MSU: Expansionist University in an Imperialist State
Piercy, Marge & Henig, Peter
Michigan State University prides itself on its service to the government in solving those international problems faced by the ever broadening American empire. A pamphlet selling to the prospective...
...A group of academics doing area studies are performing a one-way translation or an alien society into terms graspable by the American government or American business interests...
...Government-sponsored research has come to dominate universities...
...Since the needs of the great corcorations have carried them increasingly abroad, where the bulk of their profits are to be made, the university, as their partner, has moved abroad too...
...Whether your major interest is in International Relations, Economics, Science, Law Research, whatever...the CIA offers you a chance to work with programs that are constantly changing...
...Area studies create a community of people who identify with the alien society and support each other in objective concern with it (the social scientist relating in a value-free way to his victim data), while remaining within the institutional context of this society and operating professionally *All quotes in this section are from .S.U...
...controlled International Bank for Reconstruction ana Development (the WIorld Bank) and a director of the Chase Manhattan Bank...
...Just as the social sciences were used internally by the power elite, for instance as in the case oi industrial or labor relations, to make workers believe there exists a unity of interest between corporations and workers' organizations, so the social sciences served the power elite abroad...
...David E. Bell, former Administrator of AID is a Vice-President o the Foundation, Ford Trustee Stephen D. Bechtel of the Bechtel-McCone Corp...
...Statements about education for everyone sound fine, but we must always ask who is being educated for what...
...Ford Trustee Eugene Black is former head of the U.S...
...They identify the vectors in that society, its wealk points, point out the conflicting groups...
...Or, to quote the College Placement Manual: you...your training your special talents...find satisfying expression in a vital career with CIA...
...The social scientists study the natives and translate that society into graphs and analyses and the usable stuff of intelligence, whereby is counterinsurgency efficiently promoted...
...Similarly, N&SU has been involved in a project in Turkey financed by the Agency for International Development aimed at upgrading the quality of business administration education...
...The land grant college typically has a strong emphasis on developing practical skills, useful (to whom...
...Thus it is okay to study the elites of Chile or Nigeria and to perceive how power is wielded in those societies, but not all right to study our elites and how power is manipulated here...
...Just as the problems we face as a nation are broad and not tied to a limited number of fields or disciplines, the Michigan-- 11 - - State University approach to its technical assistance activitee is broadly conceived...we are trying to create an environment and an international dimension which will permeate throughout all relevant segments of the University over the years ahead.* MSU has a continuing cooperative program with the Sao Paulo School of Business Administration in Brazil, oriented partly toward executive management...
...For example, Ford's President, McGeorge Bundy was formerly Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs...
...I4SU boasts a number of area studies centers, one in Asian Studies, one in Latin American Studies and one in African Studies...
...Over one thousand businessmen in Latin America are graduates of this EIU-influenced Intensive Course for Administration...
...MbU is also putting into operation functional centers: area programs parallelled by functionally oriented centers, in (1) international communications, involving the social sciences (2) education and development, (3) economic development, () international agriculture and nutrition, (5) international management, to be developed by the College of Business based on extensive experience in Brazil and field work in other parts of the world, and (6) development politics and administration within the college of.social sciences...
...Similarly, the university is a seemingly neutral means for spreading technology, science skills, and ideology abroad, but without consideration of who is going to to control that technology, who is going to run and profit from the "development" or an underdeveloped country: the same colonial powers, the new colonial super-power, or the people of that country.-- 13 -ith the enormous increase of technology after lWJorld WIar II and the increased U.S...
...Army Area Handbook for Ecuador (published 1966): With, the financial support of AID, missions from the University or Pittsburgh, the University of Houston and Saint Louis University have been assisting the Central University, the University of Guayaquil and the Catholic University in Quito, respectively, in improvement programs...
...A pamphlet selling to the prospective student exactly those aspects of MSU which we'll be looking at says: The challenge facing American higher education is an integral part of the widespread and important responsibilities which the American nation now faces abroad...
...The niversity is quite concerned that its faculty should not suffer professionally as a result of their times out of the country (missing conventions, getting behind in reading academic journals) and various of the deans who administer the international programs are given to writing papers on how their men can go to Nairobi or Bogota for two years without loss of academic status or without growing musty in the tropics...
...Thus we create elites which are tied to the American presence and conceal that presence behind a local facade...
...How comes ISU to be so omnipresent abroad, so hyperactive in the American Empire...
...romotional materials except where otherwise stated.-- 12 -according to its values...
...The Navy, in order to establish a colonial administration, hired a group of anthropologists and sociologists from twenty different universities...
...Among the fields specifically mentioned as interest to the CIA are business, economics, finance, foreign languages and area studies, geography, history, international relations, political science, psychology, sociology...
...Take the "manifest destiny" of Michigan State University and multiply it by the array of American academic institutions -- large and small -- which are working hand in hand in support of American foreign policy and what you have is a powerful political instrument which is malting itself felt in the most obscure corners of tne world...
...officials think about university imperialism, here is an excerpt from the U.S...
...One of the policies of most U.d...
...The IIE is the administrative coordinator for a huge array or other academic ventures into the heart of darkness funded either by AID or the Ford Foundation, both of which have close links with each other and with government intelligence sectors...
...Area studies tell the government how to gain control of the social processes of another society...
...It provided a vehicle through which a society relying heavily upon technology and characterized by being strongly interrelated, can spread its techniques and ideology...
...They are very concerned to rationalize the careers of their exported faculty...
...These programs rely heavily on the Ford Foundation, the State Department and AID for sizeable grants...
...One example o the colonial uses to which area studies may be put occurred just after T Jorld War II when the Navy was setting up a military government over the recently conquered Micronesian Islands...
...Plans also call for the promotion of greater stability and a calmer, more exclusively academic atmosphere...
...arts and sciences, o supporting research that helps raise the level of technology, serving industry, serving local agriculture and now agribusiness, teaching the skills needed by local corporations and local governments and generally serving the "community needs" as defined, of course, by community leaders...
...The Manifest Destiny of MSU: A Local Development of the Land Grant College The landgrant college historically belongs in its inception to the period when we were developing our own frontier as we now develop other countries...
...They generally involved the social sciences -anthropology, economics, sociology -- plus language studies...
...e.carnsion abroad, corporations and the military have come to rely ever more heavily uon the knowledge factories to serve the power structure...
...The principal areas of activity include the reform of central administration, the institution of basic studies programs for all students before further university work and the strengthening of the facultades dealing in disciplines directly related to social and economic development...
...companies who do business in Latin America is staffing their operations with local executives who are properly trained in the corporate attitudes and virtues...
...4rhat are these area studies...
...Just to give some idea of how U.S...
...What is the context of the education Wlhat skills are we being taught and how are they and us going to be used...
...is the principle business partner of John McCone, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency...
...The Army Area Handbooks are a production of this kind of work on the part of a collection o social scientists...
Vol. 1 • December 1967 • No. 9
