To the Editor:

As UUP members struggle on behalf of quality public higher education in New York, they should continue to stress the connection between devastating state cutbacks and the huge expenditures for ongoing wars and national security institutions—the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, etc. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes estimate that the U.S.-Iraq war may eventually cost $3 trillion; the enlarging and endless Afghan war may exceed $1 trillion.

With a total of $4 trillion for these wars—about $13,200 per person—New Yorkers’ share will be nearly $260 billion. In the budget crisis, those working on behalf of the University and the truly vulnerable must break out of the intra-state financial box and target the massive funds that support U.S. militarism and unjust wars.

— John Marciano, Emeritus, SUNY Cortland