1. society
2. unrest and war

DEMILITARIZING McGILL:
Illustrated.
McGill & the Military
SHOCK WAVE
PHYSICS GROUP
McGill takes money from armies and defence contractors to conduct research that supports deadly invasions and occupations.
A thermobaric bomb ignites the air above its
target, then sucks the oxygen out of anyone
who has survived the initial blast.
Since the Vietnam War, McGill profs have been receiving money from American and Canadian military
agencies to aid in the development of thermobaric
explosives and, more recently, hypersonic weapons.
Through the SWPG and two front companies,
Profs David Frost and Andrew Higgins have
been doing explosives research at McGill for
more than a decade.
Thermobaric weapons have been used by the
United States to kill people taking shelter in
buildings and caves in Afghanistan and Iraq, and
by the Assad regime against Syrian civilians.
CFD LAB
Directed by Dr Wagdi
Habashi, the lab develops
simulation software for
aircraft, with a specific
focus on drones.
CAE uses simulation tools to train U.S.
and Israeli attack drone pilots, while
drone makers use the technology to
optimize the design of their aircraft.
AEROSPACE
MECHATRONICS LAB
Defense contractors CAE, Bombardier, and
Bell Helicopter fund the CFD Lab in exchange
for substantial control over research; a CAE
vice-president sits on McGill’s Board of Governors.
U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen
and Somalia have killed more than 2,800
people between 2002 and 2015, including
as many as 1,121 civilians, and at least
182 children. Countless others live in
constant fear.
Flight tests have been conducted
at Macdonald campus.
The military objective is to develop small
drones that can autonomously land on
rooftops and armored vehicles.
Police in North America are already using
mini-UAVs to surveil protests and for border control. There are plans to equip the
drones with tear gas and rubber bullets.
The Canadian military funds robotics research and
development at McGill. Prof Inna Sharf led a recent
project focused on mini-UAVs for use in urban warfare.
Mapping Military Research at McGill
STBIO: military-funded
psych. studies
Institute of Air and Space Law:
training for U.S. Air Force lawyers
The end products may change, but the system repeats: through military collaborations, McGill helps develop the weapons used by states to enact imperialist and
colonial violence on a massive scale in wars without end. War creates demand as
well as testing grounds for military research, so that by maintaining lab facilities
that would be unprofitable without military contracts, McGill invests itself in the
expansion of warfare. These research projects are not aberrations – McGill’s history
of complicity in colonization, white supremacy, and imperialist warfare extends back
to its founding on stolen Iroquois land by a settler who got rich off the slave trade.
James Admin.: ‘access
to information’ & VicePrincipal, Research
ENGMD: Shock Wave
Physics & Aerospace
Mechatronics
ENGMC: Network
Dynamics Lab
Mac campus:
drone flight tests
688 Sherb.: CFD Lab
Beyond Bombs and Drones
Prof. Derek Ruths of McGill’s Network Dynamics Lab collaborates with intelligence agencies
to develop methods of controlling populations
in times of social upheaval. His research depicts social networks via diagrams like this one.
It would be a mistake to restrict our outlook to McGill’s contributions
to physical weapon systems. Prof. Ruths’ network analysis work is one
example of how the militarization of the University is more insidious.
Psychology Prof. Don Taylor recently did research on Somali-Canadians
and their ‘propensity to support terrorism’ without telling subjects that
the military was funding it. The Institute of Air and Space Law teaches
active members of the U.S. Air Force the law enabling space warfare. The
breadth of military collaborations on campus implicates McGill in endless
configurations of repressive violence and state-sanctioned terror.
Learn more and review source material at
www.demilitarizemcgill.com
RESISTING
MILITARY RESEARCH:
A DO-IT-YOURSELF GUIDE
The world of the university trains us to engage in endless academic disputes, to structure our lives around meeting the
demands of external forces, to go through the motions of civil
society as if nothing real were at stake: to become the ideal
worker, compliant and risk-averse, of a permanent war economy. If we’re going to shut down McGill’s military research
labs, we’ll need to refuse our assigned roles as students and
come together in ways that pose a real threat to the University as it exists. Policy reform has not only proved a dead end
but diverted our energy away from taking concrete action to
disrupt military research, finding others who might share our
goals, and creating relationships that sustain struggle. The
basis for this project must be a commitment to attacking all
forms of authority, including as we may act them out in relation to one another. Let’s have each other’s backs, and not
just in the heat of confrontation. A crucial form of resistance is
direct action, which means acting on your own behalf to
change something without trying to get someone else to do it
for you. McGill’s inept security systems and fear of provoking
a backlash to repression mean that military-industrial development on campus is vulnerable, pretty much all of the time.
FURTHER RESOURCES
demilitarizemcgill.com
500 Years of Indigenous Resistance
The Military Strategy of Women and Children
How Nonviolence Protects the State
Blockade, Occupy, Strike Back
Security Culture: a handbook for activists
Write an email to [email protected] to learn more, make a
Disclaimer: This publication is intended for informational
purposes only and does not encourage or condone any illegal
activity.
Artwork by L.R. and hérisson
Anti-copyright
Montreal, March 2015
complaint, or meet accomplices.