Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Amy Hagopian, a professor of Global Health at the University of Washington, has been on a crusade to end military recruitment at local high schools. In 2005, she was behind the first successful effort in the U.S. to ban military recruiters on a high school campus. And these days, under the guise of scholarship, she has co-authored an article for the American Journal of Public Health that compares military recruiters to child sex predators.
Hagopian is pictured below at Seattle's Garfield High School, which banned military recruiters in 2005 as a result of her efforts.
Hagopian's recent article that compares recruiters to sexual predators is titled "Should We End Military Recruiting in High Schools as a Matter of Child Protection and Public Health?" and argues that "Military recruiter behaviors are disturbingly similar to predatory grooming."
What is "predatory grooming"? According to a news report:
"Grooming behavior is defined as the process by which a child is befriended by a would-be abuser in an attempt to gain the child's confidence and trust," Hagopian says.
The Army calls the professor's claim that military recruiters act like child predators "outrageous and offensive."
As a professor of "global health," you'd think that Hagopian would have actual problems that she could be researching and writing about, rather than the bogus "scholarship" that she has decided to devote her energies to. After all, millions of people around the world die each year from infectious diseases like tuberculosis, AIDS, and malaria--those are real global health problems.
But Hagopian, like so many of the global health experts at our colleges and universities nationwide, uses her academic field as a way to give pseudo-scientific credibility to her mal-formed ideological convictions.
(hat tip intern Josh Riddle).
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Aug '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Can't someone get this woman a job at Harvard or something ? You know, keep her out of the United States proper.
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
There actually might be an opening at Harvard. One of Harvard's top global health scholars left recently to be ... president of Dartmouth College. Sigh.
Oct '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
I agree with your sentiments regarding this woman's motives. However, recruiting and recruiters can be a bit predatory, but more along the lines of a used care salesman. It's a tough job and some stoop pretty low and can be very creative truth tellers. I speak from experience here. I enlisted in the Air Force in the early 70's under the new "job guarantee program". My recuiter told me that in order to get the specialty I was qualified for, I would have to wait until the beginning of December to be inducted. I waited, and as a result spent almost an extra week in basic training because holidays are not training days. It turns out that this time of the year is the slowest for enlistments, and the recuiter "tricked me" into a delayed enlistment in order to fill his quota for December instead of Sepetmber when I showed up at the recruiting station. Oh well, such is life. I am no worse of for it and it made me a bit wiser.
Edited on Dec 6, 2010 at 7:41amMay '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Let's embed her with UN troops for a deeper understanding of sexual predators.
May '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
"Amy Hagopian, a professor of Global Health at the University of Washington"
Is UW a state school? She's writing this crap on the taxpayer's dime?
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
I think you make a great distinction, Good Berean. A recruiter has to be aggressive as he makes his sales pitch. But there's a difference between being a salesman, trying to win a target over with your pitch, and being a (sexual) predator, which implies that you're trying to exploit or take advantage of someone else's vulnerable position.
May '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
At least Hagopian is honest. I gather many "educators" are opposed to military recruiting in schools but keep their mouths shut or simply deny it.
I don't know her, but I would wager that, as a leftist, she just doesn't like the military. Her opposition to military recruitment at schools is a mere expression of her dislike.
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Nick Stuart: "Amy Hagopian, a professor of Global Health at the University of Washington"
Is UW a state school? She's writing this crap on the taxpayer's dime? · Dec 6 at 7:44am
I think so. "The University of Washington (UW, commonly called U-Dub) is a public research university."
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Yes, I think you're exactly right.
Jun '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
My son started attending a public high school here in NJ in September of 2010. We parents had to sign a permission slip allowing contact with military recruiters. Doesn't that approach cover any concerns this "Hag" might have? Parents can then control any access a recruiter would have to their children. As Michael L. points out, she is likely anti-military, not merely anti-coercion.
Frankly, I wish I could have prevented my daughter's exposure to much of the knee-jerk lefty nonsense spewed by her Catholic school administrators & teachers while she was in high school. Not only did it make her blood boil, but it crowded out so much of what we were led to believe the school would offer. Plus, she would gladly have chatted a bit with a handsome Marine wearing Dress Blues.
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
That's too bad about the lefty ideology your daughter was inundated with at high school. Though the teachers were undoubtedly liberal at my New Jersey HS, they did a good job of keeping their politics to themselves.
If Hag were a reasonable woman, I think see would see the sense in the permission slips solution. But safeguarding the "public health" of the students does not seem to be what's driving her. Ideology, on the other hand, does, as you suggest.
Oct '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Emily Esfahani Smith, Ed. :A recruiter has to be aggressive as he makes his sales pitch. But there's a difference between being a salesman, trying to win a target over with your pitch, and being a (sexual) predator, which implies that you're trying to exploit or take advantage of someone else's vulnerable position. · Dec 6 at 7:44am
Recruiting today is not quite like this. Yes, they give you a sales pitch. Yes, they talk up the benefits and downplay the bad parts. However, they also don't swindle you in. First, you have to talk to a recruiter and gather a bunch of documents and background information. They have to do a background check to see if you've got a criminal record of any kind. That takes time.
(1/2)
Edited on Dec 6, 2010 at 8:32amJun '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Yeah, I doubt the permission slip solution would satisfy her. I can imagine her combing the halls of the high school, ripping down posters from West Point & all service branches. If a student were to come in contact with a recruiter she'd insist upon emergency deprogramming sessions through the health department. Then she'd start to imagine seperation of church & state violations if Notre Dame or Bringham Young posters were hung anywhere.
May '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Emily Esfahani Smith, Ed.
Yes, I think you're exactly right. · Dec 6 at 7:55am
Still, being globally concerned, she'd likely be in favor of that Marine risking his life for the health-vulnerable in Darfur. She hates the Marine, yet longs to give him proper commands.
Jun '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Another form of recruiting is music performances by the service academy bands & choirs. They make an effort to give concerts at high schools as part of their touring schedule.
Oct '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Then you go to MEPS, the military entrance processing station, where they tell you over and over that anything not written in your contract that you sign is null and void. They even make you sign that you understand that. Specifically, you sign by a section that says:
"No other (verbal or otherwise) promise or representation not annexed to my enlistment contract is valid or will be honored. I hereby state that I have NOT been promised anything other than what is written on this form and hereby waive any claim based upon any promise or representation not annexed to my contract."
Furthermore, the MEPS contract is breakable. It puts you in the Delayed Entry Program where you are part of the inactive reserve. At any time between then and signing the contract to enlist from inactive reserve to active duty (the day you ship to basic training) you can walk away. It is even possible and legal (although they can make it hard) to enlist after previously being in the DEP and changing your mind.
Hardly an organization of predators. Michael Labeit nailed this one right on the head.
Jun '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
"She hates the Marine, yet longs to give him proper commands."
Like Hilary & Bill --- I recall they used Marines to serve hors d'oeuvres at the White House or some such inappropriate treatment of military men on duty there.
Aug '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
After spending some time in the dfacs in several bases in Iraq, it's pretty obvious that the volunteer Army we have is alot better than what we had during Vietnam.
These recruiters reinforce the message of the military, which is to protect our country by killing the enemy or keeping him at bay.
I can imagine this woman standing in her kitchen hesitating to kill a mouse, and unable to keep it from contaminating her family's food.
The results are the same, people are going to be harmed by an inability to defuse a threat.
It should be society's job to make sure there are people in those positions, and that they be at the height of their physical tone and sensory acuity. Additional benefits of the age are that they are not encumbered by their own family yet, aren't too far from institutional environment having been in school for the last 12 years, and want to do something worthwhile before settling into the workplace. In other words, it's the best place to recruit.
Let's defuse those who refuse to protect society.
Jun '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
I wonder if Ms Hag. would approve of parents having such an influence on the up-n-coming youth of America, even if the outcome would keep them out of the military.
Do teens need such a permission slip from their parents for reproductive services?
...Good to see you in print again, Stickershock.
Jun '10
Re: Prof Compares Military Recruiters with Sex Predators
Hi Tim,
Great points. She DOES appear to be part of the crowd who wish to take away parental autonomy in child rearing. A true Brave New World believer. Imagine the tossing & turning she'd face every night, agonizing about ends justifying means if she allowed parental apporval on the pesky question of keeping recruiters away from their kids. A slippery slope indeed. Soon the parents might question curriculum. Or teacher credentials. Or sex ed presentation methods.
We know that reproductive services are absolutely provided in many places without parental permission. No such freedom is allowed for dispensing a Tylenol or Benadryl as a child's throat swells shut.