English department awarded $6.2 million in defense funding

by Cole Skuse “Director of Lockheed Martin Recruitment”

This past Thursday, the Carnegie Mellon Department of English announced that it had been awarded a total of $6.2 million in defense funding from a combination of private companies and federal funding.

“We’re really excited about this opportunity,” dean of Dietrich College for Humanities and Social Sciences Richard Scheines said in a statement to The Natrat. “English was the last department on campus that wasn’t receiving defense funding, so we’re glad to have them on board.”

A large portion of the $6.2 million comes from Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, with one of the stipulations that students enrolled in the First-Year Writing courses will have to come up with new ways for them to recruit on campus. There are also plans to expand some curriculum in partnership with the Tepper School of Business on public relations and how to effectively mislead the public. Courses include “Creative Writing for Propaganda,” “Microeconomics of Wartime Profiteering,” and “When is it okay to Violate the Geneva Conventions?” The Department of English is also planning to have some guest lecturers who have instigated various wars from the Department of Defense for classes next fall.

In an interview with The Natrat, a representative from Lockheed Martin described this as an excellent opportunity to recruit more young talent on campus, and to help inform the campus community about the “wonderful opportunities that come with war profiteering, er… defense contracting!”

Students and faculty in the Department of English are having mixed reactions to this announcement, given some of the activities that these defense companies have been involved in.

“I really don’t like companies like Lockheed Martin, but my stipend increased enough that I can now actually eat dinner every other night,” third-year rhetoric Ph.D. candidate Isabelle Martin told the Natrat. “I’ve been told I need to change my thesis about workplace communications to be slightly more defense-oriented, though, so I have to figure that out,” Martin said.

“I didn’t pay attention in my writing classes anyways, but maybe if I do well enough on the defense-funded assignments, it’ll increase my chances at getting an internship at Northrop Grumman this year,” second-year electrical and computer engineering major Nathan Whitman said. Whitman told The Natrat that his plan to increase defense recruiting on campus was to slowly replace all the members in the Career and Professional Development Center with defense company employees.

The Natrat reached out to some other departments to see what they do with their defense funding, but after receiving a check in the mail for an undisclosed amount, The Natrat is pleased to announce a joint venture with defense contractors to spread misinformation on campus.