Knowledge and Power: The Political Economy of Postwar University Military Research

• In Event: 50266 - New Directions and Emerging Studies of Politics in Science and Technology: Changes in Governance, Political Economy, Labor, and Work (Co-sponsored by Section on Political Sociology)

Abstract

This paper will examine the historical development of military-sponsored research at U.S. universities and its role in shaping neoliberal political economy. Current understandings of the military-industrial complex and academic science in the neoliberal era are incomplete because they do not theorize how military-sponsored university research following WWII established present-day ties between academia, military, and private industry. Although historical literature on the evolution of individual military-sponsored university research labs exists, they do not employ these narratives to expand understandings of our current neoliberal context. By analyzing the evolution of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory from WWII through the 1970s, I seek to reveal how early military-academic partnerships cultivated the structures, networks, and ideologies that underpin today's political economy—where endless technological innovation in the military-industrial complex fuels both global conflict and private profit.

Author

• Jasmine Cha Sausedo, Johns Hopkins University