All those student protests on the US seem to be about stopping their universities from supporting the Israel government. But supporting a foreign government is not a normal thing for a university to do, why do they do it?
Is there some educational or research resource they get?
Oh boy…so this is how I understand it (as someone who has spent many years in the tech industry - I got out of it thank god - as well as have worked closely with university engineering research departments while employed in tech), but could certainly be missing some critical components here, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
So, the tech industry in the US is heavily subsidized with taxpayer money (like many other industries in the US…yes folks, even the US “Free Market Capitalism “ isn’t really a “Free Market”, as that short experiment has shown it wouldn’t last 2 seconds…but that’s a whole other topic).
As you may know, the tech industry is critical for US “defense” operations. Like helping Israel defend themselves from those ravenous and dangerous Palestinians.
So how does this work in the US? Taxpayer dollars go to funding certain “defense” projects thru the Pentagon mostly. That money then ends up making its way to defense contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, etc. The government basically gives these contractors money and says “Go make new tech that can help us build better bombs and weapons and stuff. And if there is any tech developed that can be used for other private industries (think consumer tech), then great. But that is sort of secondary. All we care about is the weapons”. Of course, the language in these contracts are much more nuanced as to avoid any moral hazards with knowing what exactly it is you’re working on; something that took me a while to finally figure out. But, that’s essentially what it boils down to. “We’ll give you taxpayer money and your company will be very profitable. All we want is for you to use your resources to develop weapons, and if you do that we will keep giving you money”
So these contractors get their money, and hire smart engineers to help with these projects. Well a major component of this is that these contractors are heavily invested in academia and universities, because that’s where they get their smart engineers from. These contractors may also fund departments at Universities for research and development. How much specific universities are tied in with these contractors is of course university dependent, but most are tied in some way or another.
The goal of most of these protests is to stop the universities from collaborating with these defense contractors that help to support these horrific wars and injustices we’re seeing today, which if you think about it is a very ambitious goal. These students are directly challenging a major component of the military industrial complex.
THIS is why we see such a strong response from those in power trying to quell the protests and demonstrations.
I mean just take a look at the response from law enforcement. It is much, much stronger than the response from, for example, the January 6th insurrection.
Whenever you see a strong response from LE, that should immediately make a blip on your radar. It means that whoever LE is going after is directly challenging power, or some component of power/the status quo. Seeing such a strong response, you should immediately be asking yourself “Damn what are these people (students) challenging/demanding that is such a threat to those in power?” And once you begin looking into it, it all sort of starts to make sense.
Either way, I wish these students and protesters all the best of luck. Major changes in policy often start in universities, so I am crossing my fingers that this evolves into a greater challenge on the military industrial complex apparatus.
Free Palestine. 🇵🇸
Well, if the students are protesting that, the media is doing a really bad work on covering it.
I can understand protesting against ties with the defense industry, as well as I can understand wanting to maintain those. And I imagine this one is not unanimous between the students. And you are right, that this explains the police reaction much better than what is being reported.
Oh that is by design my friend. The media will often obfuscate the protesters’ true aims, instead focusing on a very, very small number of “agitators” (either real or imagined) to try and delegitimize them to the public. They want people to think “Oh those crazy, privileged, liberal college students don’t know what they’re doing”.
It is all one giant, well oiled machine.
Yep, that’s pretty much by design. Most large media companies rely on these same companies (or parents/subsidiaries) for the bulk of their advertising revenue.
Now keep that at the top of your mind every time you see a major story and I do mean every time. The media, ALL of it, absolutely positively 100% does this day in and day out on a very wide variety of issues.
Jan6 was a very short duration one-off event while the Campus Protests have been ongoing, and escalating, for months now. The difference in response is easily explained by those two facts alone. As an example The LE response on Inauguration Day clearly shows the difference between “One Time” and “Ongoing”.
AKA the largest Federally Funded jobs program in the United States.
Agree!
Boiling down the MIC to a jobs program is a bit much for me, but otherwise I agree with you (in addition to OP) here