Noam Chomsky, renowned intellectual and political activist, declared his support for the UA chapter of No Más Muertes/No More Deaths and its campaign against the UA’s business contracts with the Caterpillar (CAT) and Motorola corporations at a press conference on Tuesday.
The organization has been pressuring the university for the past three years to terminate its relationship with the two companies on account of their involvement in military activities in Palestine and Israel, according to the student organization.
In March 2009, Human Rights Watch publicized that, by providing military technology like drones and bulldozers, Motorola and CAT assisted Israeli forces during the country’s Gaza invasion in 2008 and 2009, which resulted in 1,400 Palestinian deaths. UA No Más Muertes/No More Deaths claims that the companies’ products have also been used to commit human rights violations along the U.S./Mexico border.
“There’s no question that all of this is illegal,” Chomsky said. “It is the right, in fact the responsibility, of the students to publicize any possible violations committed by the UA in its corporate partnership with CAT and Motorola in order to expose U.S. crimes taking place in Israeli-occupied Palestine and along the U.S./Mexico border,” Chomsky said in an advance statement.
Motorola has been providing communication technology to the University of Arizona Police Department since 1999, and CAT took out a contract with the university concerning software in the College of Engineering in 2004, according to UA No Más Muertes/No More Deaths.
The UA’s partnerships with the corporations were first publicized in a Daily Wildcat article in April of 2009. Since then, UA No Más Muertes/No More Deaths has begun a UA Company Boycott/Divestment Campaign, which demands that the UA end its contracts with the companies.
“We’re not sitting around and thinking about this life and death matter. We’re acting,” said Gabriel M. Schivone, a former Daily Wildcat writer who reported on the relationship.
The UA maintains its ties to the corporations today, and President Eugene Sander did not respond to the organization’s invitation to Tuesday’s conference.
Visit our multimedia page to see our video preview of Noam Chomsky’s visit to the UA campus.
