Webinar: STEM to Military Pipeline

Avery Mickalide- STEM Strikes for Peace

Avery grew up in rural Maine, running around outdoors and watching too much TV. Er* political and spiritual lives blossomed in college during the Occupy Wall Street movement. Both of these lives grew substantially in grad school where Avery was further radicalized by several years on a coal divestment campaign and several days on the frontlines at Standing Rock. Meanwhile, Avery was regularly having mystical experiences, some of which were of staggering intensity. Feeling a mixture of frustration and helplessness seeing er friends in the physics department take jobs at weapons manufacturers, Avery founded the STEM Strikes for Peace campaign, which e continues to run to this day. CALLING ALL STEM WORKERS AND STUDENTS TO REFUSE EMPLOYMENT FROM DEFENSE COMPANIES. Our demand is that spending on military science be cut by 90% and reinvested in science for the social good. This is a strike! After earning er PhD in physics in 2019, Avery took a year to travel and pursue other interests such as music before accepting a position as a computational biologist in Silicon Valley where e works today. *Avery is non-binary and is experimenting with e/er pronouns)

Seth Kershner- Author and current graduate student

Seth is the author or co-author of numerous articles and book chapters and is particularly interested in how the U.S. military has become intertwined with public education.  With Scott Harding, he is co-author of Counter-recruitment and the Campaign to Demilitarize Public Schools (Palgrave, 2015).  He is currently a graduate student in the history department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.