Revolution #98, August 19, 2007
Antioch Trustees and the Military-Intelligence Connection
In an article titled “Did U.S. Intelligence Assets Kill Antioch College?” Bob Fitrakis, publisher and editor of The Free Press, points out that at the time of the closure decision, the Board of Trustees had two members with ties to the U.S. military and security agencies. One is Bruce P. Bedford, who is also on the board of GlobeSecNine, a company described by a representative of investment corporation Bear Sterns as having “a unique set of experiences in special forces, classified operations, transportation security and military operations.” Another member of the Board at the time of the closure decision was Michael Alexander (since resigned), who founded a company called AverStar that later became part of a large military technology company, L3 Communications. The L3 Communications website says that its customers include “the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, selected U.S. Government intelligence agencies and aerospace prime contractors.”
Fitrakis writes, “The role of these trustees must be heavily scrutinized. Antioch alumni should be ashamed to allow their college to die until they get to the bottom of this spooky mystery.” (Fritakis’ article is available online at http://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2007/1568)
Another current trustee, Laurence Stone, runs Metron, Inc., whose brochure details its activities: “Objective: Support our DoD [Department of Defense] and Intelligence clients with advanced, mathematics-based products for dynamic target tracking, threat activity and event detection and large-scale warfighting simulation and analysis.” Metron works with the U.S. military and intelligence in the targeting and directing of submarine-launched missiles as well as electronic tracking of human “targets.”
The Dayton Daily News reported on July 26 that Congress recently voted $50 million in funding for high-tech military industries located in the area around Antioch. The Dayton/Yellow Springs region is home to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which has spawned a large number of companies doing military research and manufacturing.
In addition, it is quite curious that the Antioch Board of Trustees hired the “marketing, branding and public relations” firm of SimpsonScarborough in relation to the decision to close the school. The chief executive officer of SimpsonScarborough, Christopher Simpson, formerly worked as a writer and editor for the Washington Times, a newspaper associated with Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a rabidly right-wing Christian fundamentalist with political connections to U.S. ruling circles. Before working for the Washington Times, Simpson was the press secretary for the notorious racist Senator Strom Thurmond.
SimpsonScarborough specializes in “reorienting” the curricula and funding bases of universities and colleges. In an article about Antioch on the firm’s website, SimpsonScarborough Vice President Tom Hayes wrote, “No college or university can ignore market realities. There is simply too much competition to keep a blind eye to institutional drift…Maybe running a college like a business is too radical of an idea for many in higher education. But, it is an idea you can live with.”
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