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During the past three months the Gilliland Administration agenda of corporatization, privatization, and destruction of disciplinary units has escalated alarmingly. Its earlier assault on the School of Biological Sciences (SBS) is being expanded to as many as fourteen units at UMKC, this time with the help of a mandate from Central Administration in Columbia. At the center of the latest attack are the School of Education and three departments in the College--Physics, Political Science, and Sociology. All are targeted for "viability studies" or "audits" (read: "punitive fishing expeditions"). The mandate of the committee in charge makes no attempt to hide that their intent is to restructure, reduce, or close down units. Elimination of the School of Education is apparently already under way. The money "saved" will be moved to projects favored by the Administration. At stake, once again, are faculty governance and academic freedom.

The document describing the mandate of the "Resources for our Vision" committee leaves no doubt about the audits' destructive aims. The committee must provide "recommendations for each department or division under Viability Audit. Recommendtions must include either: (A) a clear plan so that the unit will become clearly viable and the expected date by which that will happen; or (B) a plan for program merger, discontinuance, or elimination." In addition, the committee is charged with providing the Provost and Chancellor, by June 1, 2004, " a list of degree programs to be eliminated [emphasis Ed.]; and recommendations for incentives that will improve the productivity and efficiency of our academic programs, emphasizing inter-disciplinary programs, alliances with other institutions, and departmental mergers and consolidations."

Since the committee's mandate excludes the possibilty that a targeted unit is already "viable," either alternative--improved productivity or elimination--involves administrative usurpation of faculty responsibilities for curriculum and instruction. For this reason alone, faculty should be demanding the termination of the audits as currently structured and replacement of the primarily administrative "Resources" committee with competent and appropriate faculty bodies .

In addition, because many units are already greatly understaffed and overworked, "improved productivity and efficiency" can only mean increasing the rate of exploitation of the faculty. Faculty instead should be demanding adequate funding for normal staffing levels and normal workloads.

For two faculty reactions to the viability studies, see "The Viability Process: A Faculty Perspective," by Harris Mirkin, and "Contrary to all that is Rational," Burton Halpert's letter of resignation as chair of the currently targeted Department of Sociology.

There are other drastic changes reflecting the same administrative agenda, and despite the wall of silence surrounding them, as around the audits, the larger plan of a corporate makeover, or takover, is evident. There is much speculation, and little concrete knowledge, about the privatization and outsourcing of the School of Education to an "Institute for Urban Education" associated with the Kauffman Foundation. School of Education faculty are currently in limbo as to the future of their unit.

What may signal a change in policy came November 19, when system president Elson Floyd met with Chancellor Gilliland and asked her to delay action on the Institute until she had "gather[ed] more professors' and community representatives' input" (Lynn Franey, "Floyd wants more public input on UMKC plan," [KC Star, December 4, 2003], B10). President Floyd is to be commended for stepping in, but it remains to be seen just who is meant by "professors" and "community representatives." Given the local administration's track record, it's clear the School of Education isn't out of the woods by a long shot.

A critique of the Institute appeared in the Star "As I See It" column December 2. Charles G. Spencer, a geologist and science education consultant, objects to "administrative unilateralism at UMKC" which leaves the faculty out of the planning process. "The Institute seems to be the brainchild of UMKC's chancellor and provost, a Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation vice president and two UMKC faculty members with close ties to Kauffman. What is most disturbing is that the institute will not exist within the School of Education, but replace it," and that it will answer to "external entities with their own agendas." Spencer also questions the decision to leave the regional school districts out of the plan, since "UMKC is supported by tax dollars from the suburbs and rural areas as well as the urban core." Finally, he sees the Institute plan as the latest in a series of Gilliland administration follies. "Under the guise of establishing collaborations with the community, the university now pursues funding relationships that transfer de facto governance of academic units from faculty to external institutions."

John Cleek, Dean of the School of Education, and Ted Sheldon, Dean of the Library, both abruptly announced their intention of leaving their deans' positions. Cleek departed with one week's notice, to take a position dealing with the "challenge" of expanding distance education (see Provost Ballard's memo to the faculty of October 17). Sheldon is taking early retirement and leaving the University altogether. Faculty in the School of Education consider Cleek's resignation to have been forced from above, while according to sources in the library, there has been no word from the administration concerning the future of the libraries since the meeting at which Sheldon announced his retirement. The faculty needs to demand significant participation in the process of selecting interim deans, and ultimately in the search process to replace Cleek and Sheldon.

For initial reactions to the Institute for Urban Education, see "Proposed Institute a Threat on Many Levels," "What is an 'Institute' and Why We Should Care," and Acting Dean Linda Edwards' letter to the Provost. For commentary on privatized education schemes see the anonymous satire on the "Brouchers System." The Faculty Advocate will be carefully monitoring developments at the Library for a report in a future issue.

Why the AAUP chapter opposes the audits

We should have an absolutely clear understanding of what these so-called "audits" signify: the administration is trying to dictate curricular policy to the faculty. But as AAUP guidelines state, the faculty have the decisive say in curricular matters. Any proposal to radically change the curriculum must involve the participation and decision-making power of the faculty in affected units. AAUP guidelines were adopted by the University of Missouri system and all four of its campuses in 1980 as a condition of being removed from the AAUP censured list, on which they were placed in 1973. As Adler, McAninch, and Odom point out in their article, the audits violate School of Education Faculty Bylaws, UMKC Faculty Bylaws, and the Collected Rules and Regulations, Article IV of 10.030.

In addition, shared governance includes the right of all faculty--tenured as well as non-tenure-track--to decide the future of the university, particularly in times of crisis, whether or not the institution declares financial exigency. If it does not declare exigency (as in the current situation), AAUP guidelines state: " The decision to discontinue formally a program or department of instruction will be based essentially upon educational considerations, as determined primarily by the faculty as a whole or an appropriate committee thereof [emphasis Ed.]" (AAUP Policy Documents and Reports [9th ed.], p. 25).

The audits are treating UMKC faculty like a passive unskilled workforce, one which is supervised and which does repetitive jobs, rather than the professionals they are in fact. Professionalism entails, among other things, the power to set the goals and choose the methods of one's work. Professionalism is the definition of academic faculty members. Most important, professionalism is the foundation of the faculty's claim to academic freedom and the tenure that protects it. Corporatization means first of all denying, abrogating, and eventually destroying that professional status, which academics work long and hard to achieve, through a extended period of professional education, apprenticeship, and peer review.

Thus the audits are not only limited purges of selected units. They undermine the professional status of every faculty member at the university, tenured and non-tenured, full-time, part-time, and graduate teaching assistants. All members of the faculty at UMKC without exception should understand that they are in danger, whether or not their particular unit is targeted. Since all faculty are at risk, all faculty should organize in self-defense. As I wrote in June 2002: "What is happening now in SBS may be repeated in the near future in other units of the university. Thus it is in the immediate as well as long-term interest of all faculty, tenured, nontenured, and contingent, to publicly make known their objections to the destruction of SBS and to insist on the proper role of faculty in determining the future of UMKC."

But the decision by other units of the University and the Faculty Senate to withhold support for the School of Biological Sciences when it was under attack was a disastrous tactical error. Once the administration saw that it could get away with its first, experimental purge, with strong opposition coming only from the AAUP and a number of individual faculty, it was encouraged to escalate its aggression. Now fourteen other units have been lined up for administrative meddling and possible dismantling, and an unknown number may be added in the future.

UMKC faculty should be reminded, as Ed Gogol points out in this issue, that the pretext for attacking SBS was audit-like allegations and innuendos that bore little resemblance to fact. As I reported in the June 2002 Faculty Advocate, a letter from Provost Ballard "enumerated alleged shortcomings on the part of the School and its faculty" and listed "multiple performance problems." In addition, the plan to which SBS faculty objected called for terminating the School, most likely by outsourcing instruction and research to the privately run Stowers Institute. An analogous plan is being applied to the School of Education, which is to be incorporated into a privately run Institute, probably affiliated with the Kauffman Foundation. Current administration strategy is to starve the School of Education into submission through deliberate understaffing. An analogous starvation tactic was used against SBS, when the Provost punitively froze its funds.

Administration spokespeople are downplaying the dangers inherent in the audits. But false assurances are a standard tactic to prevent targeted victims from organizing to defend themselves. Likewise, factuality and evidence (e.g. about alleged program shortcomings) are hardly a concern of this administration. Any arbitrary claim will do, so long as it serves to confuse, divide, intimidate, and disarm the faculty. See Ed Gogol's article, "UMKC Support for Life Sciences a Sham" in Faculty Advocate (June 2002).

What should the faculty do?

Only a determined and widespread opposition movement among faculty in all units can halt this current wave of purges and assaults on academic freedom and faculty governance, and the dangerous precedent they set for the future of UMKC. Since no unit on this campus can feel safe and invulnerable, it is in everyone's interest to oppose the administration's offensive against the core purposes of the university, teaching and research (both of which involve the Library), and thus against the core constituencies of the university, its faculty and students. Faculty should also inform students about the destructive effects of administration policy on their study and career plans and urge students to organize in their own self-defense. Alumni and parents, likewise, should be informed of the destructive administration agenda being implemented at their own public university. Letters to the editor and op-eds are also important, in the local media and in your disciplinary journals and newsletters.

One thing faculty can do immediately is to put pressure on their faculty senators to adopt resolutions strongly objecting to the audits. At the same time faculty should take the initiative at their own unit level. If the colleagues in your unit are unreceptive, then link up with individuals in other units who are determined to oppose this aggression. The AAUP chapter will serve as a clearinghouse to help faculty network with one another. For networking contact AAUP secretary, Pat Brodsky, 218 Scofield Hall, 235-2826, brodskyp@umkc.edu

In addition, since the audits violate UM system, UMKC, and campus unit regulations, which are based on AAUP guidelines, and thus are utterly illegitimate operations, consider collective methods of non-cooperation with the audits. Finally, and most important, faculty must turn the tables. As Harris Mirkin suggests, let's do a faculty audit of the upper administration. Nowhere in the university budget is there a greater need for "improved productivity and efficiency," belt-tightening, and elimination of redundancies and pork barrel financing than among these overpaid bureaucrats. Whether the money comes from private or public sources, they have been diverting millions of dollars in funds that rightly should be reserved in these financial hard times for the first priority needs of instruction and research.

Isn't it high time to "just say no" to their hostile takeover and to reassert faculty rights and responsibilities?

Proposed Institute a Threat on Many Levels

by Susan Adler, Stuart McAninch, and Louis Odom

On September 30, 2003, Chancellor Gilliland announced, with great fanfare, the establishment of the Institute for Urban Education (see, for example, the Kansas City Star, October 29, 2003). This Institute, we are told, is intended to focus on the preparation of educators (teachers and leaders) for the specific needs of urban schools. This is a goal many of us in the School of Education have long supported. Planning for this Institute could and should be an exciting and renewing undertaking. Many, probably most faculty, would be eager to participate in an Institute composed of the School of Education, the College of Arts & Sciences, and community partners in order to improve the preparation of teachers and leaders for urban schools. However, many of us have a number of concerns, both about the planning process and about the plans.

Planning for the Institute for Urban Education is proceeding without meaningful faculty input. This means that faculty expertise on urban education, teacher education, and administrator education and ongoing faculty initiatives in urban schools are being ignored by the small group of senior university and school district administrators, corporate philanthropic officials, and consultants involved in the planning. It also means that faculty control of curricula called for by the School of Education Faculty Bylaws and UMKC Faculty Bylaws and by AAUP principles, and delegated to faculty as indicated in Collected Rules and Regulations, Article IV of 10.030 is seriously threatened by decisions being made without even faculty input on academic programs.

Faculty were included this Fall in an advisory committee to the Steering Committee for the Institute (which includes Steve Ballard, Susan Wally from the Kauffman Foundation, Bryan LeBeau, and--until his "resignation", which is widely believed in the School of Education to have been forced--John Cleek, Dean of Education). However, a conclusion which has emerged among faculty representatives is that discussions in which they are involved will not have any impact on substantive decisions concerning the development of the Institute. Substantive decisions will likely be made by a group limited to the Chancellor and Provost, the superintendents of the Kansas City Missouri School District and Kansas City Kansas School District, and leaders of the Kauffman Foundation and Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. In the absence of consultation with faculty, this small group apparently intends to rely on outside consultants for expertise. Prior to the formation of the faculty advisory committee, there had been no faculty involvement in dialogue and decision-making regarding the Institute.

Meanwhile, many in the School of Education feel as though we are being starved into failure. Faculty numbers have been reduced from 47 tenure-line, clinical, and visiting faculty at the rank of assistant professor or above in 1998 to 32 tenure-line faculty (including the current acting dean, the division chairs and the Director of Teacher Education), 6 visiting and clinical faculty (one of whom is primarily an administrator), and 3 instructors this semester. Meanwhile, our student numbers have gone up, especially in teacher preparation. We have been informed by the Provost that, despite available VERIP funds, all faculty searches are frozen until that unspecified date at which the Institute is sufficiently planned to allow for the reframing of positions in light of Institute needs.

In the meantime, we are expected to address the needs of an increased number of students with a reduced base of faculty. While new searches are frozen until the needs of the Institute can be determined, two School of Education faculty members are negotiating with the Provost to transfer their academic affiliation and faculty lines to the Department of Psychology. If their proposal is approved, their transfer would essentially deprive the School of Education of the ability to offer courses in educational psychology and quantitative research methods--foundational elements in any School of Education. Furthermore, as a result of retirements and the movement of these two faculty, we have no faculty whose teaching focus is research, thus diminishing the support we can give to doctoral students. A sense of siege and mistrust pervades the School. The dean's "resignation" two weeks prior to an accreditation visit is compounded by the limited resources. The demands of meeting the needs of our current programs and students push us beyond those limits.

It is not clear, at this time, what form the new Institute will take. Implications are that the work of the Institute will supersede the work of the School of Education. That is, it appears as though the School of Education will not be a "participant" in the Institute, but will be taken over by it. We have inferred from what information we are able to get, that the intention is that all School of Education programs, with the exception of teacher and leadership preparation, and professional development for urban school districts, will eventually be closed. Currently, the "bread and butter" of the School are the master's programs for current teachers. These programs serve the entire metropolitan area, but appear to have no place in future plans. Similarly, programs such as counselor education, higher ed administration and our participation in the PhD may have to cease.

What is happening at UMKC is, unfortunately, not unique. Schools and Colleges of Education across the country are under siege for being "out of touch" with the needs of today's classrooms. The argument is that since the preparation of teachers moved from normal schools and teachers colleges to research universities, teachers are being taught in ways that are inappropriate for the demands of classrooms. It would seem that educating teachers to be thoughtful decision-makers who engage their students in active learning and inquiry is no longer acceptable. It is a teacher "training" model, rather than a teacher "education" model which is behind many of the attempts to reform schools of education. An Institute for Urban Education, with top-down control, with no input from university faculty or classroom teachers, is typical of the pressures being felt nation-wide. To say that this is in the service of urban youth is to suggest a perpetuation of existing power arrangements, not an unleashing of creative potential.

The View from Inside: Letter to the Chancellor and Provost

by Linda Edwards

(Dr. Edwards' letter begins by emphasizing the willingness of the School of Education faculty and staff to work toward "improving student achievement and learning in our region's urban schools." It goes on to point out that the Urban Institute initiative virtually excludes involvement by members of the School, and the following paragraphs describe the problems this "lack of involvment has generated."-- Ed.)

1) Though eager to participate in the proposed profound changes and often expressing this desire, faculty and its leadership have been relegated to a minimal to nonexistent role in the planning process ... attempts ... to involve faculty and leadership ... have been at [the level of] window dressing. The structure, curriculum and conceptual framework of the proposed institute, its most fundamental aspects, are being determined by foundations and upper administration of the University. Further, School of Education faculty are advised to look at the creation by others of an institute as a "great opportunity". We might view it as such if we had a chance to participate in meaningful ways.

2) There is a lack of information about the initiative, lack of clarity around the limited information given, and increasingly contradictory messages concerning the structural and conceptual elements of the initiative. We "know" mostly from what we read in the newspaper. We learn, for example, that a consultant hired by the University will "help organize the academic side of the new institute" [Frank Horton, of SBS "restructuring" fame--Ed.] or that it is unknown "what parts of the School of Education will keep rolling along and which parts won't."

3) Though adjured to "keep doing what (we're) doing, which is taking care of 1200 students and keeping (our) curriculum focused on excellence," the faculty and staff and programs of the School of Education are being made increasingly ineffective by the slow suffocation of all forward momentum. I will enumerate only a few of the most critical examples ...

Taking care of students . We have not been permitted to use our VERIP monies (or any other funds) to hire for new and/ or vacant faculty positions. Because of the State's budget deficits as well as losing five faculty to VERIP, we are at an all time low in numbers of tenure track faculty. With the impending departure of two additional faculty to A&S, along with their lines, we have lost the entire program area of Educational Psychology and Research, an area that affects and intersects with all forty-eight of our other programs, from undergraduate teacher preparation to advanced doctoral programs. Our list of eight to-be-[filled] positions (prioritized by using University wide goals) has been put on hold, pending development of the institute. The loss of over one fourth of our faculty and the inability to hire for critical vacancies have a significant impact on our ability to serve present and future students, [and] to carry out all of our programs, and upon the workload of existing faculty. Further, [our lack of sufficient faculty] endangers our present full national (both NCATE and APA) and state accreditation precisely because of its impact on students.

Keeping our curriculum focused on excellence. We have also been told that we cannot move forward with an intensive retrofitting effort for the old ... IMC space on our first floor. The new space configuration, for which thorough budgets, architectural plans and some funding have existed since last April, was to maximize our student services activities as well as to centralize and greatly expand student centered technology programs. For the past three years, faculty have engaged in radically restructuring the teacher preparation curriculum, integrating instructional technology into all program aspects. We have required the extensive development of student technology projects, such as electronic portfolios in the new curricula. We now have neither the space nor the infrastructure to carry out these requirements or prepare our current 300+ prospective teachers to be effective and competitive in the marketplace.

More curricular and programmatic issues. Over the past year and a half, we have also engaged in intensive efforts to completely revise and strengthen our M.A. programs, which serve the largest numbers of ... students (800+). These efforts have come to a halt since it seems meaningless to expend yet more energy in planning and implementing degrees which may not be chosen to keep "rolling along." Other, more minor effects include decisions about whether to spend funds on brochures advertising these newly structured degrees, thus impacting our enrollment management plan, or to restructure our web site, since the revisions may not reflect what will soon exist.

As I write this, faculty, staff and leadership in the School of Education fluctuate between anger, frustration and hope: anger at being marginalized in the institute planning process, frustration at feeling thwarted at every turn in ... serving our students and improving our programs, frustration at being characterized as hopelessly resistant to change when any constructive comments are offered, and hope, growing more slender with every passing day, that we can somehow effect a change in these conditions.

I suggest ... [the following] partial solutions to these acute problems:

1) A written plan, developed collaboratively, for the meaningful and substantive involvement of School of Education faculty and staff as full partners in the planning and implementation of the institute.

2) Clear and timely articulation and dissemination of information about the institute, realizing that if an involvement plan is formulated, we will, by definition, have access to such information.

3) Timely and thorough discussions of transition issues based on better information than we now have, so that we can minimize the damage to our students, future enrollments, existing programs and faculty.

Linda Edwards is Acting Dean, School of Education. Her letter to the Chancellor and Provost is excerpted by permission of the author.

What is an "Institute" and Why We Should Care

by Ed Gogol

The future of the proposed Institute for Urban Education appears to be quite undefined at this point, at least to the extent that discussions of its creation are public. The goals of the proposed institute are undeniably meritorious, supported by the faculty of the School of Education. However, the mechanism of establishing an independent institute outside the rules governing legitimate academic units raises several potential conflicts with a bedrock principle of the AAUP, healthy university governance. Some of the major pitfalls are listed below.

1. Shift of faculty from tenured or tenure-track slots to unspecified positions in an independent institute would violate the guarantee of academic freedom provided by the institution of tenure. (The concept of an independent institute was among the possibilities suggested by Provost Ballard in his infamous May 24, 2002 letter to the SBS faculty.)

2. If faculty lines are transferred from academic departments to preserve tenure in the institute, the affected units will be depleted of personnel and faculty slots, thereby compromising the integrity, teaching, and research capabilities of those departments.

3. If positions in institutes are continually funded by the university, appointments may be made without normal faculty oversight, potentially to reward interests in the community who have provided the administration with support. The appointment, promotion, tenure, and dismissal of faculty are a faculty responsibility and prerogative.

4. Changes in the functions of the School of Education, and perhaps in the composition of other academic departments, may take place without meaningful representative faculty leadership in these academic matters. They may instead be directed largely by moneyed interests (even if well-intentioned in their goals) outside the scope of normal university governance.

5. Finally, these issues of direct AAUP concern do not even touch on the more practical ones of the purpose of such an effort (will it grant degrees?), its viability (will it be accredited?), oversight of credentials of the appointees, and diminished efforts on behalf of ongoing academic initiatives.

(A reader sent us this satirical commentary on a worrisome trend--Ed.)

Fringe Association for Research in Communal Engineering Newsletter, Volume 1 Number 1

by V. T. Skepticism

Brouchers System Announced

The Fringe Association for Research in Communal Engineering (FARCE) announced a new institute for the study of urban bridges. FARCE representatives Ann Teak and Tie Churchstate said, "Local bridges are in a major state of disrepair." Teak indicated that years of complacency in the ivory tower of engineering educators resulted in major failures of the local bridge system. Nearly a billion dollars in state money has been pumped into the urban bridge system over the past 20 years. Churchstate said privatization of bridges forcing competition between bridge building groups would result in the greatest bridges in the world. Strong bridge builders would flourish and poor bridge builders would go out of business.

A new bridge vouchers system, also known as brouchers, will redirect the flow of bridge funding, channeling it directly to individual families rather than to government bridge districts. Families would have a reduction in taxes and be issued brouchers. This would allow bridge choice while traveling the metro. Teak said, "As a pilot project half of the areas bridges will be run by private contractors." Brouchers are advocated on the grounds that parental choice and competition between public and private bridge builders will improve transportation safety for all children. Brouchers will be funded and administered by the government, by private organizations, or by some combination of both.

New Endowed Chair

In addition, FARCE will be funding a new Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurial Bridge Building at the local university. Churchstate's brother, Buck will be the new chair. Buck said "we need new ways of training bridge engineers. The current system has failed our urban bridges. We should throw science out the window and treat bridge engineering education as a business." Buck also indicated that public land grant universities have been a major failure in the USA and that our only hope is privatization of all education, which will allow people with money, business background, and Christian values to run things.

When asked about the legality of brouchers, Buck indicated that "Brouchers are a constitutional way to assist parochial and other private bridges. Brouchers will allow private bridge groups to integrate Christian religious values and doctrine throughout bridge engineering curriculum, indoctrinating students on anti-abortion, creationism and the role of women in society. For example, women will be required to wear hats when crossing urban bridges. In order to save money, the number of girls allowed in the education system will be reduced. "We are going to break the government monopoly," according to Buck. Brouchers are the only hope for poor urban male kids because they will burn in hell if they are not converted."

However, detractor Abe Bell Formalthink says that the belief that brouchers will result in more choices for poor families is untrue. Brouchers will only pay for passage over the poorest private bridges. Even then, few private bridges are located in the nation's inner cities or other economically depressed areas. Fewer still are likely to allow children with disabilities or special needs to cross. In any event, no broucher plan will benefit more than a small number of poor children. Public bridges remain the only reliable resource for all children to cross waterways safely.

"Contrary to all that is Rational"

by Burton Halpert

(Below are excerpts from Burton Halpert's October 25 letter of resignation as Chair of Sociology/Criminal Justice and Criminology to protest the "viability studies." It was sent to Chancellor Gilliland, Provost Ballard, Dean LeBeau, the faculty in his Department, education editor of the Kansas City Star Lynn Franey, and others.--Ed.)

"This is to inform you that I have decided to resign my position as Chair of the Department of Sociology/Criminal Justice and Criminology (effective November 7, 2003) in protest over the the University's decision to conduct a viability study of my department. This decision is so far fetched that it goes contrary to all that is rational in the functioning of any university or organization. Consequently, I do not feel that I can any longer legitimate and carry out the decisions of those above me.

The Department of Sociology/Criminal Justice and Criminology over the past five years has grown into a highly robust department providing quality education to its many students, producing sizeable numbers of refereed journal articles and published books, receiving grants that amount to over a million dollars, and providing service to the community that without exception ranks the department as one of the most highly engaged units on campus. Its faculty have won the University's and College of Arts and Sciences' highest awards in community service, research and teaching. The recent Departmental COPE review was praised by Provost Ballard and led to the Department being given a new faculty position. Yet the Department was selected as one of three from all of the departments in the College ... for the viability study.

The reason given by the Provost for the Department being selected was the Delaware Study based upon FY 2000 SCH and productivity data that showed us as not being cost efficient/ effective. These data were provided by UMKC's Institutional Research Unit to the UM System, which then provided the data to those who produced the Delaware Study.

Continued attempts by the author to correct these data went for naught ... One major flaw in the data resulted from [the fact that] UMKC's Institutional Research Unit [did not know] ... that our Department contains two major disciplines: Sociology, and Criminal Justice and Criminology.... The Dean of the College discovered the flaw as well when he ran the numbers and so did Former Dean Durig, who ran the numbers to corroborate what Dean LeBeau had found.

This flaw ... was brought to the attention of the Provost, who felt that even though the data might be wrong ... 'we would be given the opportunity of showing this in the Viability Study.... he did not want to interfere in the process since it had already begun.' This was subsequently agreed to by the Dean.

As an Organizational Sociologist ... [I can attest that this] decision represents a perverse incentive for our Department as well as other departments and schools at UMKC. Rather than rewarding us for [putting] 'Education First, Engaging the Community, Innovating and Discovering, and Creating a Highly Viable Work Environment (Core UMKC Values),' we are being punished for doing a good job in meeting these values.... How can one lead others as Chair when chaos and unpredictability from above [prevail]. I certainly cannot nor do I have a wish to do so.

The Committee selected to do the Viability Study, and its highly paid outside consultant, have created an instrument that has not been pretested ... How can anyone allow [himself] to be placed at risk by an untested instrument and process--especially a Department that has a large number of untenured junior faculty members?

The aim of the process is to cut programs and faculty if necessary (reported as such in ... newspapers from St. Louis to Kansas City and told to me by the Dean). Now in a rationally run organization one would have no fear, since rationality is the underpinning of "Due Process." While I respect my peers on the committee, I cannot trust their judgement, since they have neither the institutional memory of our Department nor ... any concept of what constitutes either Sociology or Criminal Justice and Criminology....

... even more distressing is the hiring of the [same] outside consultant who was brought in initially to "shape up" the School of Biological Sciences. To my knowledge, [SBS] lost quite a few good faculty as a result. Even though I do not know the full story, from the outside [the SBS case appears to be] another example of perverse incentives at work.... UMKC has become a monolithic authoritarian-led organization where accountability is demanded of the faculty but not [of] the Administration. As Chair I can not in good conscience legitimate this kind of organization or leadership. Therefore, I am tendering my resignation as Chair.

The Viability Process: A Faculty Perspective

by Harris Mirkin

The viability process raises a lot of questions. I don't claim to know the answers, but I think we need to discuss the issues.

1. The College and the Ed School seem to be targeted. Other units are also expensive, but they seem to have argued their way out of a viability examination. Was the College Dean simply less emphatic, were the other units protected because of unstated policy decisions, or is this part of a long-range plan to allocate fewer resources to the College and more to the health sciences and some professional schools? The appointment of a Vice-Chancellor for Research, mostly dealing with Health Science type research, would seem to lend credence to the reallocation hypothesis.

2. Two academic units are being studied, while the administration pays a high salary to Horton, intends to establish a Vice Chancellor for Research, etc. These might be good moves, but is the administration operating under the same rules of fiscal restraint as the educational units? If they think something is a good idea they go ahead with it. If the educational units think something is a good idea they are told that there are no funds. Why don't we have a viability study of the administration? Also, perhaps some of the administrative salaries ought to be looked at, since there are now so many associate and assistant vice chancellors [emphasis Ed.]. Apparently the sports program isn't undergoing a viability study, though it is heavily subsidized by the operating budget and student fees, for about $5,000,000 a year. Why isn't it being looked at?

3. Why was Horton hired? He is a good administrator. Still, it seems as though the job of heading up a campus-wide viability committee should be done by the Provost. No other school in the system has gone for an outside chair. Of course, that leads to the next question, why do we have a campus wide committee?

4. Since the apparent viability problems exist mostly within the College, and since Ballard has denied that funds will be reallocated outside of the College because of viability findings, why is the university wide reallocation committee needed at all? It seems as though the College ought to be deciding on its curriculum, and it ought to make those curriculum decisions with costs in mind. If the College thought outside faculty, from the conservatory, dental school, etc. were needed, it could invite them--though it doesn't seem as though outside faculty would have any special wisdom in deciding on the college curriculum and department structures. If the College thought the issues were so thorny that an outside consultant (like Horton) was needed, they could have asked for the resources to hire that person.

5. Why has the entire university faculty been cut out of the process of deciding on curriculum issues? Neither the faculty nor the Faculty Senate were consulted about the creation of the committee, its structure or its charge (which is exceedingly nebulous). The choice of curriculum by a department in the College largely decides whether departments have high costs or low costs, depending on which courses are required. Doesn't the curriculum committee need to be involved in decisions about which departments are going to grow, be restructured, be merged or be killed? I am not one of those who think the faculty has to have the dominant voice, but we don't even have a minor role in this one. There has been a persistent pattern in the university to decide important curriculum issues by edicts from the Chancellor, the Provost and the Deans.

6. The size of impending state cuts, though great, has probably been exaggerated. We only get about 1/3 of our budget from the state at this point, so even a 20% cut in the state budget translates into an 8 or 9 % cut. Some of that could be offset by a tuition increase, so we are probably looking at a smaller cut. The cuts would be hard, but do they justify a massive restructuring? Or is the plan to shift money around, so the cuts to some units would be far greater than the state budget cuts would justify? If so, shouldn't we (administration and faculty) be discussing this?

7. We know the names of five of the units targeted for viability studies, but there were originally 14 suggested target programs sent to the campus. What are the other nine programs, and why were they removed from the list? Apparently the dean doesn't know this either--so why are the criteria and names being kept secret?

I am a member of a department that has been targeted for a viability study, but these questions are not directed at my department's particular concerns. I suspect that within the framework and structure that has been set up the process will be fair, and faculty will be consulted. These questions are policy questions, about making important curriculum decisions, which affect the entire faculty. For all the rhetoric of cooperation on this campus, it seems that even the minimal traditions of shared governance are being violated in this process. Neither the administration nor the faculty has a monopoly of wisdom on these issues. That is why there needs to be a cooperative atmosphere rather than a hierarchical one.

Transparency and MU Medicine

by Marino Martinez-Carrion

In a flurry of articles in the Columbia Daily Tribune (October 2, 19, 23, 2003) and the Kansas City Star, the latest folly in the corporatization of the university and the influence of business interests on UMKC is being exposed.

In the documents that have been aired, there is direct and indirect evidence of the collusion of the university administration with certain business leaders from Kansas City. The plan to remove the Medical School from the flagship campus to Kansas City, without faculty input or detailed academic analysis of the implications, is the latest, and biggest, chapter in the handing over of the fate of the life sciences programs to the corporate mentality. This mentality sees mainly business profit on patents and licenses as the great bait in the hook for other KC businesses, supporting their manipulations regarding the control of academic programs.

Irrelevant to corporate minds are the facts that such a move would not result in the improvement of the quality of the successful medical program in Columbia, and would deal a major blow to the Ph.D. programs in biomedical education, when dissociated from other quality science programs on that campus.

The guise of promising some millions of dollars from foundations run by themselves or their friends is intended to give the impression of altruistic motives. Does anybody really believe that, when all is said and done, there will not be need of a large infusion of state and university funds to complete such a move? The possibility of getting a medical school in Kansas City, in which they could manipulate academic appointments and the Ph.D. programs toward their profit-seeking ends, is paramount to their plans. This is a primary goal of our campus administration, to demonstrate the "leadership" of the Chancellor in life sciences. First, she wounds her primary life science research unit, the School of Biological Sciences, with 12 of its best scientists fleeing UMKC. Now she tries to dismantle one of the best state medical schools and hand it to the business types who incited her to shake down SBS.

Presumably, then, they would hail her as a great transformer and local hero for having performed an educational travesty, one that certainly would cost the Columbia campus its place among universities in the AAU. The memos from Columbia administrators-in-the-know and Missouri representative Chuck Graham to President Floyd are very telling in their distrust of Chancellor Gilliland and the influence of the Kansas City business barons.

Yet, this is only the tip of the iceberg. What else is cooking, e.g. with the School of Education? Similar pattern. A dean is fired, the business community gets a footing in the School, and the role of the faculty is ignored.

The paths are similar, the difference is that the number of consultants and ad hoc administrative positions on Oak Street keeps growing. Meanwhile the Provost claims he has a shortage in his budget, and therefore needs a reallocation of 1% from academic units. It is about time that our academic bodies hold the university administrators responsible for their actions, when the quality of education and the welfare of the faculty and students are the least of administrative priorities.

Food for Thought

by Pat Brodsky

1. Unanswered Questions

The most frequent complaint I've heard from colleagues all over campus recently is about the lack of information on crucial issues, otherwise known as stonewalling. The Chancellor repeats her promises of openness, while one administrative decision after another is carried out with little or no communication to, let alone contributions from, those most centrally affected. The campus is rife with unanswered questions, questions that deserve fast, honest and complete responses. Let me list a few.

· What is the future of the UMKC libraries? Is it true, as many suspect and fear, that the administration agenda foresees a merger of the libraries and IT, under a director not at the Dean level? Will the administration's infatuation with technology for its own sake lead to a dumbing down of the library, from its legitimate role as preserver of book culture and the printed word and facilitator of research, to a shopping mall "information center?"

· What is the real motivation behind the multiple attacks on the School of Education? Within a few months it has been targeted as one of the units to be subjected to a viability audit; its dean has resigned suddenly and with remarkably short notice; and the administration has moved forward rapidly, and without consultation, on its plans essentially to replace many of the School's functions by outsourcing them to a privately funded institute, whose exact function, structure, and even legality are unclear.

· Who benefits from these attacks? We know who will suffer from them: the School, the students, faculty control of curriculum, and academic freedom.

· What is the track record of community projects already established by private entities, with the blessings or cooperation of the administration? For example, what really happened to the University's agreement with the Belgers? At the Belgers' insistence, the agreement led to the closing of our well-respected university art gallery. But now UMKC has no art gallery at all. The Faculty Advocate plans to focus on the this matter in a future issue.
Louis Odom of the School of Education points out the need to question the claims that improvements in ACT scores, Metropolitan Achievement Test Scores, and student attendance trends can be credited to the "First Things First" reform model implemented by Kansas City Kansas School District, and funded by the Kauffman Foundation. Where is the independent external evaluation of the First Things First reform model?

· Which were the other nine units originally scheduled for viability audits? If, as we know, the data used to select the Department of Sociology were spectacularly flawed, what do the data for the other departments look like? Or are the data merely a pretext for politically motivated purges? Is it an accident that the School of Education and the Sociology Department have been targeted because they serve the real community of everyone in the region, as opposed to the elite "corporate community" which the Blueprint/Vision and the administration serve?

In this context, it is interesting to see what units were selected at the other UM campuses. (My thanks to Dean LeBeau and A&S Faculty Chair Jim Durig for these figures. At press time figures for Rolla were unavailable.) At UM Columbia viability audits are underway for the following degree programs: BA and BS in Physics; MA in Art History and Archaeology and in Exercise Physiology; PhD in Art History and Archaeology, Theatre, and Exercise Physiology; and two academic units, Entomology and Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering. At UMSL the programs currently under review are the MA in gerontology, MS and PhD in physiological optics, the PhD in nursing, and the entire Department of Foreign Languages.

· So here's another question: what does it tell us that of the fifteen programs being audited at MU and UMSL, nine are graduate level programs, whereas of the four currently under review at UMKC, three are "core" Arts and Sciences departments, and the fourth is an entire division of the School of Education?

2. Not All Pigs are Created Equal ...

Perhaps enough has been written about the Chancellor's 36% raise, although even this affront has not succeeded in rousing the UMKC community out of its apathy and into effective action. The Faculty Senate sent a letter to President Floyd questioning his decision. Floyd wrote back defending it, saying in essence that he didn't have to tell us why. Meanwhile, not only did most of us get a 2% or less raise, of which nearly half has already disappeared into higher medical premiums. Now the word is out that a number of people on campus got considerably more, and the Senate is attempting to find out who, how much, and why. At the November 4 Senate meeting, senators were told by the Chair of the Senate to hand back printed data provided by the Administration before they were allowed to leave the room. Unfortunately, most senators seem to have complied. But since UMKC is a public institution, all budget information is ipso facto public, not secret and privileged. Not only senators and faculty, but all citizens have a right to access, retain, and critique that information.

On November 13 the Senate met in a special session with the Chancellor, who had promised to bring "corrected" salary data. Instead, she arrived empty-handed; admitted under pressure that the current data were probably correct, but said they were "invalid" because they all needed an explanation; and objected to the presence of Kansas City Star education reporter Lynn Franey, saying she would not participate in a meeting at which the press was present. This brings me to yet another vital set of questions:

· Who were the persons who received more than the mandated (but unfunded) 2%, and on what grounds?

· How can the Chancellor--and the Senate chair--be allowed to flout state law by attempting to suppress access to and discussion of public information?

· Certain senators are working hard to obtain the facts, and are willing to challenge the Chancellor to her face. But when is the Senate as a whole going to stand up and do its job, as the elected representatives of the faculty, instead of swallowing whatever it's fed?

That faculty raises at other state-supported schools in Missouri (not to mention throughout the US) were the same as or less than the UMKC raises is no argument for a misery-loves-company resignation to "the inevitable." That the state of Missouri and UMKC exemplify national "trends" does not justify the economic warfare being waged against public education by the Bush administration and its helpers in state governments and among university admninistrators. Faculty, students, and citizens nationally are protesting this right-wing assault on the public domain, which includes public education. The national protest trend is the one which faculty, students, and citizens in this region should be joining in ever greater numbers.

3. A&S Commencement: Moment of Pride, or Animal House?

At a time when the corporate leviathan grinds on, dismantling the university piece by piece, the Spring 2003 A&S Commencement was a sobering experience for many of those who participated. There were problems at every level, from organization, to student and audience behavior, to the choice of speakers. From my vantage point as a marshal, I had a chance to see it from the front lines.

The traditions of Commencement have been reduced to a few externals, and its spirit has been perverted, both through administrative choices and through a failure to educate our students and their relatives and friends about what the ceremony means. During the processional and recessional, many students were raucous and rowdy, with no apparent sense of place or occasion. I realize things have changed since my own graduation ceremonies; but the behavior I've seen at this and other UMKC graduations saddens me, because it robs the students of a memorable experience. Many treat it like a sporting event, screaming and waving. The audience of family and friends likewise has no sense of solemnity or propriety, or even dignity. They act like a cheering section, and many left after "their" graduate had crossed the stage, not waiting for the end of the ceremony.

But the low point was the commencement speaker, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans. In her lengthy introduction, Chancellor Gilliland dwelt on Secretary Evans' long-time friendship with George W. Bush, as if this qualified him to speak to a group of graduates. Evans then gave a talk that was emotionally dishonest, partisan, and inappropriate. He began by telling the students that "George Bush congratulates you, cares about you, and loves you." Evans' statement was particularly offensive given the education agenda of the Bush administration, which through vouchers, faith-based interference, corporatization, outsourcing, underfunding and political harrassment of academics reminiscent of the McCarthy era, is attempting to destroy education nationwide. This President's "love" for the students is the love of the wolf for the sheep.

The people Evans proposed to the graduates as models of behavior, Jim Stowers and Ewing Kauffman, are wealthy local entrepreneurs, hardly the sort of figures that most of our students, who come from economically modest backgrounds, are able to relate to, much less emulate. Evans told a disingenuous story of how admiring people all over the world ask him, "How did you Americans do it in only 200 years?" This at a time when America's international reputation is plummeting, and the government is officially thumbing its nose at the international community.

But the worst thing about Evans' talk was the unforgivable trick he played on the students themselves--the guests of honor. He asked all graduates to stand, then told those who made only A's to sit down, followed by those who made only A's and B's, and finally those who made only A's, B's and C's. This left about a dozen students scattered around the hall looking uncomfortable, including a number of African Americans. Others students and people in the audience began to laugh and clap, whereupon Evans delivered his punchline: "Those of you who are still standing have in your transcripts what it takes to become Secretary of Commerce of the US!"

Many in the hall were appalled by Evans' insensitivity, poor taste, and contempt for intellectual achievement. He had singled out poor students before a huge audience of peers and family, on what was supposed to be their day of pride and achievement. Then he boasted of his own poor academic record, and thumbed his nose at academics and quality: you don't have to be a good student to succeed in this society, look where it got me! It would have been entirely different had he said something like, "you can come from a working class family, or be a worker yourself, and make it in America"--but as it was, his stance was mocking, indeed gloating, and very ugly. Evans' performance was an insult to the students, who, along with their families, in the belief that a college education was a valuable and worthy goal, had committed enormous amounts of time, effort, and money to be able to walk across the stage that day. They deserved a better sendoff than to be told that what they had done really wasn't worth much, and to be made a captive audience to right-wing political propaganda.

Can anything be done to restore to Commencement some of its original meaning? Faculty and everyone connected with the ceremony should impress upon students ahead of time its seriousness as well as its joy. Suggest to them that it is a time for dignity, pride, and respect for their classmates and their families. They should also be urged to talk with their guests before the ceremony and ask them to behave in an appropriate manner. Couldn't the University provide at least a token reception afterwards for the grads and their guests? And what ever happened to the idea of students and faculty playing the the leading roles in the ceremony, including a salutatorian and a valedictorian? Most important, can't the graduates be accorded the honor of an honest, intellectually exciting commencement speaker who has something to say that addresses them, their achievements, and their hopes and goals?

The good news is that faculty (and students?) are being asked to suggest names for our next commencement speaker. In many universities students, sometimes with faculty input, choose the speakers at commencement, since it is their day and their ceremony.

The bad news is that the next Arts and Sciences commencement may be the last, as such. Apparently the Administration is considering having one mega-ceremony, instead of separate commencement exercises for each School. The logistical ramifications alone boggle the mind: parking, seating, the length of the ceremony! But most important is that the result could be even more alienating, more zoolike, than what we already have, and negate any possibility of regaining the original atmosphere and significance of the Graduation ceremony.

HR 3077--the Education for Empire Act:
Right-wing Takeover of International Education
Half-completed in Congress

by David Brodsky

(The following report is a greatly expanded presentation of the corresponding print version in The Faculty Advocate--Ed.)

The American Empire

Popular awareness of the existence of an American Empire hardly begins with the latest official announcements, such as the September 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States , submitted by the White House to Congress. Or with Michael Ignatieff's essay, "The American Empire (Get Used to It)," in the New York Times Magazine (January 5, 2003). Ignatieff (and many others) seeks to reassure the public about the "benevolence," "idealism," and "civilizing role" of the US empire (as opposed to all other empires). In reality, US "benevolence" has been exemplified in embargoes, subversion, bombing, invasions, military occupations, massive non-combatant deaths, and economic exploitation, among others.

Public consciousness of the US Empire's existence began in 1898, when the empire officially came into being. So did public awareness of the identity of its principal promoters and beneficiaries, who today continue to be political and economic elites. What has changed is intensified popular attention to its operations, influenced no doubt by the willingness of its planners and apologists to espouse its cause publicly and aggressively. In this respect, open propaganda in the cause of US empire has returned to its roots at the end of the 19th century, when the US made Cuba an economic colony and annexed Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, the latter entailing the wholesale massacre of Filipinos (500,000), all but 20,000 of them civilians.

Popular consciousness, however, has not retrieved the American roots of the terms "imperialism" and "anti-imperialism." They came out of the Anti-Imperialist League, the first mass US peace movement, with a membership of 30-50,000 in the years 1898-1902. The Anti-Imperialist League included such notables as Mark Twain, William James, Samuel Gompers, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Schurz, and Jane Addams, as well as a large labor and women's movement base. One of the arguments the League used against US seizure of other countries was that imperialism violated American traditions and ideals, that is, it was unamerican. Thus the terms (anti-) imperialism (-ist) are not a foreign import but thoroughly American, as American as motherhood and apple pie.

Three European continental empires collapsed after World War 1, and most overseas colonies held by European states gained their independence after World War 2. Into this turmoil stepped the US, which exploited the opportunity of expanding its global reach without the formal annexation of colonies. Under the cover of first the Cold War, and then--following the collapse of the socialist bloc and the non-aligned movement--of "national security" and the "war on terrorism," the US emerged as the dominant military power and imperialist force on the planet.

Empire does not require colonies, but the Bush doctrine of "preventive war" provided the pretext to invade and occupy Iraq, that is, to make it a US colony ruled by a compliant US-installed government. Colonization is intended to insure US control of Iraq's mineral wealth and its economy (e.g. through lucrative "rebuilding" contracts awarded to US multi-national corporations), to extend direct US power to the middle east and central Asia, and through its geopolitical dominance to pressure Russia, China, and other major powers into compliance with the US agenda. The major incentive for empire building and its major beneficiaries are the multi-national corporations themselves and their associated imperial and colonial elites, a fact that has not changed since the 1890s. The losers are the vast majority of the people in both the colonies and the imperial centers.

Because empire building is decidedly not a popular initiative, predictable resistance abroad and at home must be overcome through military invasion and occupation of foreign countries, and through police repression of domestic dissent. For this reason empire requires the dedication of national resources to the military, intelligence, and police sectors, the suspension or elimination of constitutional rights protecting dissent, and the economic impoverishment of the general population, which is asked to make sacrifices "in the national interest" for the benefit of elites.

The economic, political, social, and cultural consequences of empire for conquered peoples are much more devastating. For example, the actual activities of euphemistically named "intelligence" agencies go far beyond "information-gathering" to encompass political and military strategizing, propaganda, psywar, espionage, subversion, terrorizing of civilians, torture, and political assassination (Blum, Killing Hope ). Most of these functions are also carried out by the military and/or assigned to local elite troops in the Third World. The latter are often trained in institutions like the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia (recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). But it has been dubbed the "School of the Assassins" by the movement that seeks to close it down.

The "management" of empire also requires the indoctrination of public opinion, domestic and foreign, and the recruiting of a large imperial bureaucracy devoted to territorial and economic conquests. Recruiting is accomplished through economic incentives, like federal funding of education channeled into a narrow range of careers.

Education and Empire: HR 3077

Education plays a crucial role in the expansion and maintenance of the US empire. Along with the mass media, education is one of the organs of the doctrinal system, a weapon in the ideological battle to control public opinion and gain consent and support for US imperial designs. At its birth, right after World War 2 and into the McCarthy period, the field of international and area studies, focussing on foreign languages and cultures, political science, sociology, and economics, was harnessed to the Cold War, an earlier pretext for US imperial expansion. Corporate foundations, the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and elite universities all collaborated in establishing the field, until Congress took over funding in the late 1950s. The legislation under which the programs were funded included Title VI of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) and the Fulbright-Hays program.

As copious documentation indicates, the main purpose of foreign area studies was to train and recruit academics for Cold War propaganda, anti-communist research and activism, Third World underdevelopment, and military and intelligence work. Despite successes in recruiting large numbers of students and faculty into the war effort, the majority studied foreign cultures for traditional academic purposes. Ideological enforcement of curriculum was covert, like much of the funding and the activities it supported. It was also decentralized, delegated to individual institutions, programs, and faculty. For these reasons, independent thought had room to develop, albeit unevenly and depending on local circumstances, and the McCarthyist goal of ideological regimentation was rarely achieved. As a consequence, many students managed to receive a good international education, whose quality improved in many respects after about 1970.

Certain foreign area centers today maintain close ties with the military and intelligence agencies and continue to place a large number of graduates in these jobs. But many other programs, centers, and faculty over the past thirty years have managed to weaken or break their dependency on the ideology and dictates of the national security state, the relation established at the very inception of the field. Vijay Prashad, Director of International Studies at Trinity College, writes: "The campus struggles during the Vietnam War and the uprisings of students of color (the Third World Strike) pushed the academy to rethink Area Studies" (Prashad). Foundation funding of progressive scholarship increased during the 1970s (Berman, 104-5). Thus "Title VI is not a one-dimensional weapon of imperial domination: it has allowed for the creation of vast amounts of knowledge mobilized by progressives to help us to understand the dilemma of our world.... Area Studies has enabled us to better understand the creativity of popular social and left movements ..." (Prashad).

The political situation, today, however, has radically deteriorated. The mass media have been placed under the tight ideological control of these same imperial multi-national corporations (witness their coordinated cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq), and now education is to be recolonized, resubordinated, and forcibly reconscripted into the imperial service. Prashad writes that the legislation is an "attempt by the state to make the academy into the emissary of Empire" (Ibid).

The neo-liberal global assault on education, continued and intensified by neo-conservatives, has its roots in the drive to privatize and eliminate the public domain (see my report, "The Broad Perspective of Academic Freedom", http://cas.umkc.edu/aaup/perspective ). Privatization, including the private takeover of public education, serves multi-national corporations, the principal promoters and beneficiaries of empire, as well as other right-wing forces (such as the religious right). But the recent passage by the House of Representatives of the "International Studies in Higher Education Act of 2003" (HR 3077), which reauthorizes Title VI funding for university-based foreign language and area study programs, unveils a newly aggressive imperial policy toward education. The term "empire," as envisioned by the radical right now in possession of the federal government, never appears in the legislation itself or in official statements and related materials. Instead, it is replaced and masked by the all-purpose slogan of "national security."

To support goals similar to those of the early Cold War, HR 3077 establishes a centralized, federal, political police agency mandated to place academia under surveillance, regiment thought, and purge dissenters. This agency, the brainchild of the coordinated Congressional and think-tank right-wing, has received bipartisan support, and is the principal means, as one history professor explains, of accomplishing "a hostile corporate take-over" of higher education (Cole). Right-wing operatives associated with well-funded think tanks are aiming to force their way into academia through the door of international education. But their career strategies pale beside the larger imperial agenda, which they hope to ride into positions of greater power and influence.

The House legislation calls for reincorporating international education into the "national security" machinery pursuing the "war on terrorism," and, to a lesser extent, into the direct service of US international business ("international competitiveness", "trade competitiveness"). Gilbert Merkx of Duke University, a presenter at the June 19 hearings on HR 3077, held by the House Subcommittee on Select Education, made the connection explicit: "National security also is increasingly linked to commerce" ("108th Congress Report"). "Commerce" and "international competitiveness" signify the penetration and domination of foreign markets, and sometimes entire national economies, by US based multi-national corporations. The CIA already maintains a Near East and South Asia Academic (NESA) Outreach office ("108th Congress Report").

Because area studies disciplines have won independence from the national security agenda in the past three decades, HR 3077 is intended to discipline and punish "revisionism," marginalize traditionalists, and mobilize the field for national security/war on terrorism/empire. In conformity with the public agenda of right-wing networks, the goal is to remove or silence liberal academics and replace them with ideological conservatives. "'There's the threat that centers will be punished for not toeing the official line out of Washington, which is an unprecedented degree of federal intrusion into a university-based area studies program,' says Zachary Lockman, a New York University history professor and director of the school's Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies" (Goldberg). Needless to say, no faculty who deal with international studies on traditionally academic or progressive grounds were invited to testify at the hearing on the bill, nor were they even represented. On the contrary, representation was limited to military-intelligence, business, and right-wing ideological interests, both within and outside the academy.

The right-wing agenda

Public attention concerning HR 3077 has been devoted to the testimony of Stanley Kurtz at the June 19 hearings. Kurtz is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a right-wing think tank, and contributor to the National Review online. Kurtz's proposals appear to have heavily influenced the legislation, but the House Republicans who drafted the bill were already well disposed toward them. The chair of the hearing ended his opening remarks with tacit support for Kurtz's testimony, expressing concern about the "teachings" of "some of the international education programs" and their "efforts to potentially undermine American foreign policy" ("108th Congress Report").

Kurtz devoted much of his time to denouncing Middle Eastern studies programs, post-colonial theory, and its founder, Edward Said, as unpatriotic and anti-American. He accused them of disloyalty to US foreign policy (the holy war on terrorism), and deplored their influence on "teachers responsible for educating America's young children about the meaning of September 11" ("108th Congress Report"). Denunciations of "corrupters of youth" resonate with the state-mandated demise of a well-known academic in ancient Athens. Said's death in September may have saved him from a similar fate.

In fact, the material Kurtz denounced consisted of a mere 20 pages out of a total of 212 in an anthology of readings about 9/11 for a pre-college teachers workshop (American Council on Education). Only 10% of the readings was devoted to informed criticisms of US foreign policy by left moderates, who were transformed by Kurtz's distorting mirror into dangerous extremists. Right-wing extremist judgments are enabled by the corporate media, which have pushed the political center so far to the right that everything on the left side of the spectrum without distinction can be dismissed as off the scale.

Paying lip service to academic freedom and civil liberties, Kurtz claimed he did not want to ban Said et al from academia. But, in fact, his colleague, Daniel Pipes, frankly declared: "I want Noam Chomsky to be taught at universities about as much as I want Hitler's writing or Stalin's writing. These are wild and extremist ideas that I believe have no place in a university" (Goldberg). Racism and xenophobia also play a role in right-wing assaults on academia. David Horowitz, a right-wing pundit, complains that "'as a result of leftist control of hiring, now 50 percent [of Middle Eastern scholars] come from Middle Eastern countries'" (Ibid).

The specific proposals Kurtz recommended were derived from a book by Martin Kramer, editor of the right-wing Middle East Quarterly. "Middle East Quarterly is published by the Middle East Forum, whose director is Daniel Pipes, the man behind Campus Watch" (Ibid). Campus Watch functions like the American Council of Trustees and Alumni just after September 11, 2001. It monitors the political content of Middle Eastern Studies programs, denounces deviations from right-wing policy, and encourages students to act as informers.

Kurtz/Kramer proposed the following measures: 1) the creation of a Supervisory Board dominated by military-security agencies to enforce "the national interest," including by means of public (inquisitional) hearings; 2) crushing the boycott of "national security related scholarships" through termination of funding for non-compliant programs, and by forcing ROTC and military recruiters onto campuses; 3) imposing "diversity" on area studies faculties, i.e. administrative hiring of right-wing operatives, irrespective of academic qualifications and standard faculty hiring procedures; and 4) increasing funding for students eager to take military and intelligence agency jobs. In Kurtz's opinion, "the national interest" takes precedence "over and above questions of peer review" ("108th Congress Report"), that is, hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions must be taken out of the hands of the faculty.

In response to Kurtz's accusations that Title VI centers "undermine American foreign policy" and "actively discourage students from working for the federal government," opposing testimony was offered by Terry Hartle, Senior Vice President, Government and Public Affairs, American Council on Education, and Gilbert Merkx, Vice Provost for International Affairs and Director of the Center for International Studies at Duke University. They confirmed that Title VI has continued to turn out great numbers of operatives for the national security apparatus.

Hartle declared: "We believe that most of the career security foreign language and area specialists in agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) were trained at institutions with Title VI-funded centers." In, addition, Title VI does "outreach to government agencies at all levels", including the CIA, the military, and the State Department. One example is "the University of Kansas Title VI national resource centers for Latin America, Russia and Eastern Europe, and East Asia," which provide "education and training opportunities for the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth." Instead of defending Said as an exemplary intellectual, Hartle claimed that Said's influence "has been waning," his books are only occasionally assigned, and "historians and political scientists rarely find this theory useful" ("108th Congress Report"). By contrast, Prashad, a working academic in this discipline, states that Said's influence has been so great "that it has provoked an immense backlash from people like Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis, Martin Kramer and Stanley Kurtz" (Prashad).

Merkx's testimony focussed on the numerous and tight connections his foreign area centers have maintained with military and intelligence agencies, and he gives several examples. "During the period of the Central American conflict, my center hosted four workshops for the Defense Intelligence Agency in which academic specialists from around the country, whom I selected, met with intelligence officers from the DIA, CIA and State Department to discuss security issues in a confidential setting." And "at Duke University, the Center for International Studies that I direct houses ... the Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS)," which "interact[s] regularly with national security agencies and military institutions. Shortly before the war in Iraq, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, visited TISS to share with us the Administration's views, anticipating remarks he was to make to the nation at the side of Secretary Rumsfeld a couple of days later." Finally, "I give these examples to make it clear that within the Title VI community there are people like myself who actively collaborate with our national security and defense institutions" ("108th Congress Report").

The Kurtz/Kramer proposals recycle the National Security Education Act of 1992, whose purpose was to increase recruiting into military and intelligence agencies. The NSEA would have created not one but two oversight boards, one public and one shadow board. The Pentagon and intelligence agencies would have dominated policy-making about international education and research. The service obligations of grantees would have been limited mostly to jobs in agencies with national security interests (Cumings, 173ff). NSEA was defeated, but it did survive in attenuated form as the National Security Education Program (NSEP), which is controlled primarily by the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence.

Forces trying to broker the passage of NSEA suggested minor reforms, such as distancing Pentagon funding through regranting agencies. But like CIA-created fronts, these were "little more than laundries for DOD funding" (Ibid, 177). Another proposal, which recommended the legislation incorporate guarantees to the academic community, had equally low credibility. Such promises were "routinely bypassed by the state and area studies academics [themselves]," and Congressional intelligence oversight committees were likewise "ignored and subverted." Finally, calls for "merit review, independence, recognition of the difference between scholarship and government 'service,' and so on, were the same ones harped on by the early leaders of area education, and they did little to hold back the proliferation of CIA-service faculty and students" (Ibid, 177).

Principled critics of NSEA and NSEP objected that students (and faculty) in the program would appear to be "'spies-in-training'" (Ibid, 173). The Association of African Studies Programs stated in 1997 that "scholarly activities and exchanges" should be "public, transparent, and based on academic integrity. This is impossible if academic inquiry about Africa is defined in a major way by 'national security' and military goals" (Association of Concerned Africa Scholars). Presidents of the African Studies Association, Latin American Studies Association, and Middle East Studies Association stated in February 1992: NSEA "will endanger the physical safety of scholars and our students studying abroad; and it will jeopardize the cooperation and safety of those we study and collaborate with in these regions" (Ibid). Thus NSEP was boycotted by a number of area studies programs and professional organizations (Middle East, Latin American, and African), which had passed resolutions "urging members not to participate in defense-related research programs" (Cumings, 174). In addition, starting with the end of the Vietnam war, many institutions adopted policies, some long-standing, that bar military and intelligence recruiters from campus. The same objections apply today to HR 3077, whose clear intent is to remilitarize higher education.

Political Police: the International Advisory Board

While most of the policies enumerated in HR 3077 reconfirm previous Title VI legislation, the major innovation is its establishment of an "International Advisory Board" (also called "Committee"). The Board is simply a policing mechanism to enforce right-wing control. It is "authorized to ... monitor, apprise and evaluate activities supported under this title ... to ensure programs meet the purposes of the title." Under the heading "PURPOSE" the legislation reads: "Such programs not only foster knowledge of the world, but more importantly [emphasis DB], train experts who are prepared to meet America's national security needs."

Other passages from HR 3077 reinforce the message. 1) "The events and aftermath of September 11, 2001, have underscored the need for the nation to strengthen and enhance American knowledge." 2) "Homeland security and effective United States engagement abroad depend upon an increased number of Americans who have received such training and are willing to serve their nation." 3) Foreign language studies are "to assist the national effort to educate and train citizens to participate in the efforts of homeland security." 4) Educational programs are to "reflect the national needs related to the homeland security." 5) One of the "FUNCTIONS OF THE COMMITTEE" [BOARD] is to "encourage students to serve the nation and meet national needs in an international business, ... or national security capacity." 6) High priority recruits are native speakers of "languages that are critical to the national security of the United States." 7) And, finally, the Board itself must include two members from "Federal agencies that have national security responsibilities."

Since the Board's mandate is to subject educational programs to "national security" criteria, with two positions reserved for military-intelligence agency representatives and the remainder to be filled with like-minded appointees, there can be little doubt about the doctrine under which international education is to be reconceived and enforced. A major consequence of domination by the "national security" rationale, as yet unremarked by its targeted victims, is that, in practice, all the other provisions of the Act--which, at least in theory, were once semi-independent and primarily supported traditional educational objectives--will be subordinated to and measured by the agenda of the "war on terrorism." Thus legitimate international education activities will be hijacked, distorted, and corrupted by the requirements of the American empire, the cause which "the war on terrorism" both advances and obscures.

That such an outcome expresses the intent of the House is indicated by the subcommittee hearings, press releases, and other published supporting material. It is also confirmed by the fact that the House passed the bill on October 21 "unanimously" (Goldberg), "under suspension of the rules and without a roll call" (National Council for Languages Report), leaving no record of debate, criticism, or individual votes. These supporting materials and circumstances will surely be used by the courts to interpret actual Congressional intent behind the Act's bland exterior.

If we look beyond the euphemistic language of HR 3077, the Board has the following functions. It is authorized to: 1) determine the shape and goals of academic disciplines, curriculum, content, and mission; 2) enforce indoctrination in and loyal adherence to official imperial foreign policy; 3) require propaganda outreach to pre-college institutions and the general public, e.g. to promote retaliation for 9/11 and the consequent "benevolence," "idealism," and "civilizing role" of US imperialism; 4) impose right-wing operatives loyal to official policy as new faculty in international studies programs, in the name of insuring "diverse perspectives" and "the full range of views"; 5) demand unlimited access to all kinds of information from all kinds of agencies, public and private; 6) pillory dissenters and non-compliant programs by means of public hearings; and 7) require access to all higher education institutions for military and intelligence agency recruiters, in search of "cadres" for the "war on terrorism," particularly among minorities.

To begin with function number 7, section 634 in HR 3077 explicitly makes funding dependent on recruiter access to students and on the absence of undefined "undue restrictions" placed by the institution on students seeking military and security agency jobs. Since any argument against these jobs (e.g. anti-war, anti-imperialist) offered by a member of the campus community or a campus organization could be construed as an "undue restriction" and therefore subject to suppression, student job seekers deprived of full information will be easy marks for the slick PR presentations of agency recruiters, a predatory relationship that already has been established in high schools (Huet-Vaughn).

For example, "military recruiters have already given away over 3 million copies" of a new computer war game, "'America's Army'," which is "wildly popular among many teenage boys.... Two million young people have signed up to play in informal tournaments." One tournament "took place in Kansas City," where teams of twelve "participate in mock combat operations," and, according to Army Times, "recruiters end up with dozens of fresh leads to (pursue)'" (Citizen Soldier).

The term "cadre," i.e. recruits for the national security apparatus, was used approvingly by Merkx in his testimony on HR 3077. He elaborates that such cadres "can serve as an on-call resource to be drawn on in times of crisis, analogous to the National Guard." Hartle compared the "educational infrastructure" to "the federal government maintain[ing] military reserves" ("108th Congress Report"). Civilian education is to be militarized, and students and teachers are to model themselves on soldiers in the National Guard or the reserves. Testimony at the same hearing by the Director of the Center for NAFTA Studies at University of North Texas confirms that the ultimate goal of militarized education is to support the imperial expansion of US business interests abroad. "International education" is expected to train business, economic, and political cadres to fill slots in imperial bureaucracies run by the government and multi-national corporations.

Functions number 1 to 4 of the Advisory Board entail direct interference in curriculum and hiring, responsibilities that belong to the faculty. Relevant language reads: "the Board may address any area in need of improvement"; it can "review and comment upon the regulations for grants"; it can do "an assessment of ... the training provided by the institutions of higher education." The Board can also interfere with cooperating foreign institutions (see Sec.2 (f) and Sec. 606). In addition, function number 4 (insuring "the full range of views") imposes a political test on academic employment. These functions all involve acute violations of academic freedom.

In response to criticisms from higher education organizations that the original bill violated the "the Department of Education Organization Act, which explicitly prohibits federal interference in curriculum decisions" (Joint National Committee), the House Subcommittee on Select Education added a disclaimer to HR 3077: "Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize the International Advisory Board to mandate, direct, or control an institution of higher education's specific instructional content, curriculum, or program of instruction" ("108th Congress Report").

Nevertherless, the weight of all the other provisions in HR 3077, its avowed primary purpose, and the ineffectiveness of similiar assurances in earlier international education laws, give this disclaimer low credibility. For example, judging by the precedent of Pentagon controlled curriculum in high school Junior ROTC programs, there is a distinct likelihood that comparable higher education courses, taught by imposed right-wing faculty, will espouse official and uncritical views of US history and foreign policy (Huet-Vaughn). JROTC has been forced on high schools through the same funding strategy proposed in HR 3077, making federal aid dependent on military and security agency access to on-campus recruiting. "With the 'No Child Left UnRecruited' law now being enforced on school districts coast to coast, military recruiters receive personal data on tens of thoudands of high school students to assist their search" (Citizen Soldier).

Functions number 5 and 6 authorize the Board to act as an investigative body, analogous to federal police agencies and Congressional inquisitorial committees, such as the House Committee on Unamerican Activities and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in the McCarthy period. These functions involve grave violations of civil liberties. The legislation states: the "Board is authorized to secure directly from any executive department, bureau, agency, board, commission, office, independent establishment, or instrumentality information, suggestions, estimates, and statistics .... and each such department, bureau, agency,... is authorized and directed [emphasis DB], to furnish such information, suggestions, estimates, and statistics directly to the International Advisory Board ..." The Board is also "authorized to utilize, with their consent, the services, personnel, information, and facilities of other Federal, State, local, and private agencies ..." ("108th Congress Report").

Function number 4, the political test in employment, links violations of academic freedom and violations of civil rights. In today's political environment, which has been accurately named the "new McCarthyism," suppression of dissent is routine, denial of most constitutional rights has been authorized by the Patriot Act and executive orders, and the government has tried to promote a broad spying and informing program among the population. Today's environment and copious examples from the McCarthy period make it reasonable to surmise that the right-wing operatives imposed as faculty on foreign area studies programs could also double as spies and informers, denouncing their non-compliant colleagues to the Board and to Homeland Security, and as prosecution witnesses in public hearings punishing dissenters. Consequently, the creation of the Board reestablishes a very dangerous precedent, one that has the potential to inaugurate a full-scale neo-McCarthyite persecution that could escalate from international studies into other academic disciplines, and from academia into other sectors of American life.

Finally, the Board is guaranteed almost six years of functioning, more than sufficient time for the right-wing to take over international studies and to expand into other areas as well.

The importance of HR 3077 to the right-wing Republicans who drafted the legislation is suggested by their careful ideological manipulation of historical dates, both overt and covert. The overt manipulation is transparent and predictable. Introduction of the bill to the full House on September 11, 2003 was strategically timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the attacks. The covert manipulation is the more telling one and confirms the bill's neo-McCarthyist intentions. The June 19 hearings of the House Subcommittee on Select Education just happened to fall on the 50th anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953. The Rosenbergs were scapegoated as "traitors," framed by the government, and murdered in the McCarthyist terror. Right-wing historical memory would have been reminded of this date by Ann Coulter's recent best-selling pamphlet, Treason, which celebrates the McCarthy period.

Higher education organizations addressed the issue of the unlimited powers granted to the Advisory Board and its potential for interference in curriculum. The AAUP is the only one to have taken an unconditional stand against the Board, which it wants removed from the Act, because it constitutes a clear and present danger to academic freedom. Another organization noted that the Board's investigative powers exceed the advisory role to which it is allegedly limited, and "its activities could be both political and intimidating" (National Humanities Alliance Report). The American Council on Education (ACE) wrote: "the Advisory Board could intrude into the academic conduct and content of higher education and could impinge on institutional decisions about curriculum and activities. Indeed, the powers vested in the proposed Advisory Board make it more of an investigative, rather than an advisory, body" (Ward). But like the accommodating academic NGOs facing NSEA ten years ago, despite these serious reservations, ACE supported the creation of the Board, arguing that it could be reformed as a harmless instrument supportive of academic values.

Brief history of international and foreign area studies

Before World War 2 education in foreign languages and cultures primarily served Christian missionaries (Asian and Latin American studies) or the foreign service (Russian studies). After the war the expansion of university-based international studies programs was a crucial factor in the expansion of the American empire. In 1943 the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) saw the need for a "comprehensive knowledge of other lands" in order to exploit projected "unexampled" business opportunities for the US after the war (Wallerstein, 196). In the same year a report on area studies at Columbia University wrote of the need for trained people "who are thoroughly, exhaustively, and scientifically informed about particular neighbors." Such information, as the report suggests, will be useful for "one of the great oil companies" (Ibid, 197).

Imperial national ambitions generated imperial international studies. The earliest conceptions of area studies were overtly imperialist on a global scale. An SSRC report in 1947 called for "'complete world coverage'" justified by US interests: "'In terms of the national good, we must not gamble'" (Ibid, 203). The rationale for focusing on "critical" regions was whether they "generate[d] an excess of power," that is, whether they were strong enough to block the expansion of US power. An SSRC conference in 1950 spoke of giving "'education a world perspective'" (Ibid, 206). The mission of the CIA think tank at MIT was "'to research worldwide political, economic, and social change'" (Trumpbour, 70). US area studies plans were called by their right name in a 1952 UNESCO publication. A French writer accurately depicted the US model of area studies as a field "'commissioned by the Defence Ministry or the Foreign Affairs Office of this or that country, with a militarist or imperialist aim'" (Wallerstein, 207).

The post-war model of area studies issued from World War 2 intelligence-espionage agencies. McGeorge Bundy of the CIA wrote that "'the first great center of area studies ... [was] in the Office of Strategic Services'" (Cumings, 163). OSS and later CIA figures, like Bundy, William Donovan (director of OSS and founder of the CIA), George F. Kennan, and John Paton Davies, "played the major roles" in developing the post-war field (Ibid, 164). The transition from OSS to CIA required the replacement of the "anti-fascist politics of the OSS" by the "anti-communist politics of the CIA." This about face may have been accomplished because "the anti-fascists, many of them left-liberals, were either weeded out or fell by the wayside, distressed at the turn taken by American Cold War policies after 1947" (Ibid, 183, FN 9).

Close collaboration between the academy, government (military and intelligence agencies), and corporate foundations (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford), with intimate ties to industry, finance, and elite policy-making bodies (e.g. Council on Foreign Relations), founded, sustained, and shaped foreign area studies after World War 2. Government agencies and foundations essentially defined the field (Berman, 99). "Military, intelligence, and propaganda agencies provided by far the largest part of the funds for large research projects in the social sciences in the United States from World War 2 until well into the 1960s" (Simpson, xii). Bundy wrote in 1964: "'It is still true today, and I hope it always will be, that there is a high measure of interpenetration between universities with area programs and the information-gathering agencies of the government'" (Cumings, 163).

"Davies had a plan to transform area studies and bring enormous amounts of government and foundation funding into American universities,... a model for the organization of studies of the communist world and threatened Third World areas. Donovan, who was then with the Wall Street firm Donovan, Leisure, was at the center of this effort, working with Davies in 1948 and helping him get foundation funding. The organizers specified that the government was not to be involved publicly in developing area studies, thus to allay suspicions that such programs were little more than 'an intelligence agency'.... However, Clinton Barnard of the Rockefeller Foundation ... wrote, 'the most compelling aspect of this proposal is the intelligence function which the Institute could perform for the government'" (Ibid, 164). In fact, "the universities, through their international studies programs," were reorganized after the war to "pump out many of the middle-level technicians needed for managing the Empire" (Trumpbour, 65).

The OSS Soviet Division was relocated to Columbia University "as the basis for its Russian Institute, which opened in September 1946" (Cumings, 163). With startup funding of $250,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation (Berman, 101), it became the model for all other area programs. Carnegie Foundation funding of $750,000, brokered by OSS member John Gardner and Harvard alumnus Devereux Josephs (Trumpbour, 66), went to Harvard's Russian Research Center in 1948, which likewise followed the university-espionage agency model (Trumpbour, Diamond). By 1952 these foundations had awarded several million dollars to the Slavic field. But the Ford Foundation, through its Foreign Area Fellowship Program initiated in 1952, had the greatest impact, particularly on Asian studies, giving "a total of $270 million to 34 universities for area and language studies from 1953 to 1966" (Cumings, 163).

Regions targeted by area studies and the foundations were Africa, Latin America, the near East, South Asia, USSR, and Eastern Europe. Foundation funded area studies centers were established at Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Georgetown, Berkeley, and Stanford, and in Geneva, London, and Oxford (Berman, 102). Funding was also given to educational institutions in "a limited number of African, Asian, and Latin American nations" (Berman, 100). The pedagogy of area studies combined language, culture, and a social science discipline. Sociology, political science, and economics formed "the core of the area-studies programs" (Ibid, 110).

The Columbia and Harvard Centers "became a model for other area progams on Eastern Europe and China. [They were] also a model of cooperation with the CIA and FBI" (Cumings, 164-5). Philip Mosely, director of the Russian Research Institute at Columbia University, and also "a central figure at the Ford Foundation," was involved for over two decades with the CIA and other "secret government agencies," and testified as a friendly witness for the McCarthy era Subversive Activities Control Board (Ibid, 167-168). Sigmund Diamond, victimized in a McCarthyist purge by Bundy, then a dean at Harvard, showed that the Harvard Russian Research Center "was based on the wartime OSS model; that the Center was deeply involved with the CIA, the FBI, and other intelligence and military agencies; that several foundations (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford) worked with the state and the center to fund projects and, in some cases, to launder CIA funding" (Ibid, 165). More generally, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations served "as financial 'covers' for the CIA's large scale entry into academic affairs and domestic politics in the United States." Their activity "appears to have violated both the CIA's legal charter and the fiduciary responsibilities of the foundation's executives and trustees" (Simpson, xxxiv, FN 18).

Major funders of the Slavic field were the US Air Force and the CIA (Cohen, 10). According to "official studies," the military in 1952 supplied "fully 96% of all reported [government] funding for the social sciences" (Cumings, 170). For example, in 1950, the CIA's Project Troy, "a covert effort seeking to beam U.S. propaganda into Eastern Europe," was developed by "MIT and Harvard intellectuals" (Trumpbour, 69). Out of this collaboration "emerged the Center for International Studies (CENIS), a joint MIT-Harvard think tank based at MIT," which the CIA founded and funded (Ibid, 70). "In its early years in the 1950s," writes Cumings, "the CIA underwrote [CENIS] almost as a subsidiary enterprise". Max Milliken, former assistant director of the CIA, was the first director of CENIS. Also on the Center staff was W. W. Rostow, later the architect of the Vietnam War. Some participants, fearful of exposure, wanted other organizations to "'front [for] the CIA'" and one thought that the National Security Council would be "'a wonderful cover'" (Cumings, 173). Cumings remarks that the CENIS meeting transcript "resonates with Hollywood versions of Mafia palaver" (Ibid, 173).

A classified committee on which CENIS-affiliated scholars sat promoted military use of "'unconventional weapons'" (i.e. WMD's), such as "crop-destroying agents that would cause general famine," suggested ways of "'minimizing'" protests by targeted peoples, and discussed means "'to reduce to tolerable levels the political disadvantages of the use of a variety of such weapons'.... the covert use of ... unconventional weapons would be accompanied by overt denial that the U.S. had used them" (Ibid, 185, FN 18). Since the committee referred to Southeast Asia, it appears to have prefigured the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Psywar research done by CENIS-affiliated scholars was later incorporated into the CIA's murderous Phoenix program in Vietnam (Ibid, 186, FN 26).

Other social science "security" projects were equally destructive. When physicians associated with prestigious university medical schools organized "studies" of the physical effects on US soldiers exposed to radiation from atomic explosions, social scientists measured their morale and strove to "'indoctrinate'" them (the word comes from the Department of Defense) "against their 'mystical' fear of radiation" (Simpson, xxxiii, FN 13). Social scientists at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University turned out a number of "studies" whose indirect goal was to accustom the population to the idea of nuclear warfare. Project titles included "The Social Impact of Bomb Destruction," "U.S. public opinion about the threat of war," "the views of corporate executives on maintaining production in the wake of atomic war, " etc. (Ibid, xxxiii, FN 14). The same Bureau studied the effects of large doses of LSD (a component in CIA psywar strategies), and produced marketing advice for tobacco interests (Ibid, xxxiv, FN 14).

Well-known CIA-linked academics include Harvard historian Richard Pipes, who wrote a CIA sponsored study in the mid-1950s entitled "Moslems of the Soviet Central Asia" (Cumings, 170), and Harvard ideologue Samuel Huntington, whose CIA ties were exposed in the mid-1980s (Trumpbour, 68). Harvard's Center was home to Henry Kissinger, McGeorge Bundy, and James A. Perkins, vice-president of the Carnegie Corporation and a director of Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank (Berman, 103).

Secret work for intelligence agencies took a political toll on academics. A 1953 Soviet area studies conference discussing Ford Foundation fellowships, attended by academics and high government officials including from the CIA, "fretted about 'loyalty' checks on grantees, and therefore suggested denying fellowships to 'partisans of special Soviet movements and recognized supporters of political parties inimical to the best interests of the United States'" (Cumings, 171). The Carnegie Foundation likewise screened out left of center scholars (Ibid, 186, FN 28). Beyond academia proper, "all contributors to the government journal, Problems of Communism, which regularly featured most of the prominent Sovietologists of the period, had to be secretly 'security cleared' before their writings appeared" (Cohen 17-18).

Some Harvard researchers were targets of FBI investigations and denounced their colleagues to the Bureau, although working for the CIA often shielded scholars, particularly foreign ones, from investigation. The main intermediary between the Center and both the FBI and the CIA was Harvard President James B. Conant (Cumings, Diamond). Campus informants for the FBI included Henry Kissinger at Harvard and William F. Buckley, Jr. at Yale (Cumings, 166). The FBI regularly monitored course content in "critical studies" fields, as well as the content of lectures sponsored by left organizations.

During the McCarthy period the Columbia University Slavic program underwent anti-communist denunciations and purges, issuing from both within and outside of the university (Blejwas; Cohen, 17). Senator McCarthy personally denounced two of the pre-Cold War founders of Slavic studies at Columbia as members "'of the Communist conspiracy'," one of whom was called before HUAC (Cohen, 17). "Selective purges of dissenting academics" were typical of the new foreign area studies model (Simpson, xxii).

The subservience of international education to the national security state did generate some resistance. Wilfrid Cantwell Smith, in a 1955 address to the American Oriental Society, made a "very traditionalist, deeply conservative defense of the humanist tradition and of Oriental studies" (Wallerstein, 213). Smith accused area studies of "'preoccupation with the technique and method rather than with the object of study, and, correspondingly, with manipulation and control rather than appreciation'." Underlying Smith's critique was an implicitly anti-imperialist educational philosophy, which treated foreign cultures with "'reverence and humanity,' 'imaginitive sympathy and objective validity'." Such an approach was the best way for Americans to "'serve our own culture'" and "'learn to live with (not to dominate) the others who share the planet and its problems with us'." It also defined the proper "'role of the university in a multi-cultural world'" (Ibid, 212-213).

Smith's resistance was echoed in postwar Great Britain. Since the US after World War 2 had replaced Britain as the world's dominant imperial force, area studies in the UK abandoned the policy of imperial domination and war for coexistence with Asia, Africa and eastern Europe (Ibid, 214). A 1961 report acknowledged "'that the civilisation of western Europe has no longer an undisputed pre-eminence. Its importance continues, but it must accommodate itself to other powerful and creative influences outside'" (Ibid, 214). British scholars recruited to the US were likewise critical of US-Euro-centrism. "Sir Hamilton Gibbs, a leading British orientalist who had become director of ... the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard," stated: "'It needs no proof that to apply the psychology and mechanics of Western political institutions to Arab or Asian situations is pure Walt Disney'" (Ibid, 216). Besides dismissing US-Euro-centrism as fantasy, Gibbs may also have been alluding to Disney's reactionary postwar views.

Government funded social science projects sometimes caused scandals. For example, the "U.S. State Department secretly financed studies of U.S. public opinion by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), at the University of Chicago, as part of the Department's cold war lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill," and a scandal erupted when its contracts were uncovered in 1957 (Simpson, xiii, xxxi, FN 5). Another scandal, revealed in 1965, concerned a US government contract awarded in 1955 to Michigan State University to aid in the training of South Vietnam's secret police (Wallerstein, 230, FN 37).

The first major scandal weakening imperial area studies arose from exposure of the 1964 Operation (or Project) Camelot. Operation Camelot was a program "conceived by the U.S. Army's Special Operations Research Office" with the "task of managing national liberation movements in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East" (Simpson, xxiv). Based at American University and funded by the US Army, Department of Defense, and intelligence agencies, it was devoted to controlling, undermining, and overthrowing popular governments in Latin America that resisted US corporate interests. The program's upbeat utopian name, associated with the administration of recently assassinated JFK, reflected the standard military packaging given to projects of US terrorist intervention. Such activities are also known euphemistically as "counterinsurgency," a term which the project description found insufficiently euphemistic, but which it agreed accurately described "'the overall counterinsurgency program of the U.S. Government'" (Wallerstein, 221).

Under the general rubric of "'The U.S. Army's Limited War Mission'" (Ibid, 221) Project Camelot invited social scientists to help the military foment civil wars in Latin American countries. Social scientists were to engage in "data collection" and "assessment," i.e.