Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

"Carnegie Mellon, what are you thinking?" Friends of the Congo Student Coordinator Kambale Musavuli protests Kagame's presence to seal a deal with the university.KPFA Weekend New Host Cameron Jones: This week, faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University signed a petition to the University’s president expressing concern about its plan to open a branch campus in Rwanda in 2012. The faculty members cited reports and legal indictments documenting the human rights abuse of Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s regime, both in Rwanda, and in Rwanda’s neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the story.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: On the 16th of this month, Rwandan President Paul Kagame addressed an audience at Carnegie Mellon University about the plan to build a Carnegie Mellon campus, offering degrees in engineering and information technology in Rwanda. Outside about fifty members of the Rwandan and Congolese diaspora and their American allies chanted and held banners that said “Kagame is wanted for crimes against humanity,” “Carnegie Mellon, what are you thinking?” and “Shame on You, CMU.” This week, a list of faculty members at the university’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences signed a petition to University President Jared L. Cohon expressing their serious concerns about the university’s relationship with the Kagame regime. The petition, which was published on the websites of Friends of the Congo

Other Africa advocates have expressed concern whether the Carnegie Mellon campus in Kagame’s Rwanda will also involve collaboration with the Pentagon, considering the Pentagon’s engagement with both Carnegie Mellon and with Rwanda, one of the Pentagon’s key military partners in the Great Lakes Region.

On November 14th, 2004, Democracy Now reported that Carnegie Mellon is one of the largest academic military contractors in the country. David Mieran, a former philosophy graduate student at the university, told Amy Goodman that its military and security contracts are so pervasive that anti-war activists call it Carnegie Military University:

David Mieran: . . .the military ties at Carnegie-Mellon University are so extensive that we have dubbed the place, "Carnegie Military University." Everywhere — every department you look, there’s some military contract, or defense, or security contract in place. From studies at the Psychology Department that are intended to help naval officers make better decisions under stress, to even in my own department, when I was a graduate student there, for terrorist detection networks. But the really big institutions that loom large in C.M.U.’s contribution to the war effort are the Software Engineering Institute, which has long been a target for anti-war activism here in the city, and now the Robotics Institute. . . many of the robotics systems that have gone into the war fighting effort in Iraq were developed here at C.M.U. and are being developed for future deployment.

"Kagame is wanted for crimes against humanity." Kambale Musavuli, Friends of the Congo's Student Coordinator, left.KPFA: Before Kagame’s appearance, KPFA asked Tim McNulty, Carnegie Mellon’s Vice President for Government Relations, what the U.S. government’s interest in its Rwanda campus is, but McNulty declined to answer and referred all questions to Theresa Thomas of CMU’s Media Relations Department. KPFA then asked Thomas what the government’s interest is, and, whether the project includes a military and/or surveillance component. As of today, two weeks later, Carnegie Mellon still has not answered.

For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison.