The University of Rochester’s Relationship with the Military Should be More Transparent

According to the July-August 2018 edition of the Rochester Review, the University of Rochester is the largest private employer in upstate New York and the fifth largest in the state overall, with an economic influence that extends from employment and capital investment to purchasing and research. This last category generates a total estimated payroll of $275 million and an estimated 18 million in income and sales tax. Over the past five years alone, the UR has received more than 1.7 billion in external funding from both federal and non-federal agencies.

Given the unquestioned economic and social prowess of the UR, I wonder if it is appropriate to scrutinize the university’s relationship with the military- industrial complex. Even though the UR has always been eager to serve the needs of the U.S. government and its military, it has often been reluctant to share the specifics of this service with the public at large. The latest example can be found in a September 16, 2018  Democrat & Chronicle article headlined, “$80 Million for Laser Lab at UR.” Journalist Brian Sharp reports that the “LLE is a smaller counterpart to the government-owned centers in California and New Mexico. The lab employs 350, has 100 students studying and working in some capacity at the River Road facility and routinely draws scientists and researchers from across the country. Its work has both civilian and military applications.”

Again, given how much money the UR brings to the economy in Rochester, I wonder if it is appropriate to ask what those military applications may be. Presumably some of the research and technological innovation will be related to the manufacturing of weapons. Some of this technology may even contain the blueprint for weapons of mass destruction, weaponized artificial intelligence, and other new frontiers of killing that may or may not be ethical by conventional standards. Should the public know what is being developed in that laser lab? Should the UR student body know? Should all of the workers inside the lab know? What is the justification for being vague outside of a vacuous call to protect national security? At what point is a program classified for the sole purpose of disguising what goes on behind closed doors. The UR wants the benefits that comes with working alongside the military, but they do not want to be accountable for the consequences of that partnership. Internally these contracts make sound business sense, but externally these arrangements do not align with the values and mission of the school. In the words of Dwight Eisenhower, We must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow.”

That being said, I get it. The UR brings 27,000 jobs, has a labor income of 1.3 million, and purchases over 1 billion of goods and services. The UR also does a stupendous amount of charity and community service in our community. Predictably the vast majority of people living in western New York are more than content to remain in the dark about their involvement in war making. Just keep the funds flowing.

But I care. I want to know what is being designed for the military and what has already been implemented on the battlefield that has come out of that lab. With great power comes great responsibility. As far as I am concerned, the UR has a responsibility to be far more transparent about their relationship with the military than they have been historically. Speaking of history, this whole topic reminds me of something the radical historian Howard Zinn wrote in an essay for the Saturday Review in October 18, 1969. These words are as relevant today as they were in then, and they are worth recounting in full:

Knowledge is important because although it cannot confront force directly, it can counteract the deception that makes the government’s force legitimate. And the knowledge industry, which directly reaches seven million young people in colleges and universities, thus becomes a vital and sensitive locus of power. That power can be used, as it was traditionally, to maintain the status quo, or (as is being demanded by the student rebels) to change it…Those who command more obvious forms of power (political control and wealth) try also to commandeer knowledge. Industry entices some of the most agile minds for executive posts in business. Government lures others for more glamorous special jobs: physicists to work on H-bombs; biologists to work on what we might call, for want of a better name, the field of communicable disease; chemists to work on nerve gas; political scientists to work on county-insurgency warfare; historians to sit in a room in the White House and wait for a phone call to let them know when history is being made, so they may record it. And sometimes one’s field doesn’t matter. War is interdisciplinary. 

 

 

George Cassidy Payne is an independent writer, adjunct professor of philosophy, and domestic violence counselor. He lives and works in Rochester, NY. George’s work has appeared in the USA Today, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Toronto Sun, South China Morning Post, Havana Times, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pace e Bene, Buffalo News, Albany Times Union, CounterPunch, Commondreams, and more.