic departments wrote the UW administration expressing
concerns. In November 2008, members of the Latin American Studies
division in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies
complained to the administration in a memo that <br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“in light of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s extensive track-record
of undermining democracies and involvement in human rights violations in
Latin America and elsewhere, we find it unconscionable that the UW would
have formal ties with the newly created Office of the Director of
National Intelligence (ODNI), let alone involve our students in an
exercise of gathering intelligence information and assist it with its
public relations campaign among children in our local schools. The most
recent examples of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s inexcusable behavior
in Latin America are torture at Guantanamo detention centers,
collaboration with the infamous School of the Americas, the backing of
paramilitary forces as part of the ‘drug war,’ ... and support for the
failed coup in Venezuela…<br><br>
<dd>“…Some would argue that UW should engage the Intelligence Community
as a method of constructively influencing or reforming it. To our mind,
this argument is naïve and misguided at best. The training we provide is
unlikely to change the deeply entrenched institutional cultures among the
various entities, such as the CIA, which form a part of ODNI. In effect,
then, we would be enabling the Intelligence Community to be more
effective at carrying out their indefensible activities ... We realize
that the UW faces a number of financial constraints, perhaps now more
than ever, but the needs for monies can never justify collaboration with
an Intelligence Community, which is responsible for hundreds of thousands
of deaths and immeasurable human suffering throughout the
world.”<br><br>
</dl>Also at UW a group of Southeast Asian Studies Center faculty and
members of the History Department questioned whether the administration
had considered how the presence of INSER on campus would taint professors
and students because, in the words of the group in the History
Department, “The professional bodies of many disciplines and professional
programs have barred members from participating in programs funded by
groups like the CIA due to the ethical conflicts such a relationship
would involve. Did the administration take this into account in the
process of creating INSER? Are there steps taken in the administration of
funds from INSER to prevent faculty from unknowingly compromising their
professional and ethical obligations?”<br><br>
Among the problems facing the UW administration in creating INSER was
finding an academic structure to administer such a stigmatized program.
Because the social sciences represented hostile territory, administrators
looked to the Information School. But many Information School faculty
weren’t happy about having to house INSER. A letter signed by a dozen
faculty from the International Studies Fund Group Librarians expressed
deep concerns that that housing “a CIA Officer in Residence” would
pollute perceptions of them in ways that could “damage our ability to
serve the [other campus constituencies],” arguing that their long
standing “strategy of impartial professionalism” across the campus “has
enabled us to create collections of such depth over the years. It is also
this professional independence that has in the past protected us from
undue scrutiny by the governments of the countries that we visit and from
which we solicit information sources – sometimes of the most sensitive
nature – for our scholarly collections.” <br><br>
While it is encouraging to find UW faculty raising ethical, historical,
and political objections, it’s far from clear that these private
critiques had any measurable effect, precisely because they remained
private.<br><br>
Today, INSER hosts at least one CIA funded post-doc on the UW campus. It
is unknown how many CIA-linked employees or CIA-linked students are now
on the UW’s campus. We don’t know what all members of the intelligence
agencies on campus are doing, but scholars who study the history of the
agency know that in the past CIA campus operatives have performed a range
of activities that included using funding fronts to get unwitting social
scientists to conduct pieces of research that were used to construct an
interrogation and torture manual; to establish contacts used to recruit
foreign students to collect intelligence for the CIA; and debriefing of
graduate students upon return from foreign travel of research. We know
historically that the CIA has cultivated relationships with professors in
order to recruit students. When universities import ICCAE programs, they
bring this history with them, and, as students from ICCAE universities
travel abroad, suspicions of CIA activity will travel with them and
undermine the safety and opportunities to work and study abroad for
all.<br><br>
There are many good reasons to keep the CIA off campus, the most obvious
ones stress the reprehensible deeds of the agency’s past (and present).
For me one good reason is that this Intelligence Community invasion
diminishes America’s intelligence capacity while damaging academia. As
the Intelligence Community’s “institutional culture” seeps into ICCAE
universities, we can foresee a deadening of intellect, weakening American
universities and intelligence capacities as scholars learn to think in
increasingly narrow ways, described by President Eisenhower half a
century ago in his farewell address’s warning that “a government contract
becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”<br><br>
If the United States wants intelligence reform, it needs to fund
independent scholarship, not narrow the range of discourse on our
campuses by paying cash-strapped universities to house revolving doors
between the academy and the CIA. <br><br>
Universities need to be places where people can freely explore ideas, but
ICCAE inevitably brings chills to open classrooms. How long will it take
until students at ICCAE universities start to wonder about who’s
reporting on free-flowing discussions in classes? With cadres of future
FBI and CIA employees on campus, those who develop dissident political
critiques will find themselves opting for a choice between speaking their
mind, or keeping silent, or softening harsh honest critiques. As ICCAE
students graduate and begin careers requiring security clearances,
accounts of academic discussions stand to make their way into
intelligence files, as clearance background checks ask for accounts of
known “subversive” acquaintances encountered during university
years.<br><br>
These are foreseeable consequences. Now, that the Patriot Act removed
legal firewalls prohibiting these forms of political surveillance, the
stage has been set for a dark renaissance of the fifties to
begin.<br><br>
Ending the Silence<br><br>
If students, faculty and citizens are concerned about ICCAE’s impact on
our universities, then breaking the silence is the most effective
opposition tactic available. Anyone who wants specific information on
contacts between university administrators and ICCAE officials and the
intelligence community can use state public records laws and federal
Freedom of Information laws to request records. Given university
administrators’ claims that everything is above board, these records
should not be blocked by national security exemptions; if they are, this
would be useful to know. Concerned members of individual campuses can use
these tools to access correspondence and verify claims by university
administrators about the nature of their contact with ICCAE.<br><br>
Faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members concerned about
ICCAE’s presence on university campuses should form consortia online to
share information from various campuses and make common cause. ICCAE has
made rapid headway because of the internal campus-specific, isolated
nature of resistance to ICCAE. Something like an “ICCAE Watch” or “CIA
Campus Watch” website could be started by a faculty member or grad
student on an ICCAE campus, providing forums to collect documents,
stories and resistance tactics from across the country.<br><br>
Finally, tenured professors on ICCAE campuses, or on campuses
contemplating ICCAE programs, need to use their tenure and speak out, on
the record, in public: the threats presented by these developments are
exactly why tenure exists. If professors like the idea of bringing the
CIA on campus, they can publicly express these views, but the split
between the public and private reactions to ICCAE helped usher the CIA
silently back onto American university campuses. The intelligence
agencies thrive on silence. If this move is to be countered, academic
voices must publicly demand that the CIA and the Intelligence Community
explain themselves and their history in public. <br><br>
David Price </b>is a member of the
<a href="http://concerned.anthropologists.googlepages.com/home">Network
of Concerned Anthropologist</a>. He is the author of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822342375/counterpunchmaga">
Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Neglect of American
Anthropology in the Second World War,</a></i> published by Duke
University Press. He can be reached at
<a href="mailto:dprice@stmartin.edu">dprice@stmartin.edu</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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