An open Letter to Vice Chancellor Michele Wheatly:

I write in response to your claim in the Syracuse University Senate (09/14) that there is universal enthusiasm in the SU community regarding our institutional pivot toward veterans as a central element of the University’s long-term strategic plan. On the contrary, since the Academic Strategic Plan was announced I (and colleagues to whom I have spoken) have had serious concerns about its consequences. While I am happy to welcome veterans to our campus, our plan seems to involve much more than that.

The draft Academic Strategic Plan is proposes to “identify existing programs and explore potential for new programs aligned with the interests and aspirations of veteran/military students as well as the needs of government funders,” and to add faculty “with expertise in military, national security, or veteran research and incentivizing faculty interest in these areas.” In your remarks to the Senate, you suggested that there will be inducements for faculty to re-orient our academic work in ways that would be attractive to this high-priority clientele. All of this seemed to me like an explicit acknowledgment that we want to make ourselves into a different kind of university, with different intellectual priorities, in order to build a long-term relationship with the national security state.

I fear the University will create a climate in which some kinds of intellectual work are perceived as “in alignment with the Strategic Plan,” while other kinds will be explicitly or implicitly devalued and discouraged. In particular, research and teaching that is critical of the national security state and America’s ongoing condition of permanent war may be seen as “rocking the boat” and therefore unwelcome. I worry about more insidious effects on our intellectual culture as research, teaching, and programs congruent with the priorities of the national security state become embedded in our own institutional priorities such that, over time, we transform ourselves into an adjunct of the national security state, a defense contractor with a university attached.  

In spite of these pressures, I hope we will find ways to sustain the belief that dissent can also be a form of high patriotism. In fact, I think this too needs to be an institutional priority in recognition of the great pressures that will attend our transformation into “the premier university for veterans and military-connected communities.”

Mark Rupert
Professor, Political Science & Chapple Family Professor of Citizenship and Democracy
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs