The Militarization of American College Campuses
Increased militarization on college campuses is a phenomenon that has plagued American academic institutions increasingly with each social movement. Student protests have prompted increased police presence on American campuses under the guise of mitigating safety concerns. However, the true driving force is their view that political dissent is a security and reputational threat. Militarized responses pose serious threats to students’ abilities to express their First Amendment rights, and undermine the historical role that student advocacy has played in movements for the betterment of democratic change. The use of force against students, from Kent State to Columbia, reveals a more sinister reality: administrators outsource conflict management to armed forces to restore order and constrain students’ constitutional rights and political participation. Many universities face pressure from donors, politicians, media, and legal teams, creating a shift that normalizes violence and surveillance on campus in exchange for perceived tranquility. As universities increasingly frame student protest as a threat to order and institutional image– under pressure to maintain civility on campus– they turn to militarized policing that suppresses First Amendment expression and erodes the democratic tradition of student activism.
There are several vital historical focal points to consider when investigating the role that policing and militarization has had on college campuses. The first and most well known is the student response to the Vietnam War. Driven by a moral opposition to American involvement in Vietnam, student-led resistance sparked massive mobilizations, but the path to this point included devastating consequences. Two foundational examples include the 1967 Dow Chemical protests at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the 1970 shooting at Kent State. The UW-Madison event was the first use of tear gas on student protestors to force dispersal, leaving 65 people injured. When students organized to protest the presence of Dow Chemical Company as a recruiter on campus, they were met with university-sanctioned violence. Dow’s production of napalm, a jellied gasoline that was used to burn and destroy landscapes and enemy bases, is what made them the center of this pushback. Three years later, students at Kent State organized against the expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia. As a result, the administration had the Ohio National Guard sent onto campus, leading to a shooting that killed four unarmed student protestors (Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Schroeder). The Vietnam war was a major turning point and set a dangerous precedent for what it means to speak out against injustice on campus. However, this era is not unique; since then, more movements have triggered similar force-heavy results.
The 1977 implementation of the 1033 Program played a major role in the militarization of college campuses by militarizing local police departments. This program was introduced by the Department of Defense and allowed the transfer of excess non-lethal weapons and tactical equipment to small law enforcement agencies.
These weapons include pepper spray, Tasers, stun guns, batons, personal alarms, pepperball launchers, rubber bullets, and flash grenades– all of which are technically deemed “non-lethal” but can and have had lethal or otherwise extremely debilitating consequences. Legislation like this assures that local police departments are well equipped to punish student protestors with military grade weaponry, following the trajectory of increasingly violent responses to campus activism that had begun to take form after the resistance to the Vietnam war.
9/11 and the cultural shift that followed the attacks rewired the purpose of higher education in the US. Although not relating directly to student protest, the way that 9/11 transformed universities into militarized hubs contributed to the habituation to violence and surveillance that can be observed today. Fueled by patriotism that propelled the War on Terror, academia bloomed into a “hypermodern militarized knowledge factory”. This became reality through government grants like Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP) and the Minerva Consortium that link student research directly to government agencies like the CIA– ultimately incentivizing students to conduct research that supports national security interests. Highlighting how integrated militarization is into American universities post 9/11 is critical to understanding how the problem has developed over time. Understanding this as a gradual change, that is actually quite inline with the way America functions domestically and internationally, provides valuable insight that makes this degradation of constitutional rights feel very predictable. Post 9/11 cultural shifts in academia, through grant funding for academic endeavors benefiting the federal government, makes surveillance and militarization of college campuses much less surprising. When one can recognize the militarization of their society, it becomes much easier to see how these ideals permeate sectors like academia. This concept is a great example of what Aimé Césaire calls the “Imperial Boomerang.” This phenomenon is described as the way that governments employ repressive techniques through imperialist efforts, and that these governments will eventually employ these same repressive techniques on their own populations domestically when they step out of line of the accepted status quo. The persecution of participants of civil disobedience falls directly under this theory. While Americans witness harsh militarism overseas, soft militarism was used on them; from the Patriot Act to the suppression of free speech through the repression of student political dissidents.
The Occupy movement, and the backlash that student protestors faced is another example displaying the continued intensified violence just 10 years after 9/11. Students were sprayed with military-grade chemical agents, while sitting down with their arms linked in protest of tuition hikes and in support of the Occupy movement at UC Davis. Just a couple years later in 2014, a new round of student protests broke out in response to the death of Michael Brown. Their vigils and peaceful demonstrations were met with the local police department’s use of tanks, tear gas, and body armor. Most recently, during student protests against the genocide in Gaza and the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, many of these tacts were employed once again to disperse participants and disincentivize future protests. At peaceful encampments, pickets, vigils, and occupations of campus facilities police used weapons including rubber bullets, flash grenades, and batons, and pushed several students down staircases at Columbia University, University of California-Los Angeles, Tulane University, Dartmouth University, and University of Texas-Austin. These events all serve as valuable examples of the consistent escalation of violence against student political dissidents. While these actions were implemented by police; many universities took this opportunity to intensify crackdowns within their own institutions. Universities revised their conduct policies to be more restrictive against student speech; banning masks, requiring permits, prohibiting encampments, surveilling students through campus wide cameras and security details, as well as an increased police presence on campus.
Many universities face immense financial and political pressure to manage reputational and operational risk. At California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo (my university), several of the campus facilities were paid for by engineering companies that support the military industrial complex. Boeing funded a building on campus and Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have direct partnerships with Cal Poly to recruit students. Where campuses maintain close relationships with defense-adjacent industries, administrators may have stronger incentives to rapidly suppress anti-militarism protests.
Further, Cal Poly has signed a contract with Flock Safety. This company installed cameras all around campus that track each vehicle, its license plate, color, damage, bumper stickers, and more. With an initial fee of $42,500, the university is also required to pay an annual fee of $46,500 to keep the surveillance system on campus. The federal government can access the data collected from the cameras without the university knowing. This is not unique to Cal Poly either, these cameras are popping up around universities all over the country.
These sorts of partnerships that benefit the federal government further incentivize universities to crack down on protests that oppose American government activities and military intervention both domestically and abroad. This pressure creates a campus environment where institutional stability and external stakeholder expectations can take priority over robust protections for student speech. The result is a governance style that treats dissent as a security problem, increasing the likelihood of police involvement and restrictive conduct rules that chill student participation. This helps explain why universities often justify escalation through the language of “civility” and “safety,” even when the response functions to deter further organizing.
Taken together, these historical and contemporary examples show that the militarization of college campuses is not an isolated overreaction to civil unrest; but, a reoccurring governance response to student dissent that has intensified across movements. From the tear gas deployed at UW-Madison and the Ohio National Guard's deadly presence at Kent state, to the post 9/11 normalization of surveillance and security partnerships, to the force-heavy crackdown during the Occupy mobilization at UC Davis, Ferguson-era protests, and recent Pro-Palestine student actions; universities have repeatedly treated protests as a threat to institutional order and public image rather than a form of political participation central to higher education's democratic mission. The dispersal of military equipment and tactics through Program 1033, coupled with administrative pressure tied to donors, political scrutiny, and liability concerns, helps explain why campus leaders so often invoke measures to preserve tranquility that deter organizing through fear of injury, arrest, and discipline. Ultimately, the turn to militarized policing does more than disperse crowds in the moment: it narrows the practical space for First Amendment expression and undermines the long tradition of student activism as a driver of social and political change. Ultimately, if universities claim to educate students for democracy, they must resist equating dissent with disorder and instead confront protests as an inevitable and necessary part of democratic life.
As a final note, I want to highlight a petition that supports the removal of Flock cameras from Cal Poly’s campus. I, and my classmates, would deeply appreciate it if you all took a second to sign it here. If you are interested in learning more about these cameras, this article provides some important context relative to Cal Poly. The bottom of that petition includes more information on the broad use of these cameras as well.
