Earlier this year, news broke that Howard University would become the first historically Black university to lead a research center for the Department of Defense. The center, which will be the 15th university-affiliated research center in operation, is sponsored by the US Air Force and is focused on tactical autonomy. As part of this partnership, Howard is set to receive $12 million per year over the next five years.
Some view this development as a win: Howard University’s president, Wayne A. I. Frederick, told CNN in January that the program will “put us in a unique space to develop techniques and capabilities and skill sets that we otherwise wouldn’t.”
Others, however, are not as pleased. Teen Vogue has spoken to experts who say that the growing number of university and military partnerships deeply concerns them.
Financial ties between the US military and universities in the United States stretch back almost a century. During World War II, the Pentagon relied on research conducted by large universities to create weapons of mass destruction. Much of the original research on the atomic bomb took place at universities such as Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Chicago, providing the backbone for the Manhattan project, which produced the first nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of California Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins University were heavily involved in developing nuclear weapons and space warfare.
Micheal Klare, professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, tells Teen Vogue he has noticed that the Pentagon is once again approaching various universities for help in creating weaponry. “Artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, and hypersonic weapons are the weaponry of the future, as the Pentagon sees it,” he says. “Just as the military turned to universities for help in weaponizing new technologies during World War II, they are doing the same thing today with these weapons.”
There are several examples of this: The Army’s center for artificial intelligence (AI) is based at Carnegie Mellon University, while the Air Force’s AI accelerator is located at MIT. In many cases, Klare says, students are directly involved in the process of creating military weapons.
Students and military personnel often attend courses together or collaborate on research, according to Klare. The University of Texas at Austin’s partnership with the military led to the Robotics Center of Excellence, where students and members of the military alike can develop advanced combat robots. Students and Air Force personnel similarly collaborate at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Accelerator in Cambridge.
“I’m concerned," Klare says, "whether or not students are being made aware that they are sitting in a classroom with serving military personnel and that their joint work that's going on in the classroom is being used to develop weapons of war, ultimately.”
In addition to being involved in the creation of weaponry, the military is also providing direct funding to many US universities. A 2019 research report from the International Campaign to Destroy Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) revealed that nearly 50 US colleges and universities are involved in the research and design of nuclear weapons. This involvement can look like the direct management of weapons laboratories or receiving grant funding for research that's applicable to the creation of such weapons. One example is Johns Hopkins University, which received $828 million in research and development grants from the Defense Department in 2017 alone.
Alicia Sanders-Zakre, an ICAN policy and research coordinator, is concerned about these financial ties. “Universities should be objective centers of the pursuit of knowledge, but receiving funding from those with a vested interest in production of nuclear weapons influences knowledge production on nuclear weapons,” she tells Teen Vogue. "Universities should not be bought by the military to work in contrast to their democratic will,” she adds, pointing out that, according to research published in 2021, about 65% of people in the United States support joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Ultimately, conversations about the acceptance of military funding by universities raise bigger questions about how these schools spend their money. Recent research shows that large numbers of college students experience homelessness, food insecurity, and other systemic issues that can impede not only the chance for a quality education, but a meaningful life.
“These discussions about military funding fit into a larger, ongoing debate about the purpose of higher education more generally,” says Klare. “At a time when our society has many competing needs regarding climate change, equity, and other needs of our population, I think there should be more conversations about whether university funds should be going into military-related research or other, or on topics that could more directly benefit society.”
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