2008 Woodie Awards
Home > Commentary
Department of Defense funding useful to people for non-millitary purposes
by Letter to the Editor |
PUBLISHED ON 7/25/06 IN Commentary
To the Students for a Democratic Society,
My name is Nicholas Kelly, and I am an undergraduate at Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI.
As a summer research assistant at the University of Oregon with the Department of Chemistry, I take issue with certain aspects of the inquiry posited in the letter to the editor in the July 20 edition
of the Daily Emerald ("UO should eschew department of defense
research ONAMI funds").
While I am also against supporting the prolonged conflict in Iraq, I do not believe that unclassified research in non-weapons technologies is truly evidence of University support for militarism, and hold that to "eschew Department of Defense" ONAMI funding would be a quixotic and potentially catastrophic way to protest the activities of the United States armed forces.
The Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute is headquartered in Corvallis, a facility I have personally toured. As its title implies, it is a research institute developing Nanotechnologies
applicable to, among other things, "portable power systems for use by military personnel in the field for water purification and battery power," which was quoted in this guest commentary from DeFazio's press release. The next statement reads, verbatim, "This type of technological development can be seen
only as a means of moving the U.S. military into a new age of warfare." It does not take a skeptic to observe the misconstrued logic that
went into or perhaps downright pessimistic propaganda that is such a comment.
Is it not possible that such portable energy systems could be used for something beyond destruction? The power systems in question are the very ones that utilize green
energy sources such as solar, hydro, and thermoelectrics, fundamental in the struggle for renewable energy. As pernicious as water purification can be in certain circumstances (I once used an iodine tablet in a
Nalgene that killed thousands, if not millions, of microorganisms), I do not think refusing to research in that particular field, based solely on the premise that it is military funded, would be an effective measure to
My name is Nicholas Kelly, and I am an undergraduate at Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI.
As a summer research assistant at the University of Oregon with the Department of Chemistry, I take issue with certain aspects of the inquiry posited in the letter to the editor in the July 20 edition
of the Daily Emerald ("UO should eschew department of defense
research ONAMI funds").
While I am also against supporting the prolonged conflict in Iraq, I do not believe that unclassified research in non-weapons technologies is truly evidence of University support for militarism, and hold that to "eschew Department of Defense" ONAMI funding would be a quixotic and potentially catastrophic way to protest the activities of the United States armed forces.
The Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute is headquartered in Corvallis, a facility I have personally toured. As its title implies, it is a research institute developing Nanotechnologies
applicable to, among other things, "portable power systems for use by military personnel in the field for water purification and battery power," which was quoted in this guest commentary from DeFazio's press release. The next statement reads, verbatim, "This type of technological development can be seen
only as a means of moving the U.S. military into a new age of warfare." It does not take a skeptic to observe the misconstrued logic that
went into or perhaps downright pessimistic propaganda that is such a comment.
Is it not possible that such portable energy systems could be used for something beyond destruction? The power systems in question are the very ones that utilize green
energy sources such as solar, hydro, and thermoelectrics, fundamental in the struggle for renewable energy. As pernicious as water purification can be in certain circumstances (I once used an iodine tablet in a
Nalgene that killed thousands, if not millions, of microorganisms), I do not think refusing to research in that particular field, based solely on the premise that it is military funded, would be an effective measure to
Be the first to comment on this story