By Nick Buxton
I’m glad to hear the university administration read my piece, although I wish it had led to some self-reflection about the ethics of education leaders holding corporate board positions – even more so when they are in the defense industry. Instead they have deployed a PR defense tactic of mis-characterizing my argument rather than addressing its core concerns. The fact that a university administration also spends public money defending a private corporation shows the costs of universities becoming ever more corporatized in recent years.
My article did not argue that Leidos was responsible for the latest Trump policy of separating children from their families, nor did I say that Chancellor May was responsible for this. However it is clear that Leidos is part of the border regime, and that May as a Board representative therefore naturally bears some responsibility and accountability for its activities.
The university PR department says Leidos’ business is limited to cargo and baggage handling, but on their own website, they heavily promote an Integrated Wide Area Surveillance System (IWASS), which is clearly intended as a technological surveillance backup that would complement or replace any Trump ‘wall’. In their own words, they “offer an end-to-end border security solution from prediction to resolution” including unmanned vehicles, surveillance radar, electro-optical and infrared sensor suite that “provides an area of coverage up to 7.5 miles.”
The reality as we all know is the demand for a wall is largely political theater by Trump given that the wall is already in existence. Most border security officials are more interested in a digital surveillance wall of the sort Leidos provides.
UCD also says Leidos has “no involvement with ICE policies or activities.” Yet the article itself had a link to a $7.8 million contract that Leidos provided ICE for translation services.
My larger point that UCD’s PR team appear to not understand is that Trump’s separation of children from families is just the latest incarnation of a border regime that has divided families and long caused similar heartache to the scenes we have seen and heard recently. Well before Trump, families have been torn apart by deportations and a deliberate ‘prevention through deterrence’ strategy that has forced people into inhospitable terrain leading at least 6000 people to die trying to cross the border. This has been backed by an explosive growth in budgets for border and immigration policing regimes from about $1.5 billion in the early 1990s to $20 billion in 2017. Defense and security companies like Leidos have both pushed for this funding and also reaped its lucrative financial rewards.
Leidos may steer away from some of the more egregious abuses that have appeared in the media, but it is clearly a key technological supplier for a militarized border regime. It provides key technological services and has grown as funds for border control have increased. Its CEO has even boasted of benefiting from Trump’s agenda.
I believe if you are opposed to what Trump is doing, we can start by not participating, and certainly not benefiting financially, from the corporations that underpin his agenda. Rather than being defensive, Chancellor May would do better to show leadership by resigning from the board of Leidos and his other corporate board positions and investing that time instead in the critical work of delivering excellent and affordable education for students.
Nick Buxton is a Davis resident, father and editor of the book 'The Secure and the Dispossessed: How the Military and Corporations are shaping a Climate-Changed world" (University of Chicago, 2015)'
Read Nick Buxton's first article on May and Leidos
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