Fri Feb 15 2008 (Updated 02/16/08)

Anti-war protesters celebrated on February 13th after having forced the US Army's Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies (ICB) to cancel the second day of its annual conference at UC Santa Barbara. The day prior, over 500 UCSB students and Santa Barbara community members disrupted the conference to demand an end to UC complicity in weapons research designed to kill Iraqis in an illegal war.

The ICB is a $50 million Army-funded research institute hosted by UCSB, with sub-contracts at MIT and Caltech. According to the Army's 2006 Budget Justification to Congress, the "ICB is focused on advancing the survivability of both the soldier and weapons systems through fundamental breakthroughs in the area of biotechnology," including sensors, electronics, and photonics for these military applications. The annual conferences feature military-sponsored biotechnology researchers from all over the United States.

The anti-war direct action movement has been building steadily at UC Santa Barbara during the past year, starting when roughly 1,500 protesters shut down Highway 217 last February 15 to protest the war in Iraq. In other recent actions, students have driven CIA recruiters from campus, conducted a nine-day hunger strike against the University of California's development of nuclear weapons, and conducted a large "critical mass" bike ride from Isla Vista to downtown Santa Barbara.