Comes now the California University of Protection and Intelligence Management

In their story on the bombings in Jordan, a television news program yesterday interviewed a terrorism expert, identified in the caption as the head of the above-named university.

It was founded by Nirmalya Bhowmick, apparently a Thai kickboxer, and is apparently California approved (although one of their press releases refers to California Accreditation).

www.cupim.com

Seems entirely above board; just another of the growing number of unaccredited degree-granting institutions.

 

www.cupim.org

 

Formerly, International Institute of Professional Executive Protection.

 

They were established as the International
Institute of Professional Executive Protection in 1991 and only offered certificates until recently. They renamed themselves the California University of Protection and Intelligence Management in 2003 and admitted their first degree program students in January 2004. They now offer bachelors and masters degrees in security protection and intelligence areas.

I remember seeing posters advertising them about a year ago on Silicon Valley bulletin boards and kiosks.

They offer DL classes:

http://eclassroom.cupim.org/

They certainly offer some sexy DL course titles. For example, CJ 452 Infiltration Techniques, INT 396 Terrorist Techniques, INT 410: Weapons and Weapon Systems, and INT 415 CBRN Weapons.

(Are terrorist techniques really something that you want to be teaching to students without knowing precisely who they are? I mean, Osama might need a brush-up after sitting in his hole for so long.)

Their old website was kind of cool, in an over-the-top way. It featured some martial arts stuff, along with a picture of two guys in black suits and shades forcing a man to the ground and holding a pistol to his head. There was another picture of two guys in leather jackets brandishing what looked like those stubby HK submachine guns that special forces use, while hustling a guy in an expensive suit out of danger.

I'm glad to see that they have toned it down and present a more professional image.

I just Googled the university's name on .mil sites and got no hits. Two hits for .gov sites, but they were both the BPPVE.

But CUPIM turns up on this NATO links page:

http://starnet.rta.nato.int/results.asp?node=1&org_type=1

A search on .edu generated only one hit. That's the bad news. The good news is that it was this guy:

http://www.start.umd.edu/research/investigators/ackerman.htm

Akerman seems to be the real deal and he's an adjunct at CUPIM and is on their curriculum development committee.

He's also a "Senior Consultant to the Special Research Division of the Akribis Group, San Jose, California".

http://www.akribis.org/main.htm

I guess that the CUPIM people aren't just running their school, they are actually selling their services to clients. Akribis "conducts threat assessments for corporate clients" and offers "proactive intelligence and personal protection to high-profile clients".

Then there's the Workthreat Group in Newport Beach. This one says that it started as a service advising corporations in dealing with employees that were suspected of being dangerous or criminal. After 9-11 they branched into counter-terrorism and say that they created the Akribis Group towards that end.

http://www.workthreat.com/company.html

But this Silicon Valley Business Journal article says that Akribis was founded by CUPIM's Mr. Nirmalya Bhowmick, who the story says is a former intelligence officer from India who immigrated to the United States. The story makes it sound like CUPIM only has a small number of students and is having trouble finding financial backers.

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2004/05/17/story7.html

But... this page says that the Akribis Group in San Jose is an importer of antiques from India or replicas of antiques or something.

http://dir.indiamart.com/foreignimporters/replicas.html

Here's something kind of positive that San Jose's NBC11 TV news did on CUPIM:

http://www.nbc11.com/news/3321533/detail.html

They echo the BizJournal in saying that Bhowmick is a former secret agent.

KGO newstalk did an interview with CUPIM's president Michael Corcoran, who they identified as a former US Secret Service agent.

There's lots more stuff out there for Googologists to find. CUPIM generated some 748 hits. That's not bad for a tiny unaccredited school less than two years old. But the lack of hits on .edu, .gov and .mil sites suggests that professionals are slower to respond.

So far, I still don't know quite what to make of CUPIM. It seems to be very new and very small and perhaps a little too grandiose for its own good. But so far it presents the appearance of sincerity and actually seems rather fascinating. You have to admit, it's way cooler than SCUPS.

 

I don't often venture into this forum but for some reason I decided to look at CUPIM's site and specifically at their "general" education courses. I wonder if ECN 400 The Underground Economy would fulfill the economics entry requirement of an MBA program?

How cool (or strange) would it be to have on your transcript some of the following "general" education courses:

SOC 510 Terrorist Group Dynamics
SOC 570 Cults and Charismatic Leaders
SOC 571 Secret Societies

Okay, at least I was entertained for the day. Now back to my term project.

 

"We're bigger than US Steel!"

Much bigger. There should be more such courses.

 

I agree (and strongly too) with Decimon. I don't think that MBA programs, or other business and economics programs, would have any problem with a course on the underground economy. They would probably welcome it and be impressed.

A significant proportion of the world's economic activity takes place off the tax rolls and without records being kept. I don't think that economics can afford to ignore it. (There are countries out there where the underground economy is as large as the conventional one.)

And it's imporant. There's the tremendous illegal drug industry with its cartels and private armies. There's the countless illegal aliens in California working cash jobs. (They dominate some industries.) There are whole island countries kept afloat by off-shore banking, tax-evasion and money laundering. Terrorism is largely funded in this way. World police and intelligence agencies have a major interest in tracking the flows of underground cash.

You have to admit, it's both topical and important. Security professionals need to be familiar with that kind of stuff. I guess that traditionally they kind of learn it on the job, but I don't see why it shouldn't be formally studied and taught in a more academic context. Schools ranging from the Naval Postgraduate School to American Military University are already doing it.

It seems to me that CUPIM's unique niche isn't so much the academic coursework as the practical tradecraft that they at least try to teach.

I still don't know if CUPIM is really credible in doing that though. But it certainly is cool.

 

Underground economy:

I am reminded of the time in the 1970s when the Mendocino County Commissioner of Agriculture, in his annual report on the value county crops, included marijuana, which he estimated was by far the biggest contributor to county economy.

There was a great flap, and he was ordered by the supervisorial ostriches never to do such an inappropriate thing again.

 

I have a female aquaintance who once worked for the IRS in Cincinnati. Believe it or not, she swears to a story in which a prostitute dutifullly paid her income taxes in full on her earnings (yes, prostitutition most definitely IS illegal in Cincinnati). According to my friend, the IRS accepted her payments and made no report to law enforcement authorities since legal statutes against prostitution are local matters and of no interest to the federal government. That was decades ago. In this era of computer-generated W-2s, I don't know if such transactions would fly, but apparently it was A-OK way back then.

 

Wouldn't the prostitute have been an independent contractor?