Rachel Wong
Anna Yang
Ju Yong Kim
A02
A02
The Imperial University
The article, “The Imperial University: Race, War, and the Nation-State” by Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira discusses the book, The Imperial University, which explains how “all imperial and colonial nations, intellectuals and scholarship play an important role, directly or indirectly, willing or unwittingly - in legitimizing American exceptionalism and rationalizing U.S. expansionism and repression, domestically and globally” (Chatterjee and Maira, 6). The Imperial University became entrenched as an increasing number of student protests arose in universities, which “normalized” violence. Especially following 9/11, the government and its police agencies have increased censorship and containment of protests in universities. One example of such student protests is the UC Davis pepper spray incident, which was characterized by the extreme repression by police enforcement against the protestors.
The article also discusses how higher educational institutions are becoming increasingly run as corporations. This privatization has allowed public education to impose white supremacy. The U.S. educational system has projected its own ideologies and have disregarded conflicting people’s ideologies, Imperial University is characterized by the “Americanization” of education, meaning one which demonstrates how educational discourage and practices in the colonies “exemplify a colonizing mission” (14).
The article discusses the characteristics of an “Imperial University,” which include academic containment and manifest knowledge. Academic containment is described as when higher education discourages disagreement with the education enacted by the “Imperial University”, and other ideals are seen as “disloyalty to the state” (22). For example, the post-9/11 ideals of Islamophobia was normalized in American society and opposing ideals were seen as “radical” and a betrayal to the government. Another characteristic of an Imperial University is manifest knowledge, which can be defined as “what is, and what can be, known about histories of genocide, warfare, enslavement, and social death and what are manifestly insurgent truths” (30). Manifest knowledge can be seen as a way in which the Imperial University imposes and controls the ideologies of its population.
The article by Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira emphasizes many points from this week’s theme. One theme that continuously stood out to us was how the universities continued to use militarism as a means of controlling the student environment. The “university” seems to want to impose absolute control over the educational system. These types of situations usually blow up and end up in a violence. Recently, a student at UC Berkeley was arrested for possession of a weapon. While some witnesses claim that J.D., the student who was arrested, had no weapons of any sort, he was still handcuffed and sent to jail. Students found this whole incident to be an example of racial profiling. In the giant group, only J.D., a latino man with tattoos all over his body, was questioned. This is a clear example of how police can exercise their power to freely do whatever they want. Minimal policies are in place to restrict this overuse of police power. Police violence has been prominent in keeping control throughout history.
Linking the theme to militarism, students who want to maintain the control that they want, universities continue to oppress the students who speak out. Using violence and other tactics like kicking students out, to make sure that nobody speaks against them. The “university” wants to impose absolute control over the educational system. A part of the university’s desire for control comes from the ideology of nationalism, which is one nation or culture as superior to another, creating a division between ideas and peoples. Sometimes, students might want to be educated about things that the university thinks is useless.
When individuals wish to educate students about other cultures, they are immediately shut down by the university with the excuse of “academic professionalism.” This excuse justifies the right to shut down ethnic studies and other opinionated thoughts that go against the beliefs of the university. The university focuses so much on education because it is vital to the growth in power in militarism. Science, technology, geography, ...etc, are all topics that are useful in creating a stronger military. Studies such as these are heavily funded because individuals want to strengthen the military. With topics like these overpowering many other studies, it creates a dissent in education.
Some students begin to feel that this apparent militarism isn’t the way to ensure “academic freedom”. The university’s definition of “academic freedom” seem to defer from the definition of the students. It may create an environment where certain students who want to break free from learning thus “norm” and want to be educated about other world views. The university have an unnatural mindset of preferring conforming which comes into conflict with some persons wishes for diversity. Some students wish to have different, non mainstream thoughts, different goals, wishing different outcomes. The university, not able to accept this ideology, continues to use violence through the military to create “peace”. This “peace” actually is the start of a disruptive climate, and it contradicts the goals the university claims to be striving for.
The university should be a place for people to come together to share ideas and learn. However, it has evolved itself into being a place of total control of its student’s education. Using violent forces to stop any individual or group from giving their opinions that are different from the “norms.” Not only does this create division within the nation, but it creates division from the outside as well. Universities will continue to have this trend of stopping people from being different. They cannot accept change and that other cultures have already come together. Instead of discouraging this union, they should learn to accept and embrace this change of coming together.
A situation that resonated with one of us, while doing the reading, the Imperial University is that they talk about different aspects of militarism present in the American University. They discussed the idea of academic containment in the Imperial University. Academic containment is the ideal of not letting certain things be known to people. An experience that I had was when I walked out for the post-election protest here in UC Davis after the immediate results of Donald Trump being elected. It brought shock to all of the students that they planned a walk out around midnight. As I was walking down the streets of Davis with my friends chanting ‘“ not my president” we were soon stopped by police figures. They were trying to contain the crowd and have everyone go home. It made me think about how this imperialism is still present in today’s society. They wanted to contain our voice and not let us express our opinions towards the newly elected president. In this way, it was not allowing people to know about our opinions. After feeling such a divide from the nation on picking our president, this was something that also contributed to how imperialism was on the rise in America for the past decade after 9/11.
A recent example of the Imperial University was seen when a student at UC Berkeley was arrested for possession of a weapon. While some witnesses claim that J.D., the student who was arrested, had no weapons of any sort, he was still handcuffed and sent to jail. Students found this whole incident to be an example of racial profiling. In the large group, only J.D., a latino man with tattoos all over his body, was questioned. This is a clear example of how police can exercise their power to freely do what they want. Minimal policies seem to be in place to restrict this overuse of police power. Police violence has been prominent in keeping control throughout history in many societies. Linking this to militarism, in order to maintain control, that the power structure desire, universities continue to join in oppressing students who speak out, using violence and other tactics like expulsion to ensure that nobody speaks against the university.
The article is concluded with a solution to decolonize the Imperial University, which includes not shying away from forms of speech scholarships that compels unease. The only way to overcome the educational prejudices that the Imperial University imposes are to recognize their biases and actively reject them.
The second article of the week, Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence by Darrell Y. Hamamoto describes how murder and killings vary in expressive behavior and take on different meanings depending on the culture. In western culture, violence has become increasingly normalized as seen in the American media and recent mass murders, just as the article, The Imperial University: Race, War, and the Nation-State, denotes. The desensitization to violence has become apparent in recent years, which has developed the normalization of western culture. In the article, multiple instances of mass murders are described that. The article suggests that society must recognize that modern mass murderers and serial killers are connected with the history of “white supremacist systemic violence” (Hamamoto 283). Most of the cases described in the article include serial killers that are obsessed with victimizing Asian individual; these serial killers target Asian men and women due to the stigmatization of them following the Vietnam War era, and also target Asian women due to the sexualization of them.
Citations:
Boggs, C. (2013). Masters of War Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire. New York: Taylor and Francis.
Chatterjee, Maira, P. (n.d.). The Imperial University: Race, War, and the Nation-State. Retrieved April 29, 2017.
Friedersdorf, C., 2017. “UC Berkeley Riot Police Use Batons to Clear students from Sproul Plaza.” The Atlantic. N.p., Web, Retreived 30 Apr. 2017. From https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/uc-berkeley-riot-police-use-batons-to-clear-students-from-sproul-plaza/248228/
The Slow and Painful Death of Academic Freedom. N.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2017. <http://www.thearkansasproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/here-lies-academic-freedom.png>.
Tonsall, S. 2017. “‘Scholar Not a Criminal.’ Group Rallies Against UC Berkeley Grad Student’s Arrest Amid Protest.” Fox 40. Web. Retrieved 30 Apr. 2017 from
Wong, A. and Mcnamara A. 2017. “Students Protest Arrest of Campus Graduate Student on Sproul Plaza. “The Daily Californian. N.p., Web. Retrieved 30 Apr. 2017. From http://www.dailycal.org/2017/04/27/students-protest-arrest-campus-graduate-student-sproul-plaza/
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