Science and Technology
in service of the warfare state

The Baskin Study:

An analysis of UC Santa Cruz's Jack Baskin School of Engineering. The Baskin Study is a measurement of UCSC's service to the warfare state. The study defines the role of the university, how it acts a subsidiary of the military enterprise, and how the Department of Defense organizes university faculty to carry out the science and technology research that is critical to the mission of the warfare state.

Is science nothing more than the rational and ethically banal servant of war? Are the physical sciences and engineering disciplines naturally concerned with the production of weapons and war by matter of fact? A survey of the many disciplines, major funding for scientific and technological research, and connections between scientific institutions and the military enterprise would seem to affirm this view.

We should not accept this perception, as it would imply that we necessarily condemn and abandon these fields of science as innately concerned with control and domination. Although science and technology have historically been enablers of exploitation, repression, and war, they have also been forces of liberation and wellsprings of peace.

This study is dedicated to a science for peace, acknowledging that there increasingly exists opportunity and power on the part of those within academia to put an end to the goals of exploitation and war. All that is needed is the existential courage to do so.