Student Protest Prevents CIA Recruiting Rvent at New York University
-Press Release by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field and Sam Pipp
A planned CIA recruiting event at New York University (NYU) was
cancelled after the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) called a protest
demanding the CIA abandon its recruiting program at NYU. 20 hours
before the recruiting event was scheduled to begin, its organizers sent
an email to all those who had registered, headlined, "The CIA Speaker
Event scheduled for Thursday, March 31 @6PM has been CANCELLED due to
the possibility of a protest by the Campus Antiwar Network."
The event -- which was scheduled to include speakers from the CIA, a
dinner, and a raffle for prizes such as an iPod Shuffle -- was
organized by students in an NYU marketing class whose classwork for the
semester is to market the CIA to their peers at NYU. They will be
graded on their efforts; the CIA, which provided them a $2500 budget
for their project, retains ownership of the marketing campaign they
create. The CIA hired the company EdVenture Partners to broker this
arrangement.
This alliance between the university and the CIA to market CIA
employment on campus is taking place at only two universities this
semester: NYU and the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA). Students
at both schools have rallied in protest against the program.
"We believe they're testing the waters to see how brazenly they can
recruit on campuses without encountering student opposition, before
spreading programs like this to colleges across the country," said
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a senior at NYU and member of the Campus
Antiwar Network. "Forcing them to cancel their big speaking event is a
huge victory. It showed them they can't market an agency that supports
torture and murder around the world without a fight."
After the event was cancelled, about twenty students rallied in
celebration outside the building where it was scheduled to have been
held, passing out fact sheets about the CIA's history of assassination
attempts and support for brutal dictatorships. Ten students went to
challenge the event's organizers to a public debate on campus about the
CIA -- an offer which was declined.
"Their marketing campaign says they want to 'dispel the myths' about
the CIA," said David Florey, a senior at NYU and member of the Campus
Antiwar Network. "But they refused our offer to debate. They can't
dispel the reality of the CIA's own practices. It's not a myth that the
CIA organized the program in Afghanistan that trained Osama bin Laden."
PART OF A NATIONAL COUNTER-RECRUITMENT MOVEMENT
NYU's protest comes in the context of a counter-recruitment movement
that has swept colleges and high schools across the country. Students
at schools ranging from Seattle Central Community College and San
Francisco State University on the West Coast, to City College New York
and and Southern Connecticut State University on the East Coast, have
chased military recruiters off their campus this schoolyear.
Expensive private colleges like NYU don't get the same kinds of
military recruiters. The only recruiters NYU has seen this year came
from the Judge Advocate General (the legal arm of the military), which
faced protest from NYU students opposed to the discriminatory Don't
Ask, Don't Tell and the prosecution of war resisters. But students at
NYU see their CIA Off Campus campaign as a contribution to the national
counter-recruitment movement.
"We know that because of the general affluence of the students at NYU,
direct military recruitment will never be as fruitful as the government
would hope, but in the past few months, we've seen a significant
increase in the presence of OTHER forms of recruitment for militaristic
operations," said Sam Pipp, a sophomore at NYU and member of the Campus
Antiwar Network. "This CIA recruitment in the guise of a class
represents a campaign of sorts on the part of the government to pull as
many as they can into the military machine."
"We're here as part of a growing counter-recruitment movement that has
the potential to stop Bush's ability to carry out his agenda of war and
terror," said Leia Petty, a member of the Campus Antiwar Network, at
the protest. "We're here to say that torture and terror are not career
opportunities, and we don't intend to back down until the CIA drops all
efforts to recruit at NYU."
THIS PROTEST IS JUST THE BEGINNING
Two days before NYU's protest, students at UTPA had protested the CIA
recruiting event at their campus, where the CIA is explicitly marketing
itself as an employer of choice for Latinos. "I think the students in
the marketing class are naive to think they're offering any
opportunity to Hispanics," said Samantha Garcia, president of Students
for Peace and Justice and the University Socialist Forum at UTPA, two
groups that protested the CIA. Garcia noted the CIA's history of
involvement in Latin America, such as its involvement in the overthrow
of Chile's left-wing leader Salvador Allende and its support of
Nicaragua's Contras.
At both schools, students plan to keep fighting the CIA presence and
opposing the U.S. occupation in Iraq, which they see as intimately
connected. "Bush says we're bringing democracy to Iraq," Wrigley-Field
said. "But the history of the CIA shows the U.S. is the last country
that can bring democracy anywhere."
May is the month of our Summer Fund Drive. If you found this article useful, please support Left Hook by making a donation.
Sam Pipp, (339) 832-0761, spp230@nyu.edu
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, (646) 320-6880, wrigleyfield@nyu.edu
|