Anti-Imperialist Protest Staged Against Weapons Manufacturers at UIC Career Fair
By Ella Rappel and Sunny Jeong-Eimer
February 29, 2024
On Wednesday, Feb. 7, local political action organizations banded together to protest weapons manufacturers being invited to table at UIC’s College of Engineering Job and Internship fair at the UIC Forum.
Members of the anti-imperialist organization Behind Enemy Lines were joined by members of UIC student organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as Chicago-based organizations such as the Chicago Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines. Members of these organizations stood outside of the forum and handed informational flyers to students walking inside.
The flyers specifically targeted General Dynamics, a “global aerospace and defense company” that creates military gear such as “combat vehicles” and “weapons systems and munitions,” according to their website. General Dynamics is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world as of 2022, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
“Their name is engraved on a lot of bombs and missiles that have dropped over Palestine throughout the genocide, in which over 27,000 people have been killed,” a UIC student associated with Behind Enemy Lines said.
Behind Enemy Lines has an ongoing campaign against General Dynamics and the billionaire Crown family, who own the majority of shares in the company, according to Katherine Cavanaugh, an organizer at Behind Enemy Lines.
“They have this huge pull over culture in Chicago, and it’s a way that people get indoctrinated into passive complicity and imperialism in a really insidious way,” Cavanaugh said.
“[They are] manufacturing genocides around the world, not just in Palestine, but also in Yemen and Syria and Iraq and so on,” the student said.
The flyer handed out by anti-imperialist organizations to students attending the career fair. Courtesy of Behind Enemy Lines.
“We hope that people take this [flyer] and share it and discuss with other people, and most importantly, ask those questions of the academic institution that they’re involved in,” Cavanaugh said. “The answers to those questions are very revealing.”
The career fair is not the first time that UIC has invited military recruiters, as the student mentioned how just the day before, they encountered the Marine Corps tabling at Student Center East with a virtual reality aviation simulator intended to draw students into military pilot careers. The pamphlets distributed alongside the simulator included a message to “test your capabilities as a leader and warrior.”
Echoing nationwide calls from students to terminate university endowment investments in the arms industry, the student pointed out that as a public university, UIC functions as an extension of the state, supporting U.S. geopolitical ties to the state of Israel. Signs of this support include the University of Illinois’ “investments in [weapons] companies,” as the student explained, including Boeing (third-largest weapons contractor in the world as of 2022) and General Dynamics, according to a comprehensive 2021 annual report on university investments.
The university has disclosed fewer details on its investments since then but a 2023 report details substantial holdings in equity dividend BlackRock, rated ‘F’ by Weapon Free Funds for its 2 billion dollar holdings in the nuclear arms and weapons contractor industries. On top of these investments and persistent military recruitment efforts on campus, the university sustains study abroad programs with the University of Haifa in Occupied Palestine and is currently being sued at the federal level for discrimination against Palestinian students who were barred from attending information sessions about the program.
The flyering at Dorin Forum was part of a larger movement to put pressure on the university to cut ties with organizations complicit in the genocide against Palestinians, according to the student.
“I urge UIC to divest immediately from all weapons manufacturers. And I relay the calls of Palestinian revolutionaries to stop the siege on Palestine, not just to cease fire, but to permanently end [the occupation] and respect the demand for liberation.”
- anonymous Student
The organizers also hope that their protests will encourage students to take action outside of the career fair, according to Cavanaugh. Behind Enemy Lines offers opportunities to get involved and to learn more about “[how] to resist imperialism in the belly of the beast,” the student added. However, Cavanaugh encouraged students to be vocal even outside of organized resistance.
“I think there’s been this conflation of declaring your stance or your opinion on something with actually taking action,” Cavanaugh said. “What I would want to say to people who are getting fired up [about] the atrocities they’re seeing happen to Palestinians right now… actually take action and think about how you might need to make sacrifices to really take a stand for what you believe in.”
