Mr. Frack: David Petraeus as Equity Firm Education Ambassador (xpost from Veterans)

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/26-1



The private-equity firm’s portfolio includes billions of dollars of investments in hydraulic fracturing and health care

David Petraeus as Equity Firm Education Ambassador
by Steve Horn
Published on Saturday, October 26, 2013 by Al Jazeera

In April, David Petraeus, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and leader of coalition forces during the war in Iraq, took an adjunct professorship at Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York. Other high-level national-security officials have also recently moved into academia. In September 2011, former CIA director and onetime secretary of defense Robert Gates became the chancellor of the College of William and Mary. And last month Janet Napolitano, former director of the Department of Homeland Security, assumed the office of president of the University of California system.

Petraeus’ appointment has generated opposition. Criticism from many — including New York City mayoral hopeful Bill de Blasio — led to the reduction of Petraeus’ reported $200,000 salary for teaching one seminar to $1. (Adjunct professors usually earn $3,000 per course.)

Hundreds of students and others signed a petition protesting Petraeus’ faculty position, suggesting CUNY had become a “war college.” A demonstration on Oct. 16 included accusations that Petraeus was the “architect of almost 3,000 ‘targeted killings’ by drones” and that he had “rained death on Afghan civilians.”

Unlike Napolitano and Gates, who became university administrators, Petraeus opted to teach. While Petraeus’ role in the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has served as the basis for protests over his CUNY professorship, the content of his course, The Coming North American Decades, has received less attention.