Week 5 | Sabrina Chou | A03

Sabrina Chou
ASA 2
Sec A03

Week 5: The Imperial University

In The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent, authors Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira discuss the militarization of the university. Due to the lack of public investment in higher education, universities have turned to corporate funding, which in turn forces them to align their own values and interests with that of corporate culture. Because of this re-alignment of concerns, universities have taken on a more militant method to repress any ideas or protests against war and discipline. In Darrell Hamamoto's chapter in Masters of War, he analyzes the psychology of serial killers and mass murderers, concluding that these horrid acts of violence against other human beings is highly influenced by race. To support his claim, he provides examples of murders who either are veterans of the Vietnam war or have known people who are veterans of the Vietnam war. The war-torn and chaotic scenes that veterans saw often contained images of white men raping and sodomizing Asian women and later suffering little consequence, in spite of their crimes. These incidents then lead to these veterans believing that it is acceptable to violate Asian women.

Desensitization of violence and brutality becomes one of the most prominent effects of war. 

We also see this militarization and desensitization happening in the university today. The UC Davis pepper spray incident is a prime example of such. In 2011, student protestors during the Occupy movement were sprayed by military-grade pepper spray after refusing to disperse from the quad when having been asked several times by the police officers monitoring the demonstration. This event brought up heated debates on the militarization of the police and the university.

Question:
If there were more public investment in higher education, would there still be this militarization in the university?

References:

Boggs, C. (2013). Masters of War Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire. New York: Taylor and Francis.

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

Metro.co.uk, R. H. (2016, October 12). Protests descend into violence in South Africa over free education. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from

http://metro.co.uk/2016/10/12/apartheid-rears-its-ugly-head-as-protests-descend-into-violence-in-south-africa-6187041/