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| Socrates drinking hemlock |
Throughout history, most academics have been the witting or unwitting servants of power. Socrates was accused of failing to honor the gods of Athens and corrupting the youth with his ideas. He was canceled in the ultimate way: sentenced to die. Aristotle, by contrast, tutored the young Alexander the Great, future King of Macedonia, which at the time was occupying Athens. During the rebellion, Aristotle fled to save his skin.
Today, some academics refusing to toe the line are also threatened with death. Chicago University’s John Mearsheimer was placed on the US-funded Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation’s blacklist, where he and others, including myself, were accused of committing "informational terrorism" by expressing fact-based opinions about the war with Russia. At the same time that Ukrainian fascists were placing me on their list, a cabal of liberal staff at my military-funded institution, the University of Plymouth (UK), terminated my position without warning or right of reply.
If we look at the US imperial apparatus, we see that higher education plays a major role.
The American university has been significantly influenced by the military since at least 1862, with the passing of the Morrill Land-Grant College Act. The Civil War-era legislation awarded government grants to create agricultural and engineering colleges.
Britain has the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), funded by big oil, weapons companies, and banks. The US has its Chatham House offshoot, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), founded in 1921 and funded by the usual suspects: banks, big oil, etc. A history of the CFR and its close ties to academics, who continue to help shape the ideologies that justify and influence capitalist imperialism, has been authored by Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter: the classic, Imperial Brain Trust. (more...)
The Military-Intelligentsia Complex: How Higher Education Enables US Militarism
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