This protest folk song was written in March, 1967, in Furnald Hall dorm at Columbia University to protest the university's institutional membership in the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a weapons research think tank. Last verse of lyrics was added in 2010.
lyrics
Come, you Bloody Minds
Look what I done find
I done did research
IDA exists
Laugh between your walls
Sit behind your desks
Watch your missiles fall
IDA exists.
The value-free school
Your mask we see right through
The weapons of the Pentagon
Their brains procured by you.
Godly Grayson Kirk
On the board he knits
Smokes upon his pipe
While his bombers bite
Problems he assigns:
“How to make men die?”
Professors they plan
Death for Viet Nam.
In ’56 to serve Defense
Five schools they did combine
Four years later
Columbia
It joined the bloody minds.
City slums they rot
Homeless live in lots
Atoms to destroy
They’re your little toys
Oh, they pay you well
To create a hell
Did you see the news?
Twelve children they slew.
A division
Its name Jason
In summer they study
They meet, they talk
They plan, they plot
Counter-insurgency.
Lovers they must part
Lamps they now are dark
Knowledge turned to swords
Kirk sits on the board
Schools changed into guns
For the Pentagon
Students now they learn:
How to make kids burn.
You stand in class
You spout your facts
A noble scientist
But then at night
You join the fight
You do secret research.
Wall Street banks collapse
Workers get laid-off
Laser beams command
Bombs on Afghanistan
Drones built by IDA
In Pakistan they slay
Robot war research
Makes professors rich.
In 2010, scientists again
They do space war research
With DARPA funds in secret labs
They threaten all the Earth.
Murder poor peasants
With the tools you sent
Orphan thin children
Help the junta win
Kill them with your mind
Paralyze their spines
Someday you will die
And in slime you’ll lie.
Look what I done find
I done did research
IDA exists
Laugh between your walls
Sit behind your desks
Watch your missiles fall
IDA exists.
The value-free school
Your mask we see right through
The weapons of the Pentagon
Their brains procured by you.
Godly Grayson Kirk
On the board he knits
Smokes upon his pipe
While his bombers bite
Problems he assigns:
“How to make men die?”
Professors they plan
Death for Viet Nam.
In ’56 to serve Defense
Five schools they did combine
Four years later
Columbia
It joined the bloody minds.
City slums they rot
Homeless live in lots
Atoms to destroy
They’re your little toys
Oh, they pay you well
To create a hell
Did you see the news?
Twelve children they slew.
A division
Its name Jason
In summer they study
They meet, they talk
They plan, they plot
Counter-insurgency.
Lovers they must part
Lamps they now are dark
Knowledge turned to swords
Kirk sits on the board
Schools changed into guns
For the Pentagon
Students now they learn:
How to make kids burn.
You stand in class
You spout your facts
A noble scientist
But then at night
You join the fight
You do secret research.
Wall Street banks collapse
Workers get laid-off
Laser beams command
Bombs on Afghanistan
Drones built by IDA
In Pakistan they slay
Robot war research
Makes professors rich.
In 2010, scientists again
They do space war research
With DARPA funds in secret labs
They threaten all the Earth.
Murder poor peasants
With the tools you sent
Orphan thin children
Help the junta win
Kill them with your mind
Paralyze their spines
Someday you will die
And in slime you’ll lie.
