Editorial by from DR-RPCV on intertwining of Espionage and Education – (It parallels PC volunteerism and espionage perceptions.)
The following editorial appeared in the Gainesville (Florida) Sun. It is in response to the University of Florida publicly creating a spy school under the spearheading of former senator Bob Graham.
Universities are no place for espionage training
The debate about espionage training at UF's new Graham Center continues. Jerry Jenkins (May 4) writes in favor. He said he learned Chinese at Yale "specifically to work in espionage activities." Congratulations.
But I presume Yale taught him "Chinese 101," not "Mandarin for Spies." Likewise at UF, I supervised the thesis of an army major, a Blackhawk helicopter commander, whose M.A. was financed by the U.S. army. But I taught him the Anthropology of the Caribbean, not Prisoner Interrogation Techniques.
Jenkins is right about the need for competent espionage. It doesn't mean that we teach it at UF.
Why not? I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic back in the turbulent 1960s. I remember comments on the street: "Look! There's the guy from the Spy Corps." This oft-shouted accusation of association with espionage (particularly in Latin America) is so detrimental to the Peace Corps mission that the CIA agrees not to hire ex-Peace Corps volunteers until several years have passed. It would not only endanger volunteers. It would hamstring the Peace Corps mission.
What applies to the Peace Corps applies to a university whose faculty have international involvements. If we publicly declare ourselves to be a center for training intelligence agents, we can shut down my department (anthropology) and the Center for Latin American studies. We'd be hemispheric pariahs.
Sen. Graham's Center for Public Policy is a major new asset that will encourage student involvement in matters of national priority. Let's not, however, sabotage this marvelous new center by publicly associating it with training in covert cloak-and-dagger activities. However vital these activities may be to the security of the nation, they are alien to the mission of its universities.
Gerald F. Murray (DR 1964-66) |