November 2006

Town Hall leaves students angry

The role of military research at McGill was another contentious issue at the Town Hall. Cleve Higgins, also an activist with GRASPé, asked if the Principal could morally “stand for research at McGill of weapons that are killing people around the world.”

In response, Munroe-Blum said that McGill has an integrity policy that applies to all research at the University, but added that “the way science is going today…it is impossible to come up with research that won’t benefit the military.”

February 2007

Uncovering McGill’s military research

by Cleve Higgins

I was glad to see the Daily’s question to Heather Munroe-Blum last week regarding military research at McGill – it is an issue that those in power at our university should not be allowed to ignore.

In response to the question, Munroe-Blum explained that McGill has a policy governing military research, then explained that the current military contracts seem harmless. It’s true; McGill does have a policy (the Regulations on Research Policy), but it has large holes that make it inapplicable to significant aspects of military involvement in university research. Our Principal reported that the military research covered under the policy seemed harmless. However, the problem is the military research that the policy ignores; research the Principal would not likely be aware of because it goes unreported.

January 2008

Students dying to demilitarize McGill

By Mikey Opatowski and Melissa Karine Ward

Seventeen student activists dropped dead in McConnell Engineering yesterday morning to protest campus military recruitment.

The students, members of the radical campus group GrassRoots Association for Student Power (GRASPé), smeared themselves in red paint and lay still for ten minutes in front of a Canadian Forces table at the Technology Career Fair.

“I don’t think its right for military recruiters to be here at all,” said Dave Howden, one of the participants in the die-in. “They’re misleading students that the army is all about an exciting career and travelling the world.”

The recruiters stood watch during the action and did not talk with any of the protesters. In an interview after the die-in, Lt. Serge Abergel spoke politely of the protesters but defended his presence at the career fair.

“It was polite, peaceful, no bad things to say about it,” Abergel said, adding, “We are simply giving information about employment opportunities for over 107 different trades, not just infantry. We are not imposing that people join the military, nor have quotas to reach.”

Bystanders trying to make their way around the protesters said they were impressed by the die-in, but were not opposed to on-campus military recruitment.

Other GRASPé members handed out flyers that challenged Canada’s role in the Afghanistan occupation and argued against students enlisting to finance postsecondary education.

Lt. Sean Frankham, who was also recruiting at the fair, defended serving in the army to pay for school.

“That’s how I got through school,” Frankham said. “And there was never any problem with that.”

The protesters left peacefully, chanting, “Recruiters lie, students die.”

The mobilization stemmed from a workshop that GRASPé members Alexandre Vidal and Cleve Higgins coordinated on Monday evening. About 20 students attended the gathering, which fostered ideas on ways to eliminate military presence and influence at McGill.

Focusing on government investment in the military and recruitment on campus, Vidal and Higgins presented results of research they completed on the relationship between universities and the military.

Vidal, who opposes Canada’s involvement in the Afghanistan occupation, asserted that government investments directed to the military should instead be used to pay for student tuition fees.

“I don’t want my tax dollars to go towards things I disapprove of, like people being killed in Afghanistan,” Vidal said.

“The 13 per cent of annual funds currently paying for military supplies could be used to abolish tuition fees for all Quebec students,” he added.

The discussion proceeded to dissect how recruitment processes work, what kind of people they attract, and why.

Students in the rank force must spend their summers at school, and attend a postsecondary institution for an additional five years after completing their enrolment. Enlisted students who break their contracts are required to reimburse the government for the difference of their tuition costs.

Higgins focused his presentation on changes that should be made to improve transparency in McGill’s research policies, suggesting that the University make its harm evaluations publicly accessible and oppose confidentiality agreements with corporations.

GRASPé is planning additional protests in front of Montreal’s recruitment centre and will work to “demilitarize McGill” by advocating the prohibition of recruiters on campus.

Last year Higgins discovered that McGill engineering professor David Frost received funding from Defence & Research Development Canada (DRDC) – and worked in conjunction with a DRDC employee Fan Zhang – for a 2006 paper, “Effect on Scale of a Blast Wave from a Metalized Explosive.”

For the paper, Zhang received research funding from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a combat support division of the U.S. Department of Defense that has commissioned research on explosives used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

October 2008

Outdoor GA failed to reach quorum: Motions passed now submitted to online referendum for ratification

Olga Redko
The McGill Daily

Not even a motion for “no-pants Fridays” attracted enough students to Tuesday’s SSMU General Assembly (GA) for it to be treated as more than a “consultative session.”

Because the GA failed to reach qualified quorum – 397 or two per-cent of the total number of undergraduate students – motions passed must be ratified in an online 48-hour referendum active until Friday at 5 p.m. 

According to Kay Turner, the SSMU general manager counted a total of 250 students come in and out of Three Bares Park, where the assembly was held, but the maximum present at one time was only 110. 

Although the first motion, calling upon SSMU to offer logistical support to the Association of McGill Undergraduate Students Employees (AMUSE), passed swiftly, disagreement persisted over two motions that asked SSMU to condemn military recruitment and research into thermobaric weapons at McGill. 

The motions’ author Cleve Higgins, U3 Sociology and International Development Studies, explained that scientific research at McGill has often received military funding exempt from ethical considerations.

“Some policies to regulate weapons research were developed [at McGill], but they don’t allow for transparency, and are without ethical considerations,” Higgins said. 

He faced strong opposition from Adam Cytrynbaum, U3 Engineering, who claimed that military-funded research can be used for peaceful and even beneficial civilian purposes. 

“Military research is done to better the people of Canada and the United States,” Cytrynbaum said. “Research is independent of what it is used for.” 

After considerable debate, the motion on military research was divided into two questions: one asked SSMU to oppose McGill’s involvement in thermobaric weapons development, while the other called for implementation of transparency policies and ethical evaluations of research done in cooperation with the military. 

Both motions passed, although the former received only a small margin of assenting votes. 

Military recruitment was an equally contentious issue. 

Michael Puempel, U1 Management, argued that since the government subsidizes certain costs at public universities, such as McGill, it has the right to place military recruiters on campuses. 

“The government…offsets some of the tuition students have to pay,” Puempel said. He added that while most recruits did not serve in combative roles in the military, they are provided with legitimate careers. 

Higgins, however, argued a precedent has been set by similar movements in dozens of university and CEGEP campuses across the province. 

“We have seen a reduced military presence on campuses,” he said. 

Even after an amendment cut down the motion to just opposing military presence in Shatner, it was passed with a slim margin. It was followed by a quick approval of a motion asking SSMU to petition the McGill administration for a catered open-bar party at Principal Heather Monroe-Blum’s home.

But quorum was lost in the midst of the fifth motion, despite SSMU executives’ efforts to persuade students to stay at Three Bares Park and call friends to the GA. Students were unable to complete a debate on whether SSMU councillors should refer to McGill administrators by Star Wars names.

Turner said any motions left unaddressed at this GA will be carried over and discussed at next semester’s GA.

To vote in the online referendum, go to ovs.ssmu.mcgill.ca.

November 2008

Referendum period opens one question short

Nicholas Smith
The McGill Daily

Demilitarize does not focus on policy lobbying for two reasons. Firstly, such efforts have historically backfired at McGill. In 2009, a previous incarnation of Demilitarize McGill participated in a lengthy policy review process with members of the administration, leading to the inclusion of stricter research regulations in a draft policy proposal. However, once the draft arrived at Senate, not only were the stricter provisions scrapped almost immediately, but regulations that were in place since student mobilizations in the 1980s were abolished. Members of the 2009 group today conclude that their time and resources would have been better directed toward talking with students and mobilizing resistance that does not rely on the University’s governance structures or bureaucracy.

Secondly, we feel that ending the university’s complicity in violence, imperialism, and war must go much deeper than simply amending a policy. We believe that real change around these issues requires critical reflection and discussion aimed at transforming attitudes towards the academy-military relationship as well as the real relations of power that sustain it. To this end, Demilitarize does not envision itself single-handedly reshaping research practices at McGill; rather, we seek to engage the broader community in the struggle against the University’s complicity in war.

February 2009

SSMU General Assembly Results!

Motion Re: Military Research

“This motion PASSED.  The SSMU is now mandated by the undergraduate student body to oppose any McGill involvement in the development of thermobaric weapons.  The upcoming revision of McGill’s Policy on the Conduct of Research may be an ideal opportunity to act on this mandate.”

February 2009

Hyde Park: Higher learning or higher-tech weapons?

Nat Marshik

Weapons, to state the obvious, are extremely complicated. High-tech explosives are not something your average McGill student understands particularly well. This may be one reason why the student body, as a whole, is relatively under-informed about ongoing weapons research taking place at our University.

Yet perhaps there are other reasons why students remain in the dark – like the fact that “transparent” is not a word one would use to describe McGill’s internal machinations. Or the fact that it takes a tremendous amount of public pressure to get the University to create a process for the ethical evaluation of academic research.

Here’s a story for you: in 1987, a group of former McGill students occupied the Vice Principal of Research’s office, demanding an end to two decades of military research at McGill. Specifically, the group spoke out against the ongoing research into fuel-air explosives carried out by two professors, Knystautas and Lee, in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Since 1967, their explosives research had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding contracts from various American military agencies, including the U.S. Air Force and the Department of National Defense.

Fuel-air explosives (FAEs) were first developed by the United States for use in Vietnam in the 1960s and seventies. More recently, these weapons – now known as “thermobaric” explosives – have been used in military offensives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to Human Rights Watch, FAEs are devastating weapons, up to 16 times more destructive than conventional high explosives, and at times rivalling the effects of low-yield nuclear explosives. Thermobarics work like this: first, a blast scatters fuel into the air, where it mixes with oxygen and flows around objects into any space that is not hermetically sealed. A second blast detonates the cloud of fuel, producing an explosion and shockwave, whose sheer pressure is strong enough to kill – usually by rupturing the lungs and internal organs. According to Human Rights Watch, use of this “particularly brutal” weapon carries “important humanitarian implications.”

After the 1987 James Administration occupation, in response to escalating pressure, McGill amended its Regulations on Research Policy in 1988 to require professors to file an ethics evaluation for any military-funded research. This policy subsequently came under criticism, since the only people evaluating the research were the researchers themselves. Public accountability remained virtually nil, since these reports were not brought before Senate as the policy required.

In 2009, the McGill community is not much wiser. Research into thermobaric explosives continues, now under Engineering Professor David Frost. Although no longer funded directly by the military, this research is conducted in collaboration with military researchers, with no opportunity for public evaluation of its harmful applications.

Yet change is in the air – perhaps. At the General Assembly this February, students voted to oppose all research into thermobaric explosives at McGill. In November 2008, SSMU voted overwhelmingly to support the establishment of an ethical and transparent military research policy at McGill. And on March 4, 2009, Senate will vote on a new University policy governing research ethics. But it remains to be seen whether the new policy’s final version will strengthen ethics procedures for military research – or whether it will write them out of existence altogether.

Whether or not we all understand the engineering behind bombs, ethics are everybody’s business.

Nat Marshik is a member of Demilitarize McGill and a U3 Women’s Studies student. You can contact Demilitarize McGill at demilitarizemcgill@gmail.com or demilitarizemcgill.wordpress.com. See their event listing in What’s the haps.

February 2009

VOX POPULI: You have a duty to demilitarize McGill (McGill Tribune)

By Zoë Miller-Vedam & Sabina Roan

What do the words “I am a McGill student” mean? As we receive our degrees from McGill, do we have an obligation to turn and question the hand that feeds us? If we plan to cash in on the name of our prestigious university, it stands to reason that we also carry some responsibility for the university’s actions and reputation. Do we have an obligation to ask questions? If we really care about the meaning of being a McGill student, we must be aware of the actions carried out under the auspices of McGill University.

As students, we have the power to do more than passively listen to lectures. The Students’ Society and other campus organizations demonstrate that we have a say in the evolution of our university. One of the motions passed at the most recent SSMU General Assembly was a mandate for the society to oppose any McGill involvement in the development of thermobaric weapons.  

Unknown to many students, McGill has been collaborating on weapons research with U.S. military agencies since 1967. This has included contracts between McGill professors and agencies like the Department of National Defence and the U.S. Air Force, focussing specifically on thermobaric weapons technology research. Thermobaric weapons, also known as “fuel-air explosives,” maximize impact through direct explosive force as well as through extreme pressure and heat. This technology was first developed for use in the Vietnam War and is still being used today in ongoing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whereas conventional explosives kill and destroy by direct explosive force and fragmentation, thermobarics also create a large shock wave of pressure and heat, and consume all of the oxygen in the area of the explosion. As explained by Human Rights Watch, “[fuel-air explosives] are more powerful than conventional high-explosive munitions of comparable size, are more likely to kill and injure people in bunkers, shelters, and caves, and kill and injure in a particularly brutal manner over a wide area.”

McGill student action on the issue of thermobaric weapons research dates back more than 20 years. In 1988, escalating community protest culminated in the establishment of an official, if largely ineffective, procedure for the ethical evaluation of military research. Since this policy is barely enforced, and the research files were never made public, campus discourse continues to focus on transparency and ethical evaluation. 

Student groups at McGill, such as Demilitarize McGill, are urging the university to increase transparency in current weapons research. This is a focal point of the debate, as increased transparency will provide visibility and accountability about what type of research is being done and how the information will be used. The objective is to create an open discussion about what is being done in the name of McGill. This discussion is crucial because we have a responsibility, as part of the McGill community, to be aware of the university’s impact on the world. Currently, McGill is drafting a new policy on academic research to replace the previous military research policy. The new policy will come before Senate on March 4, 2009. While this is a step in the right direction, it remains unclear whether the new policy will strengthen or hinder ethical evaluation of military research at McGill.

Students have a responsibility to understand what the title “McGill student” entails. Before we take our prestigious diploma and run with it, we need to educate ourselves about what’s going on behind closed doors at our own institution. And when we’re uncomfortable with what we find, it is our duty to speak up.

Zoë Miller-Vedam is a U1 economics and political science student, and Sabina Roan is a U1 environment student. Demilitarize McGill and the McGill Anti-Racist Coalition will host a public forum on transparency and ethics in military research this Friday at 5 p.m. in the Shatner Building’s Lev Bukhman room.