The Corporatization of Academia
I'll be the first to admit that politics bore the shit out of me, but when it does manage to evoke a spike train in my otherwise dormant cerebral cortex, the results are not very pleasant. And when confronted with views that differ from my own, I tend to oscillate between haughty contempt and homicidal rage. Conservative ideas are reflexively mocked, jeered, and scoffed at. People that endorse these views are reviled, scorned, and assumed to suck by association. My political leanings may be extremely liberal, left-wing, and perhaps even radical, but that does not in any way detract from their validity. Could it be that the entire political spectrum has shifted right over the past, say, 20 years? It is possible that what is considered "left-wing" today was "middle of the road" back in 1969? The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are relative, so I find these labels to be highly subjective and arbitrary.
Anyway, this was just a prelude to a politically-charged diatribe that will probably degenerate into an odd assortment of desultory thoughts and strange attempts at humor. Bear with me though, I might actually string together a coherent sentence just by random chance.
It was all triggered by the headline of IEEE Engineering in Medicine in Biology, a monthly publication of The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. "Now what could be so controversial about that?", you may ask. To answer that question, the title should suffice.
Protecting the Homeland
The Many Facets of Homeland Security
Again, you may ask, what is so politically-charged about Homeland Security? I mean, we all want to be safe from terrorism, right? But of course, in order to make such a bold-faced statement about the security needs of our nation, you have to presume that a threat actually exists. So the question then becomes, does it?
Has it been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that 9/11 was actually orchestrated by a foreign intelligence? Were the so-called "anthrax scares" executed by that same outfit, or some affiliate thereof? Or have we forgotten about our own friendly neighborhood terrorist organization, the CIA? The CIA has a long history of military blunders, presidential assasinations, and political coercion that makes it a prime candidate for such an operation. In fact, a memorandum for the Secretary of Defense in 1962, which has since been declassified, supports this thesis (excerpted below):
Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba
Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the government of Cuba. Concurrently, genuine defections of Cuban and military air and surface craft should be encouraged.
It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute from the United States to Jamaica, Guatamala, Panama, or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight.
You see folks, none of these ideas are particularly new. Terrorism has been afoot in our very own backyard since 1962 (at least). In fact, we have a precedent in history known as the Reichstag fire, which is one of many parallels with Nazi Germany.
Okay, so we engineered a "credible threat" from the Middle East to legitimize a series of unprovoked attacks on a sovereign nation that just happens to harbor a shitload of oil which just happened to make certain key members of the Bu$h cabinet filthy rich. Coincidence? Yeah, I believe in the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny too.
But I digress. You see, despite all this political intrigue, I really don't give a shit what happens to this country anymore. I have officially divorced myself from the American culture and its hoard of gluttonous, Christian-right, gas-guzzling, flag-toting, patriotic mindslaves. But when this crap starts to infiltrate the scientific mainstream, a paragon of rational and secular thought, I find it revolting.
To think that countless research dollars, personnel and talent are being squandered on some imaginary, nonexistent, hysteria-induced threat is abhorrent. And to think that I, as a graduate student supported by the ERC, must tailor my research goals to comply with this fascist agenda is equally outrageous.
Unfortunately, academia is being slowly assimilated into the corporate world. Universities are pushing for their academic departments to become more financially independent, to function as autonomous economic entities. Departments, in turn, are encouraging faculty to become more self-sufficient. Soon our only affiliation with the university will be a common address.
And that, my friends, is why I am moving to Australia.
Anyway, this was just a prelude to a politically-charged diatribe that will probably degenerate into an odd assortment of desultory thoughts and strange attempts at humor. Bear with me though, I might actually string together a coherent sentence just by random chance.
It was all triggered by the headline of IEEE Engineering in Medicine in Biology, a monthly publication of The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. "Now what could be so controversial about that?", you may ask. To answer that question, the title should suffice.
Protecting the Homeland
The Many Facets of Homeland Security
Again, you may ask, what is so politically-charged about Homeland Security? I mean, we all want to be safe from terrorism, right? But of course, in order to make such a bold-faced statement about the security needs of our nation, you have to presume that a threat actually exists. So the question then becomes, does it?
Has it been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that 9/11 was actually orchestrated by a foreign intelligence? Were the so-called "anthrax scares" executed by that same outfit, or some affiliate thereof? Or have we forgotten about our own friendly neighborhood terrorist organization, the CIA? The CIA has a long history of military blunders, presidential assasinations, and political coercion that makes it a prime candidate for such an operation. In fact, a memorandum for the Secretary of Defense in 1962, which has since been declassified, supports this thesis (excerpted below):
Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba
Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the government of Cuba. Concurrently, genuine defections of Cuban and military air and surface craft should be encouraged.
It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute from the United States to Jamaica, Guatamala, Panama, or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight.
You see folks, none of these ideas are particularly new. Terrorism has been afoot in our very own backyard since 1962 (at least). In fact, we have a precedent in history known as the Reichstag fire, which is one of many parallels with Nazi Germany.
Okay, so we engineered a "credible threat" from the Middle East to legitimize a series of unprovoked attacks on a sovereign nation that just happens to harbor a shitload of oil which just happened to make certain key members of the Bu$h cabinet filthy rich. Coincidence? Yeah, I believe in the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny too.
But I digress. You see, despite all this political intrigue, I really don't give a shit what happens to this country anymore. I have officially divorced myself from the American culture and its hoard of gluttonous, Christian-right, gas-guzzling, flag-toting, patriotic mindslaves. But when this crap starts to infiltrate the scientific mainstream, a paragon of rational and secular thought, I find it revolting.
To think that countless research dollars, personnel and talent are being squandered on some imaginary, nonexistent, hysteria-induced threat is abhorrent. And to think that I, as a graduate student supported by the ERC, must tailor my research goals to comply with this fascist agenda is equally outrageous.
Unfortunately, academia is being slowly assimilated into the corporate world. Universities are pushing for their academic departments to become more financially independent, to function as autonomous economic entities. Departments, in turn, are encouraging faculty to become more self-sufficient. Soon our only affiliation with the university will be a common address.
And that, my friends, is why I am moving to Australia.