Dear David Willetts/
The future does not belong to you./ This is an epistle/ which is addressed to you./ But it is written/ for those who will come after us./ Why?/ Because we do not respect your right/ to occupy the platform this evening./ Your name/ is anathema to us./ You are not a welcome guest/ because you come with a knife/ concealed beneath your cloak./ Behind your toothy smiles,/ we have already seen/ the fixed gaze of the hired assassin./ You have transgressed/ against all codes of hospitality./ That is why/ we interrupt your performance tonight./ Because nothing is up for debate here./ Your mind is made up./ You are not for turning./ All your questioners have been planted./ So we, too, have planted ourselves/ in your audience./ We stole in quietly,/ without much fanfare/– because we know your tactics./ But now that we are here,/ we will not wait to be told/ before we speak./
You have professed your commitment/ to the religion of choice/ but you leave us with no choice./ You are a man/ who believes in the market/ and in the power of competition/ to drive up quality./ But look to the world around you:/ your gods have failed./ They were capricious gods/ and we do not mourn them,/ nor do we seek new ones.
Fools that we are,/ we took you at your word:/ so we are clambering into the driving seat/ because your steering is uncomfortable to us/ and your destination/ is not one of our choosing.
Even the very metaphor betrays you./ So let us begin/ by activating the emergency brake:/ the University is no motor vehicle,/ to be souped up,/ ideologically re-tuned,/ intellectually re-fitted,/ cosmetically re-sprayed,/ and then sent out onto the highway,/ like some gaudy engine of the ‘knowledge economy’,/ emitting noxious filth/ and polluting the air./ The road itself is narrow;/ your eyes are fixed on a vanishing horizon/ which you will never quite reach./ You have picked a route/ which skirts carefully around/ all redoubts of human warmth and solidarity./ Look elsewhere for your metaphors, David./ We have no desire/ to be put into the driving seat./ There are chairs enough in our libraries –/ would that there were more libraries –/ and these are the only seats of learning/ that we would wish to know./ We will not be used/ by you./ We do not wish to ‘rate’ our teachers;/ we wish to learn from them./ We are not consumers./ We are students –/ and we will stand with our teachers/ on their picket lines.
Your soulless vision of efficiency;/ your mechanistic frameworks of ‘excellence’;/ your chummy invitation/ to hop on board/ and serve the needs of the Economy:/ all of this makes it clear to us/ that you have set out from a false premise,/ because guess what, David:/ you cannot quantify knowledge./ Your craven desperation to do so/ tells us only one thing:/ you are trying to discipline us,/ but we will not be disciplined,/ because we are schooled/ in a different kind of pedagogy./ You cannot steal our honey, David./ It will go sour for you./You can process all the information/ that you wish/ but your project is doomed to fail./ We thought we should let you know –/ out of kindness, mainly./ If you want to make us/ the processors of the information/ that is useful to you;/ if you want to smother/ the capacity for critical thought:/ so be it./ We understand that you do not like/ to be told that you are wrong./ So we understand/ that you do not want us to think/ too rigorously, or critically./ So go on:/ lobotomise us./ Tell us that we are beyond the pale./ Make us over/ into the drones and ciphers/ of your economy./ Your world will be the poorer./ We will continue to nourish our traditions/ in the crevices and dark corners/ that you forget/ and that you cannot touch./
It is almost inappropriate/ to lay out to you/ the terms of your own wrongness./ But has it not occurred to you/ that the ‘vocation’ of scholarship/ far from leading to a profession/ may in fact preclude it?/ Or is it that you are more of a capital calf/ than you are letting on? / Is it that the Brave New World/ you are trying to inaugurate/ will, in fact, preclude scholarship?/
We have tasted companionship/ in a way that you cannot know./ We have a singleness of heart./ And, unlike you,/ we none of us believe/ that any of our possessions are our own./ You will not find us/ in any of your statistical surveys;/ our ‘student experience’ cannot be measured/ by your instruments./ Woe to every scorner and mocker/ who collects wealth/ and counts it./ We are both measurably younger/ and immeasurably older/ than you./ You have already lost./ You have lost the initiative./ You have lost the debate./ You have lost your sense of decorum./
We are closer than you think./ So it does not surprise us/ that you are worried./ You can try to intimidate us;/ you can threaten to shoot us/ with rubber bullets;/ you can arrest us;/ you can imprison us;/ you can criminalise our dissent;/ you can blight a hundred thousand lives,/ slowly, and one-by-one,/ but you cannot break us/ because we are more resolute,/ more numerous,/ and more determined than you./ And we are closer than you think./ So it does not surprise us/ that you are scared./ It is not that you lack our confidence –/ you never had it –/ the nub of the issue is this:/ you do not have confidence in yourself./Go home, David./ And learn your gods anew.
By the citizens and the students, for the people’s mic.
![Operation Paperclip was the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) project that sought to bring German scientists to the United States after the end of World War II in 1945. Carried out by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (a subcommittee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Armed Forces), Operation Paperclip was a success, as the picture above, taken at Fort Bliss in Texas in 1946, attests. The men in this photo, many of whom are smiling, constitute some of the most brilliant scientific minds of the time in the fields of aeronautics, rocketry, medicine, electronics and physics. All of them were recruited by the United States to continue their research in America and many of them went on to become leading figures in NASA and other government research and development institutions. No. 73, Dr Wernher Von Braun, was considered the leading rocket engineer at NASA in the twentieth century. No. 32, Dr Arthur Rudolph, built NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket. No. 3, Dr Kurt Debus was the first director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Another scientist brought over by Operation Paperclip though not in this photo, Hubertus Strughold, designed NASA’s on-board life support systems and was instrumental in developing the pressure-suits worn by early American astronauts.
What is the problem with all this? Most of these men were Nazis. Many held rank in the SS. A BBC article from 2005 (http://tinyurl.com/bqedov9) outlines this fact well:
Events moved rapidly. President Truman authorised Paperclip in August 1945 and, on 18 November, the first Germans reached America.
There was, though, one major problem. Truman had expressly ordered that anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism militarism” would be excluded.
Under this criterion even von Braun himself, the man who masterminded the Moon shots, would have been ineligible to serve the US. A member of numerous Nazi organisations, he also held rank in the SS … Von Braun’s associates included Arthur Rudolph, chief operations director at Nordhausen [a rocket production facility], where 20,000 slave labourers died producing V-2 missiles … described as “100 per cent Nazi, dangerous type” [;] Kurt Debus, rocket launch specialist, another SS officer.
All of these men were cleared to work for the US, their alleged crimes covered up and their backgrounds bleached by a military which saw winning the Cold War, and not upholding justice, as its first priority.
-Andrew Walker, writing for the BBC
The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency just went to work and rewrote the past for most of these men so they could start over again in America, effectively wiping out their history of Nazism in the process. There is a deeply troubling ethical question here. Let’s frame it. When he was head of Nazi Germany’s Air Force Institute for Aviation Medicine, Dr Hubertus Strughold is alleged to have been involved in experiments on inmates of the Dachau concentration camp, experiments where the inmates were tortured and killed by being immersed in water, placed in pressure chambers, forced to drink sea water and exposed to freezing temperatures. Dr Hubertus Strughold was later, as Walker reports, called ‘the father of space medicine’, and not only designed NASA’s on-board life support systems but also the pressure suit for early American astronauts as already noted. There is thus a troubling correlation between Dr Strughold’s wartime research and his later work for NASA. In his experiments on concentration camp victims Dr Strughold appears to have been investigating the effects that the extreme conditions (pressure, temperature, weightlessness &c.) of the zero-gravity space environment would have on humans. The research yielded by these unconscionable human experiments is therefore arguably the early groundwork for the later medical and scientific work that saw Strughold design NASA’s astronaut suits and life support systems. How can we relate to a scientist and a science that delivered progress and advances, yet did so through unethical, inhumane, indeed evil, means? Condemn both, certainly, and consider disposing of his science. Yet how do you dispose of his science, really? The astronauts at the international space station right now as well as the structure they are floating around in are part of Strughold’s legacy. They prove that his legacy will continue and that his science has passed into the epistemé, not for better, but for benefit and ethical worst.
America won the space race, but the history of Operation Paperclip reveals that this victory was won with blood thought. How much of our scientific progress is, or has been, achieved with blood thought, blood sacrifice of humans, animals or the environment? Argue with anyone who tries to tell you that science is neutral and objective, that it has no bias, or that ethics are of no concern in progressive scientific research if the research yields quantifiable advances and results. Tell them they are wrong. All too often we allow ourselves to see the advance of science as an impersonal phenomenon, as a machine or automaton marching forwards into the grey distance without any emotive or political directive. Operation Paperclip reminds us that this is not the case, that science is human, all too human.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lun63lnlQ01qz6ehvo1_r1_500.jpg)
Operation Paperclip was the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) project that sought to bring German scientists to the United States after the end of World War II in 1945. Carried out by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (a subcommittee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Armed Forces), Operation Paperclip was a success, as the picture above, taken at Fort Bliss in Texas in 1946, attests. The men in this photo, many of whom are smiling, constitute some of the most brilliant scientific minds of the time in the fields of aeronautics, rocketry, medicine, electronics and physics. All of them were recruited by the United States to continue their research in America and many of them went on to become leading figures in NASA and other government research and development institutions. No. 73, Dr Wernher Von Braun, was considered the leading rocket engineer at NASA in the twentieth century. No. 32, Dr Arthur Rudolph, built NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket. No. 3, Dr Kurt Debus was the first director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Another scientist brought over by Operation Paperclip though not in this photo, Hubertus Strughold, designed NASA’s on-board life support systems and was instrumental in developing the pressure-suits worn by early American astronauts. 
