Know your history: The science of coercion

Seems like a good time to do some research into how the academic world became so infested with the social justice paradigm, yet without falling down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory. With that in mind, here is a little food for thought:

(Quotes are taken from the book 'Science of Coercion -- Communication Research & Psychological Warfare 1945-1960' by Christopher Simpson, 1994. Oxford University Press)

"For the first decade after 1945 -- which is to say, the decade in which communication studies crystallized into a distinct academic field, complete with colleges, graduate degrees, and so on -- U.S. military , propaganda, and intelligence agencies provided the large majority of all project funding for the field. The earliest cumulative data concerning government funding of social science is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1952; that report shows that over 96 percent of all reported federal funding for social science at that time was drawn from the U.S. military. "

"At least a half-dozen of the most important centers of U.S. communication research depended for their survival on funding from a handful of national security agencies. Their reliance on psychological warfare money was so extensive as to suggest that the crystalization of mass communications studies into a distinct scholarly field might not have come about during the 1950s without substantial military, CIA, and USIA intervention."

"Taken as a whole, the evidence thus far shows that a very substantial fraction of the funding for academic U.S. research into social psychology and into many aspects of mass communication behavior during the first fifteen years of the cold war was directly controlled or strongly influenced by a small group of men who had enthusiastically supported elite psychological operations as an instrument of foreign and domestic policy since World War II. They exercised power through a series of interlocking committees and commissions that linked the world of mainstream academia with that of the U.S. military and intelligence communities. Their networks were for the most part closed to outsiders; their records and decision-making processes were often classified; and in some instances the very existence of the coordinating bodies was a state secret.  This was not a 'conspiracy' in the hackneyed sense of that word. It was rather precisely the type of 'reference group' or informal network that is so well known to sociologists."

"...the 'dominant paradigm' of the period proved to be in substantial part a paradigm of dominance, in which the appropriateness and inevitability of elite control of communication was taken as a given.  As a practical matter, the key academic journals of the day demonstrated only a secondary interest in what communication "is." Instead, they concentrated on how modern technology could be used by elites to manage social change, extract political concessions, or win purchasing decisions from targeted audiences...This orientation reduced the extraordinarily complex, inherently communal social process of communication to simple models based on the dynamics of transmission of persuasive -- and, in the final analysis, coercive -- messages."

This makes one wonder about the origin of many of the university programs in sociology, women's studies, racism and gender issues, as well as the rise of social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google.In this light, consider the following:

Gloria Steinem and the CIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HRUEqyZ7p8