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To Do the Greatest Harm
Cornell University’s Complicity in International Violence & Destruction
This independent research shown in this report, show that the US and Israeli military, the largest military and weapons corporations, and technology companies have invested over $180 million in Cornell researchers and departments, mostly from 2023-2024.
Discussion of the military-industrial complex often leaves out its third arm: academia. For many decades, the American defense industry, weapons manufacturers, and universities have collaborated in a profitable pattern that turn students and academics into cogs of the American war machine. The Department of Defense (D.o.D.) is the branch of government that distributes taxpayer funds, generally through direct and indirect contracts, to research universities.
This report unmasks Cornell University’s participation in this system and its complicity in global violence, destruction, and human rights violations while it enjoys a $10.7b endowment. In particular, our analysis, largely based on Office of Sponsored Research files from 2001-2024, finds that Cornell has been complicit in the U.S.-backed Saudi genocide of Yemen and the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Gaza. This complicity has been established through two forms of collaboration:
-
Direct collaboration, through tens of millions of dollars in funding, with weapons manufacturers and fossil fuel companies. These include companies from which the student undergraduate and graduate bodies have adopted divestment resolutions (BAE Systems, Boeing, Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, Technion Institute, and ThyssenKrupp).
-
Direct collaboration with Saudi ARAMCO and the Israeli Ministry of Defense (I.M.o.D.), including millions of dollars in funding. In addition, Cornell’s partnership with the Israeli university Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) through the New York City Cornell Tech Campus is uniquely egregious and a direct form of collaboration.
Much of the data supporting this has been aggregated into an excel file attached here with the original files. Hundreds of these sponsored research projects are listed in the linked table in addition to D.o.D. work that is included in our larger report. The projects vary in subject from vaccines to cyber to hardware to policy. The table should be treated as a largely representative but incomplete list of Cornell’s involvement with the most prominent weapons manufacturing-related entities.
Israeli Funding and Cornell’s Role in Apartheid and Genocide
In 2007, Harold Craighead, Professor in Applied and Engineering Physics, secured $300k from the I.M.o.D. The funded project focused on the development and fabrication of nanodevices. Though we were unable to obtain papers specifically citing this funding other than the official reporting, we present here the most plausible outcome of the proposed research. In 2006, Craighead received a visit from former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres. In a discussion with Peres, Craighead mentioned his collaboration with Tel Aviv University (T.A.U). Indeed, in the same year Craighead published a paper in collaboration with employees of T.A.U. focusing on the same topic of nanodevices. Military applications of the research include nano-meter scale robotics and biotechnologies along with optics/imaging. In a similar vein, the unaffiliated partnership between Lockheed Martin and Rice University documents other broad military applications of nano-tech.
In 2020, Robert F. Shepherd, an Associate Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, solicited $100k from the I.M.o.D. for elastic metamaterials research. Like Craighead, this funding is not reported in any of Shepherd’s publications, though one can extrapolate on the basis of the research topic as to which papers of his were I.M.o.D. funded. In particular, a paper from 2020 focuses precisely on the use of fluid flow to modulate material shape. This field is largely concerned with the manufacturing of materials which can change properties like texture or rigidity as a modulated response. Such applications are useful for the development of robotic components which can manipulate or navigate the environment. In addition, Shepherd’s collaborator at Israeli university Technion, Amir Gat, lists a 2019-2020 $100k funding grant from Maffat (a joint administrative body of the I.M.o.D and the I.D.F.) under the same topic. Conference proceedings also fit under the same topic and Shepherd went to Technion to present his work at a conference in 2020.
Frank Wise, Professor of Engineering in Applied and Engineering Physics, also solicited $100k from the I.M.o.D. to research high-power lasers. Such terawatt fiber lasers have a variety of applications but are of particular military interest for destroying aircraft or infrastructure without the use of conventional kinetic weapons like missiles. Lockheed Martin, a weapons manufacturer, reports its own interests in high-power lasers and such weapons are already being applied aboard military ships. This funding resulted in a paper on lasers that can be modulated to use various modes of emission. Pavel Sidorenko, a post-doc within Wise’s group, is now holding a position at the Technion continuing research on the high-power fiber lasers “which are becoming increasingly important in a variety of fields ranging from military applications to healthcare”.
Qing Zhao, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, also solicited $420k from the I.M.o.D. between 2021 and 2024. Zhao used this funding to research artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms and cites the I.M.o.D. funding in two papers dealing with computer vision and decision-making algorithms. Focusing on the former, Zhao’s work on computer vision enables cameras to more effectively identify objects, persons and notice patterns. Indeed, such computer vision algorithms have been implemented by the Israeli military to identify Palestinians from Gaza at checkpoints targeting forcibly displaced refugees.
Zhao’s work also has applications in the development of efficient autonomous drone swarms, by producing algorithms that lead to effective decision-making. Suppose a swarm of drones is navigating an area, each with its own sensors or cameras learning about its environment, then the data has to be processed leading to a decision. Zhao’s work creates an algorithm that processes this information in a centralized way and then makes a decision. This research can be applied to make decisions such as whether or not to kill an individual or bomb a building. Per a Booz Allen Hamilton report, Israel has been to date the first to use machine learning, including drone swarms successfully in military campaigns:
“Israel’s victory over Hamas in 2021 was the first war to be won via the asymmetric advantage provided by AI, and the conflict in Gaza that started in 2023 continues to be characterized by AI as well as information warfare in the cognitive domain… Israel became the first country to use true drone swarms, deploying them in its 2021 conflict with Gaza, and is arguably the global leader in this technology because of their implementation of Elbit Systems’ Legion-X, a modular, heterogeneous, multi-domain C2 swarm system”. See also.
The use of these machine learning algorithms in Gaza has been documented in +972 magazine with the implementation of algorithms known as The Gospel, Lavender, and Where’s Daddy?
On the policy side, Sarah Kreps, Professor in Government, conducts public policy and supply chain studies for the D.o.D. and the Israeli government. In 2024, she published a study on the best surveillance practices for governments to engage in. The study was in part funded by the Israel National Cyber Directorate.
Given Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians, Cornell’s collaboration with Technion University in Israel is another blatant example of its active complicity. With the establishment of the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in NYC in 2012, Cornell has doubled down on its commitment to its Israeli collaborations, despite the efforts of its activist student body and the protest of NYC communities. At the announcement of the partnership, the Israeli consul expressed the “strategic importance” of the project to change the state’s association with conflict and violence, and instead associate it with innovation. Cornell consistently touts its collaboration with Technion in published articles: “The impact of the Technion on Israel’s economy, society and defense is unmatched”.
Further, the word “defense” is often used by weapons manufacturers and governments as a euphemism for offensive capabilities. The Technion has also been instrumental in advancing technological capabilities of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. It also had several programs and scholarships sponsored by weapons manufacturers Rafael and Elbit Systems. In addition, Technion has been directly complicit through providing support to the Israeli military. As the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (B.D.S.) movement has documented: “Technion has developed a course on marketing the Israeli weapons industry to the international market for export. Technion also has numerous joint academic programs with the Israeli military and developed the remote control capabilities for the Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer used by the Israeli military to demolish Palestinian homes—considered collective punishment under international law.” Cornell Tech’s council includes Michael Bloomberg who once stated: “I’ll never condition aid to Israel.” This may reflect, in part, why Cornell’s leadership has refused to even consider divestment.
Saudi Funding and Cornell’s Role in Climate Change and Human Rights Abuses
Cornell’s complicity with genocidal governments extends further through its substantial relationships with the Saudi government and its institutions. University programs and individual faculty benefit from Saudi funds despite the many violations of human rights carried out by Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi totalitarian Crown Prince and Prime Minister. These include but are not limited to the following: the U.S.-backed genocide in Yemen, the assassination and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the country’s limitless production of fossil fuels, and its persistent crackdowns on its own activists, including feminists. The Yemeni genocide claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians from 2015 to 2022. [^45] American-made weapons were used and made the U.S. complicit. At no point did Cornell, as an institution, take action to break ties with the Saudi dictatorship. Cornell’s former president Frank H. T. Rhodes served as a trustee at the King Abdullah University of Science Technology along with former M.I.T. president Charles M. Vest.
Over the past few years, faculty have also been subsidized through research funding from Saudi ARAMCO, the majority state-owned petroleum and natural gas company responsible for almost 4.5% of all global CO2 and methane emissions between 1965 and 2017. The company has a long history of obstructing action against climate change through aggressive lobbying and funding of Western research, especially at American universities. The work financed by Saudi ARAMCO at Cornell is focused on oil refinement and energy generation broadly, a problematic venture, especially considering academia’s knowledge of the human role in perpetuating climate change.
Amongst the employees who received funds from ARAMCO are Lawrence Cathles, Lynden Archer and Emmanuel Giannelis, professors in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Materials Science, respectively, who received $1.3m from 2009 to 2011 through the KAUST-Cornell Center for Energy and Sustainability. Despite its name, this center, a collaboration between Cornell and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (K.A.U.S.T.) in Saudi Arabia from 2008-2015, was committed to research on oil and gas production. Further K.A.U.S.T. funding followed: Giannelis also received $531k between 2012 and 2014. Archer, current Dean of the School of Engineering, received $84k in 2017. In 2023, $250k went to Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Yong Joo and $400k to a professor in Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Geoffrey Coates. Yong Joo also solicited $200k in funding along with Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering Greeshma Gadikota’s $300k in 2024.
Collaboration With Weapons Manufacturers
In addition to collaborating with violent regimes, Cornell has received millions of dollars in research funding that have come directly from weapons manufacturers. Publicly available documents dating from 2001 show this funding includes the “primes”: Lockheed Martin [~$3m], Raytheon [~$6.5m], Boeing [~$1.4m], Northrop Grumman [~$2.3m] and General Dynamics [~$240k]. B.A.E. Systems [~$2.3m], L3Harris [~$1.4m], Shell [$500k], Exxon [~$1.2m], Intel Corporation [~$16.4m], I.B.M. [~$7.2m], M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory [~$250k], Teledyne [~$700k] and others have also given considerable research funding to the Cornell employees.
The group of studies are far too extensive to discuss in one document but demonstrate the ultimate functioning of so-called “academic” research. The funding has been for machine learning and artificial intelligence development, software and computer language platforms, silicon chip and battery development, miniature satellites, robotics, data visualization, 3-D rendering and much more. All of these are components that are often declared as being “dual use” but are used by militaries and states well beyond any stated consumer use. As one example, Raytheon has published articles on its web page touting its collaboration with Cornell on gallium-nitride materials and refinement radio-frequency technologies.
These collaborations extend to student life. Cornell has overtly partnered with Lockheed Martin to create a Masters of Engineering program in Systems Engineering. On the front page of the program is stated: “Lockheed Martin Employees - Welcome!”. Standards are lowered for Lockheed Martin employees by waiving GRE scores and requiring only one recommendation letter. Similarly, Cornell has an identical partnership with Boeing for a Masters program along with a 5% tuition discount and waiving of application fee.
The university also holds a key laboratory for the Northeast Regional Defense Technology Hub (N.O.R.D.T.E.C.H.) along with a plethora of other universities and weapons manufacturers. Though its aims include a wide array of technologies, they are highly focused on the development of computer chips. The basis of the organization is to create a collaborative space between weapons manufacturers, the D.o.D., and academia.
The Cornell Tech campus in N.Y.C. also does its own collaborations, including with DefenseArk. Through its startup award it has helped sustain autonomous robotics companies like Aatonomy which are looking to do business with the D.o.D.
Outlook
In the midst of foreign catastrophes including the Yemeni genocide, the ongoing Palestinian genocide and the assassination of hundreds of reporters in Gaza, Cornell has never ceased nor paused its collaboration with regimes or the weapons manufacturers supplying them. Not only does this demonstrate its institutional and individual collaboration with actors that consistently violate international law, but also reveals that its professed human values are ultimately hollow calls. In our non-comprehensive analysis of Cornell research funding from 2001-2024, we found that researchers and institutes received hundreds of millions of dollars from the D.o.D, weapons manufacturers, and international governments committing vast human rights violations. Further investigation would also reveal indirect transfers of technology and weaponry from Cornell to U.A.E.’s fueling of the Sudanese genocide by means of weapons manufacturing sales.
Cornell feigns its research to be merely theoretical, non-applied, or done for the sake of “knowledge production.” David Gray Widder, post-doctoral researcher at Cornell Tech has recently written about the impossibility of making a distinction between basic and applied research when such research is funded by entities whose explicit purpose is to enact harm: “this mutual enlistment is crucial to the perpetuation of the military-industrial-commercial-academic complex, and to the technopolitical imaginaries of security through military domination that keep public funds flowing to projects in more efficient killing and destruction”.
Political scientist Neve Gordon and medical anthropologist Guy Shalev published a recent article titled “The Shame of Israeli Medicine”, which concludes that Israeli academics are not doing their part in preventing the genocide and therefore require external pressure and sanctioned from outside Israel. Despite these findings, Cornell Tech’s president Michael Kotlikoff recently stated proudly in a speech that “at Cornell Tech, we have the most intensive and meaningful collaboration with an Israeli university of any institution in this country”.
As Cornell reportedly prepares to reach a $100 million settlement with the Trump administration over allegations of anti-semitism, it draws ever closer to the belly of the beast. The Trump administration’s blatant weaponization of anti-semitism is one of its many tactics designed to manufacture consent for its crackdown on higher education and prompt capitulation. With this settlement, Cornell’s alliances with repressive regimes are only continuing to expand. An institution that continues to tie itself to the destruction of international communities can only degrade and devolve into a symbol of oppression.
This report finds that Cornell’s purported goals in sustaining human-centred values are not only lacking, but are egregiously contrary to them. On an institutional and individual level, Cornell is intimately complicit in the act of genocide. And though Cornell has its own unique forms of complicity, the academic-military-industrial complex permeates the entire American system of higher education. If these institutions, as they have demonstrated thus far, do not have the moral capacity to make ethical and just decisions, it is the responsibility of students, faculty, staff, and the broader international academic community to put pressure, sanctions, and boycotts on them. Ultimately, the contradictions revealed within academia, both over decades of violent complicity and the ongoing starvation and annihilation of Gaza, make clear the necessity of breaking apart and reshaping an academia divorced from the military, and truly committed to a greater, ethical, and just future.
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"title" : "To Do the Greatest Harm: Cornell University’s Complicity in International Violence & Destruction",
"author" : "Eliza Salamon & MB",
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"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/cornell-complicity",
"date" : "2025-08-20 12:01:00 -0400",
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"excerpt" : " This independent research shown in this report, show that the US and Israeli military, the largest military and weapons corporations, and technology companies have invested over $180 million in Cornell researchers and departments, mostly from 2023-2024.",
"content" : " This independent research shown in this report, show that the US and Israeli military, the largest military and weapons corporations, and technology companies have invested over $180 million in Cornell researchers and departments, mostly from 2023-2024.Discussion of the military-industrial complex often leaves out its third arm: academia. For many decades, the American defense industry, weapons manufacturers, and universities have collaborated in a profitable pattern that turn students and academics into cogs of the American war machine. 1 2 The Department of Defense (D.o.D.) is the branch of government that distributes taxpayer funds, generally through direct and indirect contracts, to research universities.This report unmasks Cornell University’s participation in this system and its complicity in global violence, destruction, and human rights violations while it enjoys a $10.7b endowment. In particular, our analysis, largely based on Office of Sponsored Research files from 2001-2024, finds that Cornell has been complicit in the U.S.-backed Saudi genocide of Yemen and the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Gaza. This complicity has been established through two forms of collaboration: Direct collaboration, through tens of millions of dollars in funding, with weapons manufacturers and fossil fuel companies. These include companies from which the student undergraduate and graduate bodies have adopted divestment resolutions (BAE Systems, Boeing, Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, Technion Institute, and ThyssenKrupp). 3 4 Direct collaboration with Saudi ARAMCO and the Israeli Ministry of Defense (I.M.o.D.), including millions of dollars in funding. In addition, Cornell’s partnership with the Israeli university Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) through the New York City Cornell Tech Campus is uniquely egregious and a direct form of collaboration. 5 Much of the data supporting this has been aggregated into an excel file attached here 6 with the original files. 7 Hundreds of these sponsored research projects are listed in the linked table in addition to D.o.D. work that is included in our larger report. 8 The projects vary in subject from vaccines to cyber to hardware to policy. The table should be treated as a largely representative but incomplete list of Cornell’s involvement with the most prominent weapons manufacturing-related entities.Israeli Funding and Cornell’s Role in Apartheid and GenocideIn 2007, Harold Craighead, Professor in Applied and Engineering Physics, secured $300k from the I.M.o.D. The funded project focused on the development and fabrication of nanodevices. Though we were unable to obtain papers specifically citing this funding other than the official reporting, we present here the most plausible outcome of the proposed research. In 2006, Craighead received a visit from former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres.9 In a discussion with Peres, Craighead mentioned his collaboration with Tel Aviv University (T.A.U). Indeed, in the same year Craighead published a paper in collaboration with employees of T.A.U. focusing on the same topic of nanodevices.10 Military applications of the research include nano-meter scale robotics and biotechnologies along with optics/imaging. In a similar vein, the unaffiliated partnership between Lockheed Martin and Rice University documents other broad military applications of nano-tech.11In 2020, Robert F. Shepherd, an Associate Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, solicited $100k from the I.M.o.D. for elastic metamaterials research. Like Craighead, this funding is not reported in any of Shepherd’s publications, though one can extrapolate on the basis of the research topic as to which papers of his were I.M.o.D. funded. In particular, a paper from 2020 focuses precisely on the use of fluid flow to modulate material shape.12 This field is largely concerned with the manufacturing of materials which can change properties like texture or rigidity as a modulated response. Such applications are useful for the development of robotic components which can manipulate or navigate the environment. In addition, Shepherd’s collaborator at Israeli university Technion, Amir Gat, lists a 2019-2020 $100k funding grant from Maffat (a joint administrative body of the I.M.o.D and the I.D.F.) under the same topic.13 Conference proceedings also fit under the same topic and Shepherd went to Technion to present his work at a conference in 2020.14 15Frank Wise, Professor of Engineering in Applied and Engineering Physics, also solicited $100k from the I.M.o.D. to research high-power lasers. Such terawatt fiber lasers have a variety of applications but are of particular military interest for destroying aircraft or infrastructure without the use of conventional kinetic weapons like missiles. Lockheed Martin, a weapons manufacturer, reports its own interests in high-power lasers and such weapons are already being applied aboard military ships.16 17 18 This funding resulted in a paper on lasers that can be modulated to use various modes of emission.19 Pavel Sidorenko, a post-doc within Wise’s group, is now holding a position at the Technion continuing research on the high-power fiber lasers “which are becoming increasingly important in a variety of fields ranging from military applications to healthcare”.20Qing Zhao, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, also solicited $420k from the I.M.o.D. between 2021 and 2024. Zhao used this funding to research artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms and cites the I.M.o.D. funding in two papers dealing with computer vision and decision-making algorithms.21 22 Focusing on the former, Zhao’s work on computer vision enables cameras to more effectively identify objects, persons and notice patterns.23 Indeed, such computer vision algorithms have been implemented by the Israeli military to identify Palestinians from Gaza at checkpoints targeting forcibly displaced refugees.24Zhao’s work also has applications in the development of efficient autonomous drone swarms, by producing algorithms that lead to effective decision-making.25 Suppose a swarm of drones is navigating an area, each with its own sensors or cameras learning about its environment, then the data has to be processed leading to a decision. Zhao’s work creates an algorithm that processes this information in a centralized way and then makes a decision. This research can be applied to make decisions such as whether or not to kill an individual or bomb a building. Per a Booz Allen Hamilton report, Israel has been to date the first to use machine learning, including drone swarms successfully in military campaigns:“Israel’s victory over Hamas in 2021 was the first war to be won via the asymmetric advantage provided by AI, and the conflict in Gaza that started in 2023 continues to be characterized by AI as well as information warfare in the cognitive domain… Israel became the first country to use true drone swarms, deploying them in its 2021 conflict with Gaza, and is arguably the global leader in this technology because of their implementation of Elbit Systems’ Legion-X, a modular, heterogeneous, multi-domain C2 swarm system”.26 See also.27The use of these machine learning algorithms in Gaza has been documented in +972 magazine with the implementation of algorithms known as The Gospel, Lavender, and Where’s Daddy?28On the policy side, Sarah Kreps, Professor in Government, conducts public policy and supply chain studies for the D.o.D. and the Israeli government. In 2024, she published a study on the best surveillance practices for governments to engage in.29 The study was in part funded by the Israel National Cyber Directorate.Given Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians, Cornell’s collaboration with Technion University in Israel is another blatant example of its active complicity. With the establishment of the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in NYC in 2012, Cornell has doubled down on its commitment to its Israeli collaborations, despite the efforts of its activist student body and the protest of NYC communities.30 31 At the announcement of the partnership, the Israeli consul expressed the “strategic importance” of the project to change the state’s association with conflict and violence, and instead associate it with innovation.32 Cornell consistently touts its collaboration with Technion in published articles: “The impact of the Technion on Israel’s economy, society and defense is unmatched”.33Further, the word “defense” is often used by weapons manufacturers and governments as a euphemism for offensive capabilities. The Technion has also been instrumental in advancing technological capabilities of the Israeli Ministry of Defense.34 35 36 It also had several programs and scholarships sponsored by weapons manufacturers Rafael and Elbit Systems.37 In addition, Technion has been directly complicit through providing support to the Israeli military.38 As the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (B.D.S.) movement has documented: “Technion has developed a course on marketing the Israeli weapons industry to the international market for export. Technion also has numerous joint academic programs with the Israeli military and developed the remote control capabilities for the Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer used by the Israeli military to demolish Palestinian homes—considered collective punishment under international law.”39 40 41 42 Cornell Tech’s council includes Michael Bloomberg who once stated: “I’ll never condition aid to Israel.”43 This may reflect, in part, why Cornell’s leadership has refused to even consider divestment.Saudi Funding and Cornell’s Role in Climate Change and Human Rights AbusesCornell’s complicity with genocidal governments extends further through its substantial relationships with the Saudi government and its institutions. University programs and individual faculty benefit from Saudi funds despite the many violations of human rights carried out by Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi totalitarian Crown Prince and Prime Minister. These include but are not limited to the following: the U.S.-backed genocide in Yemen, the assassination and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the country’s limitless production of fossil fuels, and its persistent crackdowns on its own activists, including feminists. The Yemeni genocide claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians from 2015 to 2022.44 [^45] American-made weapons were used and made the U.S. complicit.45 46 47 48 At no point did Cornell, as an institution, take action to break ties with the Saudi dictatorship. Cornell’s former president Frank H. T. Rhodes served as a trustee at the King Abdullah University of Science Technology along with former M.I.T. president Charles M. Vest.49Over the past few years, faculty have also been subsidized through research funding from Saudi ARAMCO, the majority state-owned petroleum and natural gas company responsible for almost 4.5% of all global CO2 and methane emissions between 1965 and 2017.50 The company has a long history of obstructing action against climate change through aggressive lobbying and funding of Western research, especially at American universities.51 The work financed by Saudi ARAMCO at Cornell is focused on oil refinement and energy generation broadly, a problematic venture, especially considering academia’s knowledge of the human role in perpetuating climate change.Amongst the employees who received funds from ARAMCO are Lawrence Cathles, Lynden Archer and Emmanuel Giannelis, professors in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Materials Science, respectively, who received $1.3m from 2009 to 2011 through the KAUST-Cornell Center for Energy and Sustainability. Despite its name, this center, a collaboration between Cornell and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (K.A.U.S.T.) in Saudi Arabia from 2008-2015, was committed to research on oil and gas production.52 53 Further K.A.U.S.T. funding followed: Giannelis also received $531k between 2012 and 2014. Archer, current Dean of the School of Engineering, received $84k in 2017. In 2023, $250k went to Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Yong Joo and $400k to a professor in Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Geoffrey Coates. Yong Joo also solicited $200k in funding along with Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering Greeshma Gadikota’s $300k in 2024.Collaboration With Weapons ManufacturersIn addition to collaborating with violent regimes, Cornell has received millions of dollars in research funding that have come directly from weapons manufacturers. Publicly available documents dating from 2001 show this funding includes the “primes”54: Lockheed Martin [~$3m], Raytheon [~$6.5m], Boeing [~$1.4m], Northrop Grumman [~$2.3m] and General Dynamics [~$240k]. B.A.E. Systems [~$2.3m], L3Harris [~$1.4m], Shell [$500k], Exxon [~$1.2m], Intel Corporation [~$16.4m], I.B.M. [~$7.2m], M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory [~$250k], Teledyne [~$700k] and others have also given considerable research funding to the Cornell employees.The group of studies are far too extensive to discuss in one document but demonstrate the ultimate functioning of so-called “academic” research. The funding has been for machine learning and artificial intelligence development, software and computer language platforms, silicon chip and battery development, miniature satellites, robotics, data visualization, 3-D rendering and much more. All of these are components that are often declared as being “dual use” but are used by militaries and states well beyond any stated consumer use. As one example, Raytheon has published articles on its web page touting its collaboration with Cornell on gallium-nitride materials and refinement radio-frequency technologies.55These collaborations extend to student life. Cornell has overtly partnered with Lockheed Martin to create a Masters of Engineering program in Systems Engineering.56 On the front page of the program is stated: “Lockheed Martin Employees - Welcome!”. Standards are lowered for Lockheed Martin employees by waiving GRE scores and requiring only one recommendation letter. Similarly, Cornell has an identical partnership with Boeing for a Masters program along with a 5% tuition discount and waiving of application fee.57The university also holds a key laboratory for the Northeast Regional Defense Technology Hub (N.O.R.D.T.E.C.H.) along with a plethora of other universities and weapons manufacturers.58 Though its aims include a wide array of technologies, they are highly focused on the development of computer chips. The basis of the organization is to create a collaborative space between weapons manufacturers, the D.o.D., and academia.The Cornell Tech campus in N.Y.C. also does its own collaborations, including with DefenseArk.59 Through its startup award it has helped sustain autonomous robotics companies like Aatonomy which are looking to do business with the D.o.D.60OutlookIn the midst of foreign catastrophes including the Yemeni genocide, the ongoing Palestinian genocide and the assassination of hundreds of reporters in Gaza, Cornell has never ceased nor paused its collaboration with regimes or the weapons manufacturers supplying them. Not only does this demonstrate its institutional and individual collaboration with actors that consistently violate international law, but also reveals that its professed human values are ultimately hollow calls. In our non-comprehensive analysis of Cornell research funding from 2001-2024, we found that researchers and institutes received hundreds of millions of dollars from the D.o.D, weapons manufacturers, and international governments committing vast human rights violations. Further investigation would also reveal indirect transfers of technology and weaponry from Cornell to U.A.E.’s fueling of the Sudanese genocide by means of weapons manufacturing sales.61Cornell feigns its research to be merely theoretical, non-applied, or done for the sake of “knowledge production.” David Gray Widder, post-doctoral researcher at Cornell Tech has recently written about the impossibility of making a distinction between basic and applied research when such research is funded by entities whose explicit purpose is to enact harm: “this mutual enlistment is crucial to the perpetuation of the military-industrial-commercial-academic complex, and to the technopolitical imaginaries of security through military domination that keep public funds flowing to projects in more efficient killing and destruction”.62Political scientist Neve Gordon and medical anthropologist Guy Shalev published a recent article titled “The Shame of Israeli Medicine”, which concludes that Israeli academics are not doing their part in preventing the genocide and therefore require external pressure and sanctioned from outside Israel. Despite these findings, Cornell Tech’s president Michael Kotlikoff recently stated proudly in a speech that “at Cornell Tech, we have the most intensive and meaningful collaboration with an Israeli university of any institution in this country”.63As Cornell reportedly prepares to reach a $100 million settlement with the Trump administration over allegations of anti-semitism, it draws ever closer to the belly of the beast.64 The Trump administration’s blatant weaponization of anti-semitism is one of its many tactics designed to manufacture consent for its crackdown on higher education and prompt capitulation. With this settlement, Cornell’s alliances with repressive regimes are only continuing to expand. An institution that continues to tie itself to the destruction of international communities can only degrade and devolve into a symbol of oppression.This report finds that Cornell’s purported goals in sustaining human-centred values are not only lacking, but are egregiously contrary to them. On an institutional and individual level, Cornell is intimately complicit in the act of genocide. And though Cornell has its own unique forms of complicity, the academic-military-industrial complex permeates the entire American system of higher education. If these institutions, as they have demonstrated thus far, do not have the moral capacity to make ethical and just decisions, it is the responsibility of students, faculty, staff, and the broader international academic community to put pressure, sanctions, and boycotts on them. Ultimately, the contradictions revealed within academia, both over decades of violent complicity and the ongoing starvation and annihilation of Gaza, make clear the necessity of breaking apart and reshaping an academia divorced from the military, and truly committed to a greater, ethical, and just future. https://universities.icanw.org/ ↩ https://www.thenation.com/article/world/the-pentagons-quest-for-academic-intelligence-ai/ ↩ https://assembly.cornell.edu/shared-governance/get-involved/input-issues/spring-2024-undergraduate-referendum/submitted?utm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss ↩ https://www.instagram.com/p/DI_mRUeOtKr/?img_index%3D3 ↩ https://www.instagram.com/p/DI_mRUeOtKr/?img_index%3D3 ↩ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SbjxsSRFFNKQTe0typvAR3KjKo0IZmdmBTpkMht6Ets/edit?usp%3Dsharing ↩ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S6NHD1w-828udkjH6mfYe0whBGoD0YZg/view?usp%3Ddrive_link ↩ https://antiwar.io/cornell ↩ https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/11/shimon-peres-calls-science-and-technology-key-peace ↩ https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp%3D%26arnumber%3D4159973 ↩ https://investors.lockheedmartin.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lockheed-martin-and-rice-partner-nanotech-research ↩ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7071869/%23fn-group1 ↩ https://gat.net.technion.ac.il/files/2019/07/AmirGatResume-1.pdf ↩ https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019APS..DFDG23001P/abstract ↩ https://yizhar.net.technion.ac.il/files/2021/09/MSRC2020_booklet.pdf ↩ https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2023-07-28-Lockheed-Martin-to-Scale-Its-Highest-Powered-Laser-to-500-Kilowatts-Power-Level ↩ https://newatlas.com/military/us-navy-uses-ai-train-laser-weapons-against-drones/ ↩ https://newatlas.com/military/us-navy-delivery-tactical-lockheed-martin-laser-weapon/ ↩ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2110.03571 ↩ https://zuckermanstem.org/scholars/dr-pavel-sidorenko/ ↩ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.08869 ↩ https://proceedings.mlr.press/v202/salgia23b/salgia23b.pdf ↩ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.08869 ↩ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/technology/israel-facial-recognition-gaza.html ↩ https://proceedings.mlr.press/v202/salgia23b/salgia23b.pdf ↩ https://www.boozallen.com/content/dam/home/docs/natsec/top-ten-emerging-technologies.pdf ↩ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2282656-israel-used-worlds-first-ai-guided-combat-drone-swarm-in-gaza-attacks/ ↩ https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ ↩ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00223433241233960 ↩ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/cornell-nyc-techs-alarming-ties-israeli-occupation/ ↩ https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/in-opposition-to-cornell-universitys/ ↩ https://www.jta.org/2011/12/20/ny/israeli-schools-strategic-move ↩ https://tech.cornell.edu/news/israel-cidon-joins-cornell-tech-as-director-of-the-joan-irwin-jacobs-technion-cornell-institute/ ↩ https://ats.org/our-impact/the-technion-protecting-israel-for-100-years/ ↩ https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/07/02/israeli-military-institute-technion-is-at-the-heart-of-the-military-industrial-academic-complex/ ↩ https://ats.org/our-impact/technion-students-paying-it-forward/ ↩ https://bdsmovement.net/news/israeli-universities-attacking-campus-uprisings-uphold-israels-crimes-against-palestinians ↩ https://www.technion.ac.il/en/blog/article/defense-ministers-shield-to-be-awarded-to-the-technion/ ↩ https://www.mitgaisim.idf.il/%25D7%259B%25D7%25AA%25D7%2591%25D7%2595%25D7%25AA/%25D7%25A8%25D7%2590%25D7%25A9%25D7%2599/%25D7%25A2%25D7%25AA%25D7%2595%25D7%2593%25D7%2594/%25D7%25AA%25D7%259B%25D7%25A0%25D7%2599%25D7%25AA-%25D7%25A1%25D7%2599%25D7%259C%25D7%2595%25D7%259F/ ↩ https://materials.technion.ac.il/en/studies/undergraduate-programs/gvishim-program-for-outstanding-academic-idf-reservists ↩ https://www.mitgaisim.idf.il/%25D7%259B%25D7%25AA%25D7%2591%25D7%2595%25D7%25AA/%25D7%25A8%25D7%2590%25D7%25A9%25D7%2599/%25D7%25A2%25D7%25AA%25D7%2595%25D7%2593%25D7%2594/%25D7%25AA%25D7%259B%25D7%25A0%25D7%2599%25D7%25AA-%25D7%25A1%25D7%2599%25D7%259C%25D7%2595%25D7%259F/ ↩ https://www.972mag.com/top-israeli-university-marketing-countys-arms-industry-to-the-world ↩ https://www.timesofisrael.com/bloomberg-to-aipac-ill-never-condition-aid-to-israel-no-matter-whos-pm/ ↩ https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/yemen-genocide-emergency ↩ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/16/us/arms-deals-yemen.html ↩ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/16/us/arms-deals-raytheon-yemen.html ↩ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/us/politics/us-war-crimes-yemen-saudi-arabia.html ↩ https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2018/09/world/yemen-airstrikes-intl/ ↩ https://www.kaust.edu.sa/en/about/administration/board-trustees ↩ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions ↩ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/climate/saudi-arabia-aramco-oil-solar-climate.html ↩ https://ecommons.cornell.edu/communities/9de3b5de-53b7-4098-a8e9-e611323f790a ↩ https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2008/04/25-million-cu-saudi-link-will-boost-nanoscale-research ↩ https://ventureoutsource.com/contract-manufacturing/top-military-electronic-defense-primes-diversify-de-risk-win-dod-pentagon-procurement-budget ↩ https://www.rtx.com/news/news-center/2023/11/16/rtx-and-darpa-to-revolutionize-gallium-nitride-technology-for-improved-radio-freq ↩ ttps://www.engineering.cornell.edu/sys/distance-learning-meng-systems-engineering/corporate-partners/lockheed-martin-employees/ ↩ https://www.engineering.cornell.edu/sys/distance-learning-meng-systems-engineering/corporate-partners/boeing-employees/ ↩ https://www.nordtechub.org/members ↩ https://tech.cornell.edu/news/bridging-academia-and-industry-innovation-meet-cornell-techs-first-venture-fellow/ ↩ https://tech.cornell.edu/news/how-to-easily-make-any-robot-autonomous/ ↩ https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/07/arms-sales-uae-00217874 ↩ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.17840 ↩ https://president.cornell.edu/speeches-writings/2025-state-of-the-university-address/ ↩ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-01/cornell-close-to-white-house-settlement-of-up-to-100-million ↩ "
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "On Bedouin Burger, Beirut, & Beyond: Lynn Adib x Collis Browne",
"author" : "Lynn Adib, Collis Browne",
"category" : "interviews",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/lynn-adib-bedouin-burger",
"date" : "2025-11-21 09:10:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/SK-Lynn-25-Film-9.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "COLLIS BROWNE:Thank you for this conversation. It feels fitting to be doing it in Beirut. Both of us have a long-standing connection to Beirut, even though neither of us lives in Beirut. I know that you’re originally from Syria. When did you come to Beirut? What’s the connection?LYNN ADIB:I grew up in Syria until 2009, then I moved to Paris, where I lived for nine years. When the war in Syria stopped in 2018, I decided to leave France and go back to Syria. I went to Damascus and soon realized that it was going to be difficult for me to do the project I wanted to do in Damascus. Then I met Zeid Hamdan [the other half of duo Bedouin Burger], who was living in Beirut. I decided to go to Beirut because there was a lot happening there. I also have a lot of friends in Beirut. It’s crazy… it felt like destiny. It’s like Zeid and I needed to meet each other at that time in our lives. The project was created so organically… it was me and him just hanging out all the time. I was singing the tunes in the studio; he was working on them. Even the name of the band was a joke between me and him. It was a blessed period of our lives, even though Beirut was going through such a hard time. It was maybe the worst year in Lebanon since the war. It was 2019, a few months before Covid. Covid allowed us to be very creative. We had so much time, because time stopped… We had nothing to do but take refuge in the studio and work. This is one of the rare things I really miss about CCovid… our relationship to time.The name of the band came from the feeling of being like Bedouins, meaning that I really don’t feel I have a place I can call home, and every place is kind of my home. “Home” is where I meet beautiful people who nourish my soul. And I have found so beautiful people here in Beirut. The idea of home is related to this project… the notion of home has to change for us to survive.COLLIS:I love the idea of home as movable, or as a place tied to the people more than the land. I think it’s an idea that, especially in the region here, everyone kind of has to adopt. I think it’s a survival mode also… There is a long and complicated relationship between Syria and Lebanon, because historically these two countries share a very similar kind of culture. It was the same land. The border was drawn by the French. But in modern history, there are times when Syria has occupied Lebanon… But I’m interested in the Syrian perspective. Tell me more about this.LYNN:I don’t know where to start, because it’s such a broad conversation, but I’m just going to say what I felt when I came to Beirut as a Syrian. I did feel that speaking Arabic all the time was not a very good thing in a lot of settings. I was feeling that I had to use my French or English to fit into the society somehow. In Syria, it’s completely the opposite. When you speak French or English, people think you are just pretending to be on a higher social level, and they don’t really like that. So Arabic proficiency is something that is very respected in Syria. I am proud of the fact that I speak Arabic well, and it is something that I’ve missed here in Beirut. I’m privileged as a Syrian here because of my French education. I see other Syrians struggle… they take the jobs that Lebanese people don’t want to take. It is very hard for me to accept.Even yesterday… we went to a restaurant and all the servers were Syrian. I knew that from their accent. I’m very disappointed by what happened after the regime fell. I’m also very optimistic about Syria, about Lebanon, about the region, even though we know that the danger is nearby… but I still feel that this area is so blessed. I feel that I touch life when I’m in Beirut and in Damascus… that I can see what life looks like. I’m optimistic, also, because there are so many young people now in Damascus and Syria, and they’re trying to move things forward. We take as an example what happened in Lebanon, where Lebanon is culturally… there are so many things that are not working well here, and there is so much chaos, but in so many ways it’s very inspiring. I love that.COLLIS:We’re based in New York, so we were seeing the Syrian regime fall from afar… I guess at that point, you went back and visited family…LYNN:Yeah, I put on a concert there that was incredibly powerful for me, because I’d never sung in Syria. I mean, not after I left the choir, because I grew up singing in a choir… but under my name… this was the first official concert for me in Syria. It was a tiny concert, but it was incredibly powerful for me. We allowed ourselves to be happy for a while. I understand why people were also alarmed, especially people who were living there. I have so many friends who never wanted to leave Syria during the revolution, who are all thinking about leaving now. It seems that there is a plan for Syria to be fragmented… and it’s happening within the Syrian society, unfortunately, by the creation of chaos and uncertainty and instability…COLLIS:It’s absolutely fueled by the external forces. It’s the colonial divide and conquer. That’s the story of Lebanon. Can music be a force to affect all of this?LYNN:It’s a question I always ask myself: does art really change things? I think it can when it really reflects the artist’s vision, purely and without any filter. Ziad Rahbani [Lebanese composer and son of legendary singer Fairuz], who passed just recently in July 2025, is one of the rare artists in the world who was so true to what he said that he suffered personally from it. He was alone. And this can change things. It can change something within people’s souls. But it’s very rare that we encounter this kind of art. It’s very rare. Authenticity; that’s what I’m getting at. We are in an era of over-consumption in general, including over-consumption of art and music. This is because of social media… We want to hear new things all the time. We want the artist to produce new material all the time. The artist doesn’t have time to be true to themselves and think about what’s going on and do something true to who they are, which actually can move things forward.We are consuming so much information all the time that we don’t have time to just stand still. This is what I feel is missing. Dictators and presidents and wars come and go, but culture and songs remain if they are authentic. They remain in our memory more than anything else, more than war.I do believe that at the end, it’s life that wins over death and darkness… and music is part of life, true music, beautiful music, authentic music is part of life, and it always wins. I don’t think it stops war right away. It doesn’t save a child in Gaza. But this is what’s crazy about life; our relationship to death is so fragile that sometimes, even if we die, it’s not that we really die. There’s something that remains and will change things later on.COLLIS:Are you creating new things as Bedouin Burger, that reflect the times?LYNN:In this album, Zeid and I were reflecting on the moment we met during the revolution here in Lebanon. All the songs were either songs that we love singing because they are traditional songs, or compositions of mine that I proposed to Zeid, or compositions we created together. “Nomad” was a song that was co-written by me and Zeid when we were both in France. It reflects on the feeling of living in exile. We kind of stopped time by doing this project. Thankfully, I have Zeid in my life who understands that I need to breathe, to do something different than Bedouin Burger, to go back a to something that’s personal. I’m really blessed that Zeid understands."
}
,
{
"title" : "Engineering for Genocide at MIT",
"author" : "MIT Coalition for Palestine",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/engineering-for-genocide-at-mit",
"date" : "2025-11-19 14:00:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Two years into the genocide in Gaza, universities across the United States are still exposing their role as collaborators in state violence. Among the most complicit is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As documented in the 83 page report MIT Science for Genocide, MIT aids and abets genocide in Gaza through its engagements with the Israeli military and its arms suppliers. At least $3.7 million have flowed into MIT through these channels, and MIT corporate partners include the Israeli state-owned weapons giant Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).",
"content" : "Two years into the genocide in Gaza, universities across the United States are still exposing their role as collaborators in state violence. Among the most complicit is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As documented in the 83 page report MIT Science for Genocide, MIT aids and abets genocide in Gaza through its engagements with the Israeli military and its arms suppliers. At least $3.7 million have flowed into MIT through these channels, and MIT corporate partners include the Israeli state-owned weapons giant Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).The MIT community and global public have challenged MIT on its complicity, notching victories over the Institute’s ties to Israeli arms makers and forcing MIT professors to cancel Israeli military grants. These efforts build on our history and broad popular support. But our work is not finished.We call on people of conscience everywhere to challenge MIT over its unethical research. Click here to send an email to MIT officials or grab the copy from here.IMOD AND GENOCIDAL APPLICATIONSThe Israeli government enters the MIT research funding structure through the Institute’s historic war nexus. From 2017 to 2021, 60% of MIT revenue came from the federal government, and 17.4% came from the now re-named Department of War. The department provides Israel with billions of US tax dollars in the form of yearly Foreign Military Financing grants. The Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMOD) then uses these funds to sponsor laboratory research at MIT of interest to its affiliates and their military objectives. MIT has accepted some $3.7 million through this channel since 2015. According to MIT audit files, the connection extends back to 2008 at least, and MIT approves the contracts on an ongoing basis. In a July 2025 report to the UN Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese named MIT a “sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project” through its IDF-funded research.What kind of research does the Israeli military sponsor? **One example is Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and AI laboratory. She led a recent project “Coreset Compression Algorithms,” which received $425,000 in direct sponsorship from the Israeli government since 2021, according to MIT’s annual reports tracking the flow of external funds into MIT. Rus’ research program develops AI algorithms for applications like “city-scale observation systems” and “surveillance and vigilance”. **The goal is to teach drones to track and pursue targets with increased autonomy.Another example is Christopher Voigt’s lab in the MIT department of Biological Engineering. Voigt programs “sentinel bacteria” to respond to human DNA sequences. The Israeli Ministry of Defense funds his lab and provides soil samples for testing. In another of Voigt’s papers, sentinel bacteria are “used to detect diverse signals in the environment,” including landmine detection. Between two grants labeled “Field-Capable Bacterial Biosensors” and “Effects of Oxidizing Environments on Carbon-Based Materials”, Voigt has taken over $850,000 in IMOD-sponsored contracts. This technology (if it ever works) is poised to enable the Israeli military to clear land for settlements or invade ‘hostile territory’.MIT’S PARTNERSHIPS WITH MERCHANTS OF DEATHFirms that sell and transport weapons to Israel also recruit from MIT and enter institutional collaborations with the university – Lockheed Martin, Maersk, Boeing, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Caterpillar, General Dynamics, and L3Harris. One firm, Liquid AI, co-founded by an MIT professor sponsored by the Israeli military, attempts to build autonomous fighter jets. Together, these firms recruit MIT researchers into genocidal activity and bias scientific research agendas toward belligerent instead of life-affirming applications.MIT also goes beyond ordinary corporate relations to pursue institutional commitments with the Israeli arms industry itself. An egregious example is Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), a corporation owned wholly by the Israeli government. IAI makes weapons used in the Gaza genocide. **According to the CEO, their Heron drone has played “a pivotal role” in the war on Gaza. The state-owned company also makes the Harop suicide drone, used to bomb refugee tents, as well as autonomous armored bulldozers. In the past two years, **IAI missile systems have bombed Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran.After October 2023, MIT began a new institutional engagement with IAI through its CSAIL Alliances and Quantum Science and Engineering Consortium (QSEC). In June 2025, as the Israeli government starved Gaza, MIT welcomed IAI executives to campus in order to deepen institutional collaboration in quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Guests included IAI North America’s CTO, CEOs, and an Israeli missile factory director. These partnerships give IAI access to MIT scientists, influence on research projects, and a recruitment pipeline.ENDING TIES TO ELBIT SYSTEMS**Our movement has made some progress against companies at MIT. **Elbit Systems, for instance, is one of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturers, supplying an estimated 85% of Israel’s drone arsenal. It is also a central provider of white phosphorus, cluster munitions, and flechette projectiles to Israel. We know Elbit Hermes 450 drones were used in the 2024 World Central Kitchen massacre in Gaza. Elbit also abets oppressive regimes globally, selling weapons to assist the Azerbaijani occupation of Nagorno Karabakh, as well as the Indian occupation of Kashmir and Bastar.Despite its direct, material support for human rights abuses, Elbit was a member of the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) from 2017 until late 2024. Through this program, Elbit monitored MIT research developments, advised on research sponsorship and technology licensing opportunities, and linked with MIT-connected startups. In 2021, Elbit Systems and Elbit’s medical subsidiary KMC announced a new “innovation center” in Cambridge that hoped to recruit MIT and Harvard graduates into the company.Through an organized pressure campaign, this did not come to fruition. **In August 2024, following protests from Boston-area community activists in BDS Boston, Elbit Systems vacated its Cambridge office. Then BDS Boston and MIT activists turned attention to MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program. In spring 2025, MIT and BDSB announced that the ILP program had ended its engagement with Elbit Systems after global pressure. **We need a similar campaign to succeed in ending MIT’s ties with IAI.DIVESTMENT IS TRIED AND TESTEDThe wins against Elbit highlight that although divestment is sometimes framed as a political taboo, it has a long history at MIT. The school’s Fluid Mechanics Laboratory shifted to civilian research and funding in 1966 under pressure from the anti-war movement. In May 1970, MIT activists pushed the Institute to acknowledge atrocities committed by US forces in Vietnam and divest its Draper Laboratory, which worked on guidance systems for the Poseidon missile. MIT also ended a Taiwan Program in 1976 following concerns over ballistic missile proliferation. In the 1980s American student movements, including the original MIT Coalition Against Apartheid, led divestment campaigns against South African apartheid.The MIT Coalition for Palestine builds on this legacy as well as a recent history of divestment. In 2007, MIT declared the Darfur Genocide “abhorrent” and pledged to divest its endowment. The MIT Energy Initiative cut ties with Saudi Aramco in 2021 following the state murder of a Saudi journalist. In 2022, MIT ended its Skoltech collaborations in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. Following mass protests in solidarity with Palestine, Lockheed Martin left a program managed by MISTI-Israel and chose to not renew it. An MIT professor recently cancelled an Israeli military grant after student pressure.When invoking our past, MIT activists draw on a wellspring of moral tradition. As MIT students in 1937 wrote in a petition against the Institute sending a delegate to the Nazi festival in Göttingen, MIT’s participation would “condone the acts and practices of the forces now controlling Germany”. Similarly, MIT’s contracts with the Israeli military condone the acts and practices of Israeli forces. Academic freedom does not protect such ties. As the anti-war student leader Ira Rubenzahl told our student newspaper in 1969 during the Vietnam War: “One doesn’t have the right to build gas chambers to kill people.”CONCEALMENT AND CALL TO ACTIONIn defiance of the mandate handed to them by the public, MIT officials conceal and misdirect over the institution’s complicity. In summer 2025, MIT revoked access to tools for the MIT community to understand its research funding sources, such as the annual Brown Books, which track the flow of external funds into MIT. It also barred us from using the university’s Kuali Coeus grant-tracking website, which MIT researchers use to better understand our external grants. They have further engaged in a campaign of persecution against student activists, as detailed by a May 2025 letter of UN rapporteurs to the MIT President.**MIT’s actions are antithetical to the Institute’s supposed motto “Mind and Hand” for the “betterment of humankind.” **Instead, MIT’s minds and hands are engineering for genocide — a damning moral stain on the Institute. Majorities of MIT students demand that the Institute cut ties with the Israeli military, as confirmed by three separate campus votes in 2024 and 2025 as well as our Scientists Against Genocide encampment in spring 2024.We call on people of conscience to challenge MIT to end its unethical science.\Send an email here to MIT officials or grab the copy from here."
}
,
{
"title" : "Skims, Shapewear, and the Shape of Power: When a Brand Expands Into Occupied Territory",
"author" : "Louis Pisano",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/skims-shapewear-and-the-shape-of-power",
"date" : "2025-11-17 07:13:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Skims_Israel.jpg",
"excerpt" : "On the evening of November 11, Kris Jenner celebrated her 70th birthday inside the fortified sprawl of Jeff Bezos’s $175 million Beverly Hills compound, hidden behind hedges so tall they violate city regulations, a rule he bypasses with a monthly $1,000 fine that functions more like a subscription fee than a penalty. The theme was James Bond, black tie and martini glasses, a winking acknowledgment of Amazon’s new ownership of the 007 franchise. Guests surrendered their phones upon arrival, a formality as unremarkable as valet check-in. Whatever managed to slip beyond the gates came in stray fragments: a long-lens photograph of Oprah Winfrey stepping out of a black SUV, Mariah Carey caught mid-laugh on the curb, Kylie Jenner offering a middle finger through the window of a chauffeured car. The rest appeared hours later in the form of carefully curated photos released by an official photographer, images softened and perfected until they resembled an ad campaign more than documentation. Nothing inside was witnessed on anyone’s own terms.",
"content" : "On the evening of November 11, Kris Jenner celebrated her 70th birthday inside the fortified sprawl of Jeff Bezos’s $175 million Beverly Hills compound, hidden behind hedges so tall they violate city regulations, a rule he bypasses with a monthly $1,000 fine that functions more like a subscription fee than a penalty. The theme was James Bond, black tie and martini glasses, a winking acknowledgment of Amazon’s new ownership of the 007 franchise. Guests surrendered their phones upon arrival, a formality as unremarkable as valet check-in. Whatever managed to slip beyond the gates came in stray fragments: a long-lens photograph of Oprah Winfrey stepping out of a black SUV, Mariah Carey caught mid-laugh on the curb, Kylie Jenner offering a middle finger through the window of a chauffeured car. The rest appeared hours later in the form of carefully curated photos released by an official photographer, images softened and perfected until they resembled an ad campaign more than documentation. Nothing inside was witnessed on anyone’s own terms.The guest list felt less like a party roster and more like an index of contemporary American power. Tyler Perry arrived early, Snoop Dogg later in the evening, Paris Hilton shimmering in a silver column that clung like liquid metal. Hailey Bieber drifted past in a slinky black dress, while Prince Harry and Meghan Sussex appeared in images that were quietly scrubbed from the family grid a day later. Nine billionaires circulated among the luminaries, their combined wealth brushing toward $600 billion. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan joined Bill Gates at the poker table, while Bezos himself wandered through the party with Lauren Sánchez, doing the kind of effortless hosting that comes with having $245B in the bank.Jenner, dressed in red vintage Givenchy by Alexander McQueen, floated from conversation to conversation. She paused for a warm embrace with Perry, raised a glass with Hilton, and eventually made her way to the dance floor with Justin Bieber. At 70, she remains the family’s central command center, equal parts mother, manager, strategist, and brand steward. The celebration functioned as a kind of coronation, a reaffirmation that the Kardashian-Jenner empire is not stagnating but expanding, stretching itself into new sectors and new narratives with the same relentless ease that has defined its last decade.Just two weeks earlier, on a bright Monday in late October, a very different scene unfolded at the SKIMS flagship on the Sunset Strip. That morning, the boutique had been cleared to host Hagiborim, the Israeli nonprofit that supports children of fallen IDF soldiers and orphans of the October 7 attacks. Around a dozen girls wandered the store, laughing among themselves, perusing tank tops, and snapping selfies before assembling outside with those unmistakable beige SKIMS shopping bags. The images of the visit were sparse and easily missed unless one went searching; they appeared only on Hagiborim’s Instagram highlights. The event took place on October 28, less than a week before news began to circulate about SKIMS’s upcoming entry into the Israeli market.The launch itself unfolded with clinical precision. On November 10th in partnership with Irani Corp, SKIMS went live on Factory 54’s Israeli website, with in-store boutiques planned for December and ten to fifteen standalone stores projected to open across Israel by 2026. The company’s official language remained on brand, warm and relentlessly forward-looking. It spoke of “inclusivity,” of “community presence,” of broadening the global market. Nowhere did it acknowledge the war in Gaza, though the border sits just over an hour away and the headlines that week were filled with rising casualty counts and allegations of cease-fire violations, an entirely different reality unfolding parallel to the brand’s expansion.Hours after the SKIMS launch, Kardashian’s Instagram shifted into overdrive. She posted a carousel of herself in a gray bikini, captioned with a single emoji racking up millions of likes. The images came just two days after news of her fourth unsuccessful attempt at the California Bar had broken, a reminder that in the Kardashian ecosystem, social media momentum often outweighs any setback.Beneath the SKIMS machine which just raised $225M in funding is a quieter network of capital. Joshua Kushner, Jared’s younger brother, the polished, soft-spoken investor whose firm helped seed Instagram, owns a 10 percent stake and a board seat in SKIMS, a detail that surfaces only in required filings and the occasional business-page profile. The Kushner family’s ties to Israel run far deeper than the brand’s marketing conveys: long-standing real-estate ventures in Tel Aviv, and a family foundation that has funneled at least $342,000 to Friends of the IDF and another $58,500 to West Bank settlement groups and yeshivas in places like Beit El and Efrat. Jared Kushner’s diplomatic work on the Abraham Accords carved geopolitical corridors that SKIMS now moves through. The brand may position itself as apolitical, but the infrastructure of its Israel expansion is built on deeply political ground.Fashion media, however, showed little interest in any of this. A wide sweep through the archives of Business of Fashion, WWD, and Vogue Business yields nothing, not a single headline, not even a line buried in a retail digest. The launch through Factory 54, the long-term plan for as many as fifteen stores, the philanthropic event with Hagiborim, all of it passed in silence in the sector that usually treats Kardashian business moves as reliable traffic drivers.Instead, their coverage was devoted wholly to Kris Jenner’s birthday. Harper’s Bazaar published three separate pieces. W Magazine dubbed it “the Kardashians’ own Met Gala.” Vogue broke down the night with a dutifully detailed recap that leaned heavily on Harry and Meghan’s brief presence, clearly recognizing their value as SEO gold.The Kardashians operate with a level of intentionality that has outpaced many political campaigns. They understand the choreography of public-facing narratives better than any other family in American media. The Hagiborim visit, girls only, modest branding, no Kim in sight, served as a small preemptive gesture, a way to soften potential critique before the Israel launch rolled out. While the party dominated the feed, the expansion passed unnoticed and the charity event remained strictly confined to the margins, a calculated sequence, not chaos, the kind of PR mastery we’ve come to expect from Kris Jenner.The same instinct shapes their political signaling. On Inauguration Day 2025, as Donald Trump took the oath of office for a second term, Kim posted a silent Instagram Story of Melania Trump stepping out in a navy ensemble and wide-brimmed hat. She offered no caption, no endorsement, no framing. The image disappeared within 24 hours, but not before sparking a brief firestorm. It is the same familiar pattern, presence without explanation, the kind of ambiguity that allows the public to fill in the blanks while the family remains insulated.Beyond their insulated world, the conflict continues. Inside the bubble, the champagne is crisp, the Hulu cameras are rolling and the narrative is intact. What remains for the public is the split-screen: Kris Jenner blowing out seventy candles beneath a ceiling of crystals, surrounded by some of the wealthiest people alive; and Kim Kardashian posing in a studded bikini, eyes locked on the lens, hinting at the next product drop. Between the two lies a series of transactions, commercial, political, and moral, that the audience is never invited to examine.As for Kris Jenner’s birthday, it will be remembered. The launch will fade. The girls who posed with their new SKIMS pajamas will grow older; the war will either end or shift into some new phase. And the Kardashian-Jenner machine will keep moving, calculating every image, every post, every angle, ensuring the story that matters most is always the one they control."
}
]
}
