Did you know that Stevens actively maintains and encourages partnerships with companies proven to be complicit in war crimes? One example is Lockheed Martin, an American defense and aerospace
manufacturer with historic and celebrated connections to Stevens. Lockheed Martin has played a key
and direct role in conceiving and developing Stevens’ Department of Systems and Enterprises, to
which Jack Irving, Senior VP and General Manager at Lockheed Martin, praised as a “controllable
curriculum that we could continuously customize to meet the ever changing needs of our business… it
was perfect” (Stevens). See the following paragraph from the article, “Stevens Institute of Technology
and Lockheed Martin: A Historic Partnership in Systems”:
Over the past 10 years of SSE [now the Department of Systems and Enterprises], the numbers
reflect the depth of the Stevens and Lockheed Martin collaboration. On education, more than
2,000 Lockheed Martin employees have enrolled at Stevens graduate programs, many
completing doctoral degrees. On research, over the past 5 years funded more than $2 million in
research at Stevens, which has resulted in more than $5 million in supplemental research
funding by the U.S. Department of Defense. And several Lockheed Martin executives have
served on the Board of Advisors of the Stevens School of Systems and Enterprises, including
Jack Irving, Senior VP and General Manager, Lockheed Martin. (Stevens)
Stevens is very proud of their relationship with Lockheed Martin, and even invited former CEO and
Chairman Norman Augustine to kick off The President’s Distinguished Lecture Series in 2012.
Corporate connections are a great resource for a university of budding engineers, computer scientists,
and mathematicians. But a seemingly inseparable relationship to a company with staggering accounts
of human rights violations should certainly raise alarms. Here are a few examples:
In 2023, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics, three of the five largest U.S. defense
contractors, were sued in the US federal court for supporting war crimes by selling weapons to Saudi
Arabia and UAE-led coalition forces during the civil war in Yemen. Reports have linked Lockheed
Martin weaponry specifically to a horrifying instance on Oct. 8, 2016 – in Yemen’s capital. According
to Military Times, “Hundreds were gathered at the Great Hall of Sana’a City for the funeral of a tribal
leader, when a Raytheon and Lockheed-made GBU-12 Paveway II 500-pound laser-guided bomb
leveled the area, killing 140” (Military Times, Human Rights Watch).
Stevens’ most distinguished corporate partnership also “faces multiple lawsuits for toxic pollutant
contamination from a Florida facility that has resulted in brain lesions, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and birth defects, as well as litigation linked to a uranium facility” (IASJ, Law360). Stevens remains
steadfast in its alliance with Lockheed Martin— a corporation entrenched in violence and pain. The
institution continues to proclaim, “Inspired by Humanity, Powered by Technology,” yet declines to
examine the moral cost of the power it chooses to stand beside. At a moment when the consequences
of such alliances reverberate globally through two distinct genocides (Gaza and Sudan), Stevens has
shown little appetite for confronting the ethical implications embedded within its own partnerships.
As Stevens students we must ask ourselves: Is this the legacy we wish to uphold?
A special thanks to James Hooker for his contributions in writing this entire paper.
