Sunday, April 30, 2017

Week 5 A01 Regenia Un

Regenia Un
A01
Week5



In “The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent” by Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira, the term “Imperial University” is introduced and it is very eye-opening because I have never heard of this term before. Last week, we talked about the corporatization of the university and this week we went further to how this corporatization can link to militarism, racism, nationalism, and neoliberalism. In today’s world, many universities are being controlled by the funding and many students’ protest in universities are treated by repressive tactics because they may threaten the funding. Military power has become normalized and the authors effectively used the example of protest at UC Riverside and our school UC Davis to illustrate the acceleration of U.S. militarism. The authors also talk about how the education institutes are turned into vocational center that help the military development of the state, thus literally becoming an Imperial University.

I remembered one time my classmates and I were filming at the school of Law for our filmmaking class assignment, we are holding some big signs, and people started to think that we were protesting and yelled at us before they actually read the words on the signs. That is the first time I deeply feel the limitation of academic freedom and how sensitive the environment is. The universities are no longer a place for ideas sharing, because the way students are treated and trained is affected by the militarization of the state. Therefore, my question of this week is what are the ways that militarization can be reduced and how will it harm students’ security eventually if it is getting worse?

The video that I shared is an episode of Days of Revolt that talks about Militarizing Education. In this video, Alexa O’Brien, an Investigative journalist, provides a thorough analysis of the topic.



Chatterjee, P., & Maira, S. (2014). Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent. Minneapolis- University of Minnesota Press.

teleSUR English (2015, Nov 23). Days of Revolt - Militarizing Education. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntMdeB98lZ0


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