Against the Militarized Academy
Henry Giroux is one of the leading academics in the field of Critical Theory, having authored over 20 books and 200 articles on the topic. He is the chair of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, and his most recent book is The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.
This article was run in the March 18 issue of The Link’s aptly titled “Something Academic” column. The ad campaign at Concordia is winding down, and we threw our punches.
While Concordia University’s decision to allow the Canadian Armed Forces to advertise on the campus may appear to be a violation of student union policy against army recruitment, I think it raises a larger set of concerns about the ongoing militarization of higher education both in Canada and in the United States. In a post-9/11 world, war and a culture of fear as the matrix for all emerging relations of power now spreads the discourse and values of militarization throughout the social order, increasingly producing what might be called the shift from a welfare state to a militarized society.
Militarization suggests more than simply militaristic ideals of masculinity and unquestioning patriotism, but an intensification and expansion of the underlying values, practices, ideologies, social relations and cultural representations associated with military culture. What appears new about the amplified militarization is that it has become biopolitical and normalized, serving as a powerful pedagogical force that shapes our lives, memories and daily experiences, bearing down on all aspects of social life and the social order.
As Michael Geyer points out, what is distinctive about the militarization of the social order is that civil society not only “organizes itself for the production of violence,” but also increasingly spurs a gradual erosion of civil liberties. Military power and policies are expanded to address not only matters of defense and security, but also problems associated with the entire health and social life of the nation, which are now measured by military spending, discipline and loyalty, as well as hierarchical modes of authority.
As citizens increasingly assume the roles of informer, soldier and consumer willing to enlist in or be conscripted by the totalizing war on terror, we see the very idea of the university as a site of critical thinking, public service and socially responsible research being usurped by a manic jingoism and a market-driven fundamentalism.
This should not surprise us, since as William G. Martin, a professor of sociology at Binghamton University, indicates, “universities, colleges and schools have been targeted precisely because they are charged with both socializing youth and producing knowledge of peoples and cultures beyond the borders of Anglo-America.” But rather than be lulled into complacency by the insidious spread of corporate and military power, we need to be prepared to reclaim institutions such as the university that have historically served as vital democratic spheres protecting and serving the interests of social justice and equality. What I want to suggest is that such a struggle is not only political but also pedagogical in nature.
Large numbers of students pass through the hallowed halls of academe, and it is crucial that they be educated in ways that enable them to recognize the creeping militarization and its effects throughout Canadian society. But students must also recognize how such anti-democratic forces work to dismantle the university itself as a place to learn how to think critically and participate in public debate and civic engagement. In part, this means giving them the tools to fight for the demilitarization of knowledge on college campuses–to resist complicity with the production of knowledge, information and technologies in classrooms and research labs that contribute to militarized goals and purposes.
Even so, there is more at stake than simply educating students to be alert to the dangers of militarization and the way in which it is redefining the very mission of higher education. A grassroots movement will have to occupy center stage in opposing militarization, secrecy and imperial power. This is relevant to Canada under its current conservative political leadership. Such a task may seem daunting, but there is a crucial need for faculty, students, administrators and concerned citizens to develop alliances for long-term organizations and social movements to resist the growing ties among higher education, on the one hand, and the armed forces, intelligence agencies and war industries on the other–ties that play a crucial role in reproducing militarized knowledge.
An oppositional pedagogy of cultural production is needed, one that defines the pedagogical space of learning not only through the critical consumption of knowledge but also through its production for peaceful and socially just ends. In the fight against the biopolitics of militarization, educators need a language of critique, but they also need a language that embraces a sense of hope and collective struggle that will encourage students to reclaim public spaces and institutions regarded as private on the other.
We live at a time when matters of life and death are central to political sovereignty. While registering the shift in power toward the large-scale production of death, disposability, and exclusion, a new biopolitics must also point to notions of agency, power and responsibility that operate in the service of life and the expansion of human rights.
Finally, if higher education is to come to grips with the multilayered pathologies produced by militarization, it will have to rethink not merely the space of the university as a democratic public sphere, but also the global space in which intellectuals, educators, students, artists, labor unions, and other social actors and movements can form transnational alliances to oppose the death-dealing ideology of militarization and its effects on the world, including the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Surely it is time for educators and students to take a stand and develop global organizations that can be mobilized to supplant a culture of war with a culture of peace, whose elemental principles must be grounded in relations of economic, political, cultural and social democracy and the desire to sustain human life.
