Project Minerva and the Militarization of Anthropology

Author(s): Hugh Gusterson

Source: The Radical Teacher, No. 86 (Winter 2009), pp. 4-16
Published by: University of Illinois Press
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Project
Minerva and the
Militarization of
Anthropology
By Hugh
Gusterson
fi
ROCKY MOUNTAIN ARSENAL, BOMBS IN
CRATE, 1965
HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD
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When I had a 45-minute conversa
tion with a senior
Department
of
Defense official about the
Pentagons
new
Minerva
initiative,
I found that
Project
Camelot
was on his mind
as well as mine.
He had been
reading
about
Camelot,
he told
me,
trying
to understand
why
it
blew
up
in the
Pentagons
face and how
to ensure the same
fate did not befall
Minerva.
Project
Camelot
was a 1964 research
initiative,
run
by
the
Special Operations
Research Office
(SORO)
at American
University
and funded with $6 million
from the US.
Army
as seed
money
for
a
larger
initiative. This
was,
at the
time,
"the
largest single grant
ever
provided
for a social science
project."1 Against
the
backdrop
of
powerful insurgencies
led
by
Fidel
Castro,
Che Guevara
and,
on
another
continent,
Ho Chi
Minh,
the
purpose
of
Project
Camelot
was to mobi
lize
leading
social scientists to under
stand the sources of
revolutionary
move
ments and
insurgencies
in Latin America
and to
develop strategies
of what the
SORO called
"insurgency prophylaxis."
Six countries had been selected for
study,
the first
being
Chile.
According
to its
defenders,
the research envisioned under
Project
Camelot
was not
greatly
differ
ent from
open
research
already being
done
by
various social scientists
pursuing
their
own
academic
interests;
the
Army
was
just planning
to formalize scattered
research into a more coherent
program,
increase its
volume,
and
bring
in some
more
prestigious
social scientists to
juice
it
up. Despite allegations
at the time that
Camelot
was
mobilizing
social scientists
to
engage
in covert
espionage
in Latin
America,
Project
Camelot
was,
in
fact,
not classified and its researchers
were to
be free to
publish
in the
open
literature.2
A 1964
Project
Camelot
working paper
presented
Camelot
as an
enlightened
effort to achieve
development
and reduce
violence,
saying
"it is far
more
effec
tive and economical to avoid
insurgency
through essentially
constructive efforts
than to counter it after it has
grown
into a
full-scale movement
requiring drastically
greater
effort."3
Project
Camelot self-destructed when
the
anthropologist Hugo
Nutini,
a
Chilean who had become a
naturalized
U.S.
citizen,
misrepresented
Camelot
to Chilean
colleagues
he was
trying
to
recruit,
concealing
the U.S.
military's
financial
backing
of the
project.
This
deception
was
publicly
unmasked
by
the
Norwegian
researcher
Johann
Galtung,
who decried the
"imperialist
features" of
the
project.
Once the State
Department
and the U.S.
Embassy
in Chile said
they
had been
kept
in the dark about
Camelot,
the
project
was
widely
denounced in Chile
and elsewhere in Latin America. Latin
American academics felt
betrayed by
their
American
colleagues, wondering
which of
them could be
trusted,
and
politicians?
especially
those
on
the Left?were
quick
to
join
in the chorus of condemnation. In
the
ensuing
commotion about social sci
Versions of this article were
presented
at
UCLA,
at Duke
University,
and at Rut
gers
University. My
thanks to all who
gave
feedback at those
venues,
and to
my
colleagues
in the Network of Concerned
Anthropologists (http://concerned.
anthropologists .googlepages
.com/)
for their continuous intellectual and
political comradeship.
A few
passages
in
this article
are
indebted to
chapter
2 of
the Network of Concerned
Anthropolo
gists'
Counter-Count
er
insurgency
Manual
(Prickly Paradigm
Press, 2009).
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entists as
spies, Project
Camelot became
publicly
framed
as a covert research
pro
gram
on
insurgency
and
counterinsurgen
cy
in Latin
America,
often in
ways
that
were
less than
fully
accurate. President
Frei of Chile
protested
the
project
to
Washington,
and
Congressional hearings
were
held
during
which Camelot
was
denounced
by
Senator
Fulbright
among
others.
By
1965 Camelot was
cancelled,
though
other
counterinsurgency projects
that used social scientists would contin
ue.
These included
Project Troy, Project
Simpatico, Project
Revolt,
and
Project
Michelson.4
Many
American social scientists who
worked in Latin America found their
research
damaged by political shrapnel
from Camelots
implosion.
One doc
toral student had two
years
of data
on
social stratification in Chile seized
by
the Chilean
government and,
for
years
afterwards,
U.S. researchers
reported
that
many
Latin American collaborators
became
distant,
research visas or other
tokens of official
cooperation
became
problematic
to
obtain,
and so on. As a
1967 article in Science
put
it: "With social
scientists now
making
their annual sum
mer
exodus to the
foreign
countries in
which
they
conduct
fieldwork, many
of
them
are
discovering
that their 'labora
tories' abroad have been
metaphorically
padlocked."5
This article
quotes
from a
letter sent
by
a
group
of Brazilians
can
celing
their collaboration with a team
from Cornell. "How can one maintain
and
justify
a
relationship
with an institu
tion?the
university
in the United States
?which
permits
itself to be transformed
into the instrument of a
security agency
which
today
is
internationally
known as
the
instigator
of international
coups...
We...know that
[your] project
did not
receive
money
from foundations linked
to the
security
service of the American
government...Lamentably
the
just
will
pay
for the sinners."6
Meanwhile,
within
anthropology,
Carolyn
Fluehr-Lobban has
argued
that
"Project
Camelot can now
be
recognized
as the crisis that
began
ethical discourse in
anthropology..
.It
provided
the immediate
background
for the
adoption by
the fellows
of the AAA
[American
Anthropological
Association]
of the first statement on
Problems of
Anthropological
Research
and Ethics in 1967...The
greatest
effect
of Camelot was that it raised the issue of
secret research
on a
wide scale within the
profession,
across
the social sciences as a
whole,
and
among
the American literati
who observe and comment on
anthro
pology's public quarrels.
The
principle
enunciated was
that clandestine research
is
wrong,
that secret research is
unethical,
and,
finally,
that both
are
unprofessional."7
Together
with revelations three
years
later
that some
anthropologists
were involved
in secret
counterinsurgency
research in
Southeast
Asia,8
Project
Camelot set the
stage
for the AAAs 1967 Statement on
Problems of
Anthropological
Research
and Ethics
and,
after
a
bruising fight
within the
Anthropology
Association,
its
1971
Principles
of Professional Practice.
The 1967 statement
declared,
"the inter
national
reputation
of
anthropology
has
been
damaged by
the activities of individ
uals...who have
pretended
to be
engaged
in
anthropological
research while
pursu
ing
other ends. There is
good
reason to
believe that some
anthropologists
have
used their
professional standing
and the
names of academic institutions as cloaks
for the collection of
intelligence
informa
tion and for
intelligence operations."9
From the ashes of
Camelot,
four decades
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later,
we see
the birth of Minerva. Minerva
was
first announced
by Secretary
of
Defense Robert Gates
on
April
14, 2008,
in a
speech
to the American Association
of
Universities,
where the assembled uni
versity presidents
reacted with enthusiasm
to an initiative that offered $50 million
to
university
researchers.10 Gates'
speech
was soon
followed
by
a
Broad
Agency
Announcement
soliciting proposals
for
funding.11
Like
Camelot,
Minerva
was
given
a
mythical
name,
the
progression
from
Arthurian
England
to
imperial
Rome
as a source of
mythical imagery per
haps betraying
a
deeper
shift in America's
self-identification in the
years
between
John
F.
Kennedy
and
George
W. Bush.
Minerva
was ancient Rome's
counterpart
to
Athena,
the
goddess
of warriors and
wisdom. As Catherine Lutz has
observed,
the
Pentagon's naming practices
often
make
use
of
"classics-washing"
to
suggest
the
"nobility,
timelessness,
and
beauty"
of
their
imperial projects.
In Lutz's
words,
"the
military
academies have found the
Roman
Empire good
to think with
as
they
contemplate
what the US can
accomplish
in the world."12
Gates'
speech
and the Broad
Agency
Announcement laid out five broad areas
of
heterogenous inquiry grouped
loose
ly?some
would
say incoherently?to
gether
under the Minerva umbrella:
(1)
Chinese
Military
and
Technology
Research
and Archive
Programs:
an initiative to
translate,
gather
and
analyze
unclassified
but hard-to-find Chinese documents to be
aggregated
in a
physical
or virtual archive.
According
to the call for
proposals,
rel
evant
topics might
include "the effects
of a
shift from
a
command to a
market
economic
system
on
the defense establish
ment and
budget; changing
identities in
the
People's
Liberation
Army
(PLA)
that
accompany
shifts from a closed to a more
open
political system...and
the evolution
of PLA
strategic thinking."
Here
some of
the work
analyzing open
sources
that is
typically
done
by intelligence analysts
is
being
outsourced to academia. This
com
ponent
of Minerva is
clearly
tied to con
cerns
that
a
rising
China,
on
track to be
the world s second
largest economy
within
a
few
years,
will soon
become the United
States'
leading geopolitical
rival; (2)
the
Iraqi Perspectives
Project:
an initiative to
translate, archive,
and
analyze
documents
from Saddam Hussein's
Iraq captured
during
the U.S. invasion and
occupa
tion of that
country;
(3)
Studies
of
the
Strategic Impact of Religious
and Cultural
Changes
within the Islamic World: here the
Minerva announcement
foregrounds
such
questions
as the sources of the Taliban's
popularity,
the role of Islamic madras
sahs as incubators of
violence,
and so
on. "Relevant
disciplines
include anthro
pology,
economics,
political
science,
sociology,
social and
cognitive psychol
ogy,
and
computational
science," says
the
call for
proposals;
(4)
Studies
of
Terrorist
Organization
and
Ideologies: emphasising
the
importance
of
predictive computer
modelling,
the call
says
"development
of
models that can be used to
explain
and
explore
human behaviour in this area?
organized
violence?will be
especially
helpful
to the
Department
of Defense in
understanding
where
organized
violence
is
likely
to
erupt,
what factors
might
explain
its
contagion,
and how to cir
cumvent its
spread.
Research on belief
formation and emotional
contagion
will
provide
cultural advisors with better tools
to understand the
impact
of
operations
on
the local
population;"
(5)
New
Approaches
to
Understanding
Dimensions
of
National
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Security, Conflict
and
Cooperation:
this is
basically
a
"none of the
above"
category.
Researchers are
invited to
sub
mit
proposals
to
develop
new
ways
of
looking
at the
security
challenges
fac
ing
the United States in the
twenty-first
century.
In his rollout
speech,
Gates said
he was
hoping
for the
emergence
of
new
ideas that
might play
a
role
analogous
to
game
theory
or
Kremlinology
in the
Cold War.
According
to William
Rees,
a
Minerva official in the
Pentagon,
the
majority
of
proposals
received have been
in this catch-all
category.13
Under the initial call for
proposals,
Minerva
was
capitalized
at
$50 million
over
five
years.
This raises the
prospect
that,
overnight,
the
Pentagon
will become
one
of the
largest
funders of
anthropolog
ical research in the
country.
Applying
the
"big
science" model to the humanities and
social sciences
(and
thereby showing
their
lack of
understanding
of the academics
they
seek to
recruit),
Defense
Department
officials said that most awards would
go
to teams of researchers and be in the $1
million to
$1.5 million
range.14 Foreign,
as
well as
American,
academics
are invit
ed to
apply,
and researchers are
allowed to
publish
work funded
by
Minerva in the
open
literature.
On
May
28, 2008,
Setha
Low,
the President of the American
Anthropological
Association wrote to the
head of the Office of
Management
and
Budget signalling
broad
approval
for the
goals
of
Minerva,
but
expressing
concern
about the
wiring
of the
funding
circuitry.
(Full
disclosure: I was
consulted on
the
phrasing
of
this
letter.)
"The
Association
wholeheartedly
believes that
social science
research
can
contribute to reduction of armed
con
flict,"
Low
wrote,
"but
we
believe that
as
Project
Minerva
moves
toward
imple
mentation,
its
findings
will be considered
more
authoritative if its
funding
is routed
through
the well established
peer-re
viewed selection
process
of
organizations
like the National Science Foundation
(NSF),
the National Institute of Health
(NIH),
and the National Endowment
for the Humanities
(NEH)...Rigorous,
balanced and
objective peer
review is the
bedrock of successful and
productive pro
grams
that
sponsor
academic research...
Lacking
the kind of infrastructure for
evaluating anthropological
research that
one
finds at these other
agencies,
we
are
concerned that the
Department
of
Defense would turn for assistance in
developing
a
selection
process
to those
who
are not
intimately
familiar with the
rigorous
standards of our
discipline."15
Partly
in
response
to such
criticism,
pre
sumably,
the
Department
of Defense then
announced a
three-year
memorandum of
understanding
with the National Science
Foundations
Social, Behavioral,
and
Economic Sciences Directorate. This was
accompanied by
an additional $8 million
for Minerva in 2009 to be administered
by
NSF in a
separate competition
titled
"the Social and Behavioral Dimensions
GATES' AIDES SPOKE OF
MINERVA AS AN INITIATIVE
THAT WOULD YIELD RESULTS
IN A 10-30 YEAR TIME
FRAME,
LIKENING IT TO BASIC
RESEARCH FUNDED BY THE
PENTAGON DURING THE COLD
WAR THAT EVENTUALLY LED
TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THE INTERNET AND GLOBAL
POSITIONING SYSTEMS
(GPS).
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of National
Security,
Conflict,
and
Cooperation"
(NSCC).
There
may
or
may
not
be
a
further $8
million for this
NSF version of
Minerva in 2010
and 2011. To
put
this in
perspec
tive,
one foundation
program
officer told
me
that Wenner-Gren
spends
about $5 mil
lion
per year
on
anthropology
research.
The memorandum of
understanding
with NSF
might
seem to alleviate the
concerns
raised
by
Low about the
peer
review
process through
which
grantees
will be
selected,
as well as further con
cerns that Minerva would not attract a
broad cross-section of academics unless
it were a civilian
program
not identified
with the
Pentagon.
However,
as I have
argued
elsewhere,16
the NSF
program,
which bears the Defense
Department
logo,
is
being
used to
give
Minerva
a
cosmetic makeover rather than to make
Minerva
genuinely independent
of the
military.
The
majority
of Minerva fund
ing,
disbursed outside the NSF
process,
will still be controlled
directly by
the
Pentagon.
Meanwhile,
in a
highly
unusu
al
arrangement,
the NSF is
allowing
the
Department
of Defense to
pick
some
members of the NSF review
panels,
and
recipients
of NSF Minerva
funding
are
expected
to attend collective
meetings
with Defense
Department
officials
seeking
to
develop
a
social sciences brain trust. In
other
words,
the
Pentagon
will be allowed
to
put
its thumb
on
the scale of the
puta
tively objective
NSF selection
process,
and the NSF will lend its networks and
prestige
to the
task of
building
a reserve
army
of social science
expertise
for the
U.S.
military.
Gates'
pro
nouncements
have made it
clear that he sees
the "war
on ter
ror" as a
genera
tional commitment
that,
like the cold
war,
will last for
decades,
and he is
looking
to
Minerva for research whose fruits
may
take
many years
to mature. At
a
forum
sponsored by
the
Department
of Defense
and the Smith Richardson
Foundation,
Gates' aides
spoke
of Minerva as an initia
tive that would
yield
results in a
10-30
year
time
frame,
likening
it to basic research
funded
by
the
Pentagon during
the cold
war that
eventually
led to the
development
of the Internet and Global
positioning sys
tems
(GPS).17
It is also clear from a num
ber of
speeches
Gates has
given
that he is
particularly
interested in the contribution
anthropologists
and other cultural
special
ists can make. If the cold war was the
physicists'
war,
Gates seems to see the "war
on terror" as the
anthropologists'
war.
The
Pentagon's
new
public
interest in
anthropology
broke with the
precedent
of the
previous thirty years.
After the
firestorm that
erupted
within the anthro
pological community
in the 1960s in
reaction to some
anthropologists'
par
ticipation
in
counterinsurgency projects,
and
as
anthropology
turned to the left in
the 1970s and
1980s,
the national secu
rity
state treated
anthropology
as a
largely
demilitarized zone. Those few anthro
pologists
who worked for the national
security apparatus
tended to do so
quiedy,
IT IS ALSO CLEAR...
THAT
[GATES]
IS
PARTICULARLY INTERESTED
IN THE CONTRIBUTION
ANTHROPOLOGISTS AND OTHER
CULTURAL SPECIALISTS CAN
MAKE. IF THE COLD WAR
WAS THE PHYSICISTS'
WAR,
GATES SEEMS TO SEE THE
"WAR ON TERROR" AS THE
ANTHROPOLOGISTS' WAR.
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in the shadows. This
changed
after 9/11.
Now the CIA tried to
place
a
job
ad
in
Anthropology
News.
(It
was
rejected).
The Pat Roberts
Intelligence
Scholars
Program
(PRISP)?a
sort of ROTC for
spies?offered
tuition
funding
for anthro
pology
and other students who
pledged
to
work for the
intelligence community
on
graduation.18
And,
in
2007,
the
Pentagon
announced that it
planned
to send
anthropologists
to
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
as
embedded social scientists in "human
terrain teams." "One
anthropologist
can be much more
effective than a
B-2
bomber,"
said
one
Human Terrain Team
spokesperson.19 Although
the Executive
Board of the American
Anthropological
Association issued
a statement condemn
ing
Human Terrain teams on the
grounds
that
anthropologists
on these teams would
run a
grave
risk of
endangering
human
subjects,20
some
anthropologists
have
signed up
for these teams.
Critiques
of Minerva
At least three
critiques
of Minerva have
emerged.
The first has to do with the
legal
and ethical status of the
Iraqi
documents
offered for translation and
analysis.
The
second focuses
on selection bias issues
in the
way
the
competition
has been
set
up.
And the third
concerns
ways
in
which Minerva threatens
to further mili
tarize the
university
and the
production
of
knowledge
in American
society.
To start with the
Iraqi
document
com
ponent:
the Broad
Agency
Announcement
says
of these
documents,
using
a
strikingly
agentless
locution,
that "In the course of
Operation Iraqi
Freedom,
a vast num
ber of documents and other media
came
into the
possession
of the
Department
of
Defense."
[Emphasis
mine].
To be
pre
eise,
5 million documents.
They
were
seized
by
the U.S.
military,
then
given
by
the
Department
of Defense to the
Iraq Memory
Foundation,
an
organiza
tion founded
by
an
Iraqi
exile,
Kanan
Makiya,
who had lobbied for the invasion
of
Iraq.
The
Iraq Memory
Foundation has
in turn
signed
an
agreement
to transfer
these documents to Stanford
University's
Hoover Institute.
According
to an
article in The New
York
Times,
"to some
Iraqi
officials and
American archivists...this has been...a
blatant
case
of
plunder..
.with Saad
Eskander,
the director of the
Iraq
National
Library
and Archive in
Baghdad,
and
Akram
al-Hakim,
Iraq's acting
minister
of culture who also holds the title state
minister for national
dialogue, asserting
that the documents were
unlawfully
seized
and
calling
for their immediate return. In
an
open
letter to the Hoover Institution
on
June
21,
Mr. Eskander wrote that
its
arrangement
with the
Iraq Memory
Foundation
was
'incontrovertibly illegal.,,,
The
Society
of American Archivists and
the Association of Canadian Archivists
have
supported
that
claim,
calling
the
removal of the documents from
Iraq
"an
act of
pillage,
which is
specifically
forbid
den
by
the 1907
Hague
Convention."21
The
professional
archivists' stated
opin
ion on
this issue is
arresting. According
to
them, any
scholar who works with
these
documents,
rather than
working
for their
repatriation,
is
complicit
with
a
violation of the
Hague
Convention
and with an act of state
looting.
These
documents should be returned to
Iraq
as
part
of their national
patrimony,
rather
than
being exploited
as a resource
by
an
occupying army which,
in
turn,
invites
scholars to
profit
from their
expatriation.
Once
they
have been returned to
Iraq,
the
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Iraqi government
can
decide who should
have access to these documents for what
purposes.
The second
critique
of Minerva
concerns
possible
selection biases that
may prove
inherent in its current
structuring
as a
research initiative run
by
the
Pentagon.
To
begin
with,
the
Pentagon
has little in
the
way
of an
established infrastructure?
program
officers trained in
anthropology
and a rich network of trusted external
reviewers?for
evaluating anthropological
work. In such circumstances one wonders
how
rigorous
the
process
of
peer
review
and selection will be and what canons of
judgment
will be
applied
in the selection
process.
Will
proposals
be
judged
accord
ing
to
prevailing
standards of excellence
in academic
anthropology (granted
that
we know how
problematic they
can
be)?
Will
they
be
judged according
to
yester
days
standards of excellence in academic
anthropology,
or
by
the standards of some
other academic
discipline?
Or will
they
be
judged
not so much in terms of academic
standards at
all,
but in terms of
promised
pragmatic payoff
for the
military?
In the
1960s
some
social scientists
complained
bitterly
that the
Project
Camelot
program
officers were
mostly psychologists
who did
not understand
anthropological
research.
Will we hear similar
complaints
from vet
erans of the Minerva selection
process?
But
my
main concern in
regards
to selec
tion bias is not so much about Minerva's
gatekeepers
as it is about
a
biased
pool
of
applicants.
If, say,
the Social Science
Research Council
(SSRC)
issued a call for
proposals
on the roots of terrorism and
on
the relation between
Islam,
violence and
peace, they
would attract
proposals
from a
broad
range
of
anthropologists
and other
experts.
We would
expect
an
SSRC call
for
proposals
to elicit a
strong response
for
two reasons:
first,
because the S SRC has
a
well established set of
networks,
built
over
decades and nourished
by program
officers rooted in the academic
commu
nity,
to beat the bushes for
proposals;
and,
second,
because the SSRC has a
strong
reputation
as an
independent
arbiter of
academic
quality
whose
funding
will not
run the risk of
tainting
those funded
in the
way that,
for
example,
oil indus
try money might
taint an
environmental
researcher,
tobacco
money might
taint an
epidemiologist,
or
pharmaceutical
money
might
taint a medical researcher. If one
reflects for a moment on
the reluctance
of a
strong,
independently-minded
envi
ronmental researcher to
accept
oil indus
try funding?as
much because
they
fear
how it will
appear
to others
as
because
of
any
precise
mechanism to suborn the
integrity
of their research?it is
easy
to
understand
why many experts
on Islam
and the Middle East would be inclined
not to seek
funding through
a
Pentagon
research initiative. Minerva is
likely
to be
given
a wide berth
by
many
scholars who
do not like the
Pentagon
on
political prin
ciple,
scholars who have other
funding
options,
and scholars who are
afraid that
accepting Pentagon funding
will
damage
their
reputation
with
colleagues
or
make
interlocutors in the field less
likely
to trust
them. The latter concern
will be
particu
larly
acute for the scholars the
Pentagon
most needs: those who have
spent years
developing relationships
of trust with
interlocutors in the Middle East.22
If Minerva is
boycotted by left-wing
anthropologists
and
by anthropologists
worried that Minerva would leave them
with lots of
funding
but
no
informants,
then it will
limp along
as a
biased,
dis
torted,
depleted
research
program.
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indeed this is
what seems to be
happening.
One
anthropologist
in the confidence
of the Minerva
bureaucracy reports
that the first round
of
applications
was
smaller than the
Pentagon hoped
for,
contained
few
applications
from
anthropolo
gists,
but
many
applications
from
people
who have
sought
defense
funding
before.
Instead of
breaking
the
mould,
Minerva
is
becoming
another chance at the
trough
for the usual
suspects.23
This is a lose
lose outcome: the research
community
does not
get
a
funding competition
in
which all its members feel comfortable
participating.
Meanwhile,
policy
makers
who
rely
on
Minerva to make
intelligent
decisions about future
policies
in the
Middle East will not have the benefit
of research informed
by
a full
range
of
political
commitments,
nor the benefit
of the best research American academia
can
provide.
Minerva will
then,
to use a
phrase
coined
by
Laura Nader in a dif
ferent
context,
be
"unhelpful
to
reality
testing
for
government."24
If Minerva is not intended to be a
clas
sified
program
of
research,
it would make
much more sense to make it a
genuinely
civilian research
program.
Given that
allowing
such research to be funded
by
a
civilian
agency through
a
truly indepen
dent
process
would
surely produce
much
better
research,
we must ask
why
the
Pentagon
refuses to do this. I believe the
answer to this
question
lies in the NSF
s
stated
goal
in its Minerva announce
ment "to
develop
[Defenses]
social
and human science
intellectual
capital
in order to enhance
its
ability
to address
future
challenges."
In the context of
an
anticipated long
war in the Middle
East and of other
neocolonial
proj
ects in Africa and
elsewhere,
the
Pentagons long
term
goal
is to
develop
a cadre of social
scientists,
particularly
in
anthropology,
who are
tied to the mili
tary
and its
projects.
The
Pentagon
seeks
to
recuperate
the
implosion
of
Project
Camelot and its
estrangement
from much
of the social science
community
in the
Vietnam
years
by establishing
a com
munity
of social scientists who will be
on
call for
consultations,
who will be drawn
into the
training
of soldiers and intelli
gence officers,
who will serve as
adjudica
tors of research
proposals
for
others,
and
who will train students and direct them
to careers as
military
social scientists.
Project
Minerva is an
attempt
to restore
the 1950s.
The third
critique
of Minerva is more
overtly political.
It warns that
military
funding
will undercut the kind of critical
thinking
many
of
us
prize
in
anthropol
ogy,
changing
the
questions
we ask and
the
positions
from which we
ask them?
to the detriment of both
scholarly
and
democratic debate. In
Cathy
Lutz's
words,
"the
Pentagon
frames the
questions
to be
asked,
and does so within the constraints
of what C.
Wright
Mills
years ago
called
the
military
definition of
reality.
This
entails
seeing
the world as a series of
IN THE CONTEXT OF AN
ANTICIPATED LONG WAR
IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND
OF OTHER NEOCOLONIAL
PROJECTS IN AFRICA
AND
ELSEWHERE,
THE
PENTAGON'S LONG TERM
GOAL IS TO DEVELOP
A CADRE OF SOCIAL
SCIENTISTS,
PARTICULARLY
IN
ANTHROPOLOGY,
WHO
ARE TIED TO THE MILITARY
AND ITS PROJECTS.
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threats to be dealt
with,
sorting people
into enemies and
allies,
and
focusing
on
the use or threat of force.
"Look at the
Pentagons
research wish
list. It does not
correspond
to the lists
most
anthropologists
would construct of
the most
important problems, security
or
otherwise,
facing
the
people
of the United
States
or the world. Their alternative lists
would include
global warming, inequality,
disease,
job
loss....The lists
might
contain
some
problems generated by
the
Pentagon
itself,
like the human toll of the current
wars or the
huge
deficit created
by
mili
tary spending."25
In a similar
vein, John
Tirman has
argued
that Minerva creates a distorted
picture
of the world in which the rise of
China and the
upswell
of Islamic radical
ism crowd out other
emergent security
threats that
are,
in Tirman's
view,
more
dangerous. Among
these he
names nuclear
proliferation,
massive international flows
of human
migrants,
the rise of AIDS
and other
diseases,
climate
change,
and
food
shortages
created
by
the new neolib
eral economic order. "Minerva is a missed
opportunity
on a massive
scale?investing
heavily
in the irrelevant or
minor,
ignor
ing
the monumental and
urgent."26
Noting
Minervas focus
on and
tight
coupling
of Islam and
terrorism,
Tirman
also
suggests
that
a more
broadly
based
program
of
inquiry
into terrorism
might
ask how
differently positioned
peo
ple
define
"terrorism,"
whether
(as
the
anthropologist
Talal Asad has
argued27)
Christianity produces
terrorist violence
as
well,
whether suicide bombers in the
Middle East are driven
by religion
or
(as
much social science research
suggests28)
by
nationalism and other
ideologies.
In
the
way
it defines the
problem
to be
addressed, then,
Minerva
replicates
what
Irving
Horowitz in a 1967
essay
saw as
the
principal failing
of
project
Camelot:
"the
Army,
however
respectful
and
pro
tective of free
expression
at the formal
level,
was
'hiring help
and not
openly
submitting military problems
to the
higher
professional
and scientific
authority
of
social science...It became clear that the
social science servant was not so
much
functioning
as an
applied
social scientist
as
he
was
performing
the role of
supplying
information to a
powerful
client."29
During
the cold
war,
the
patronage
of
the national
security
state
substantially
transformed the American
university
in
ways
that have been
mapped by
a num
ber of recent studies.30 Federal
funding,
especially
defense
funding,
underwrote
a massive
expansion
of American
high
er
education,
increasing
its
capitaliza
tion
twentyfold
from 1946-1991.31
Major
research universities such
as
Stanford,
MIT and
Johns
Hopkins
rose to
power
and
prominence
on the back of this fund
ing
stream,
and the new
circuitry
of
funding undergirded
the
emergence
of
complex
networks
tying together
uni
versity
researchers, weapons laboratories,
and
funding agencies
(often
staffed
by
people
who had been trained with defense
funding by
the
very
academics
they
then
went on to
fund).
In
response
to the needs
of the national
security
state,
lavishly
funded centers
appeared, sucking
in fac
ulty
and
graduate
students
as
they grew:
MIT's Center for International Studies
(which grew
out of
Project Troy
and
was first directed
by
a
former CIA offi
cial);
Russian research centers at Harvard
and Columbia
Universities;
the Stanford
Research
Institute;
and the
Draper
Laboratory
for research on
missile
guid
ance at
MIT,
for
example.
Meanwhile,
within
disciplines,
some fields
grew
and
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others shrank. In
physics,
nuclear
physics
and solid-state
physics
were of
great
inter
est to the
military,
so
funding
for these
fields
grew
and those
engaged
in these
areas
of research
were
disproportionately
likely
to become
department
chairs,
labo
ratory
directors,
graduate
advisors and so
on.
Engineering
saw
the rise of
cybernet
ics. In
communication,
opinion polling
found a new
prominence.
In
psychology,
research
on mind
control, obedience,
and
opinion
formation
(important
for
psycho
logical
warfare and
propaganda opera
tions) grew.
In
political
science,
ethics and
political thought
went into decline
even
as area
studies,
development
studies and
security
studies
prospered.
Anthropology
did not
escape
the
shap
ing
effects of the cold
war,
as recent
work
by
David Price and Laura Nader
in
particular
has made clear. In the
high
McCarthyist years
of the 1950s most
anthropologists
learned to steer clear of
radical
ideas,
while some who did not
paid
the
price.32
Meanwhile the
emergence
of
area
studies,
the creation of the Human
Relations Area Files
(HRAF),
and the
rise of
linguistic anthropology
and of
Foreign Language
Area Studies
(FLAS)
fellowships
were
developments
associ
ated with the rise of the national
security
state.33
However,
anthropology
was not
as
deeply
militarized
during
the cold
war
as
many
other academic
disciplines,
and
many anthropology departments played
an
important
role in the second half of
the cold
war in
developing critiques
of
the Vietnam
War,
of U.S. intervention in
Central
America,
and of economic
poli
cies that led to
underdevelopment
in the
Third World.
Will
anthropology
now abandon or
attenuate this
oppositional
tradition in
response
to initiatives from the
Pentagon
and
intelligence agencies?
If
anthropolo
gists
match the
Pentagon's
cultural turn
with their
own
military
turn,
it is clear
from the
history
of other
disciplines
in the
cold war
what
we can
expect:
an
infusion
of
resources at the
cost,
paradoxically,
of
a
narrowing
of research foci and
points
of
view;
separate
conferences and
jour
nals for
anthropologists
who do
security
work;
curricular
changes
in
anthropology,
including
the
emergence
of new mas
ters
programs,
tailored to the
produc
tion of defense
workers;
the
discovery by
some
anthropologists,
as
their
discipline
is
increasingly perceived
as an instrument
of U.S.
hegemony,
that
they
can no
longer
do certain kinds of
fieldwork;
and the
pro
gressive marginalization
of those
formerly
at the
discipline's
center of
gravity
who
refuse to undertake this kind of work.
In her article on the
"phantom
factor" in
anthropology?the phantom
factor
being
the role of the national
security
state in our
discipline's history?Laura
Nader remarks
that in
anthropology "questions
of social
responsibility
raised in the 1960s remain
largely
unresolved." Now
anthropology
has reached a
point
where it must decide
whether it wants to be the human rela
tions branch of
Empire.
If
we throw in our
lot with the
military,
then,
in Marshall
Sahlins' words in an
essay
on
project
Camelot,
our
"quest
for
objective
knowl
edge
of other
peoples
[will be]
replaced by
a
probe
for their
political
weaknesses."34 It
is
my
most
profound hope
that
anthropol
ogists
will refuse to transform their disci
pline
into one
that
uses a rhetorical
patina
of cross-cultural
understanding
and harm
reduction to mask a
project
that would
understand the other in order to
subjugate
and control it. This would be
a
betrayal
of
our human
subjects
and of our vocation as
interlocutors of the other.
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Notes
1
Irving
Louis
Horowitz,
The Rise and
Fall
of
Project
Camelot: Studies in the Rela
tionship
Between Social Science and Practi
cal Politics
(Cambridge,
MA: MIT
Press,
1967), p.
4.
2 Document
4,
reprinted
in
Horowitz,
bears this claim out.
3
Horowitz,
p.52.
4 Thomas
Asher,
"Making
Sense of
Minerva
Controversy
and the
NSCC,"
http://essays.ssrc.org/minerva/wp-con
tent/uploads/2008/lO/asher.pdf;
Milton
Jacobs,
"LAffaire
Camelot,"
American
Anthropologist
69
(3/4), 1967, pp. 364-6;
John Walsh,
"Cancellation of Camelot
After Row in Chile
Brings
Research
Under
Scrutiny,"
Science
149,
number
3689,
September
10, 1969, pp. 1211-3;
Horow
itz,
1967. On
Project Troy,
a
study
run
through
MIT of
strategies
of
psychologi
cal warfare
against
the
USSR,
see
Allan
Needell,
"Project Troy
and the Cold War
Annexation of the Social
Sciences,"
in
Christopher Simpson
(ed.)
Universities and
Empire: Money
and Politics
injhe
Social Sci
ences
During
the Cold War
(New
York: New
Press, 1998), pp.
3-38.
5 Elinor
Langer, "Foreign
Research:
CIA Plus Camelot
Equals
Troubles for U.
S.
Scholars,"
Science 156
(3782) June 23,
1967, pp. 1583-4,
quote p.
1583.
6
Langer.
7
Carolyn
Fluehr-Lobban,
"Ethics and
Anthropology
1890-2000,"
in
Carolyn
Fluehr-Lobban
(ed.)
Ethics and the
Profes
sion
of Anthropology
(Walnut Creek,
CA:
Altamira
Press, 2003),
pp.1-28, quotes
pp.6-7,
10.
8 On
anthropological participation
in
counterinsurgency
work in Southeast
Asia,
see Eric
Wakin,
Anthropology
Goes to War:
Professional
Ethics and Counter
insurgency
in
Thailand
(University
of Wisconsin Center
for Southeast Asian
Studies, 1992).
9
http
:
//www. aaanet.
org/stmts/ethst
mnt.htm.
10
http://www.defenselink.mil/
speeches/speech. aspx?speechid=1228.
11
http://www.arl.army.mil/www/
D o
wnlo ade d Inter net
Page
s/Cur
rentPages/DoingBusinesswithARL/
research/08-R-0007.pdf.
12 Catherine
Lutz,
"The Perils of Penta
gon
Funding
for
Anthropology
and Other
Social
Sciences,"
http://essays.ssrc.org/
minerva/2008/ll/06/lutz/.
13 "Social Science and the
Pentagon,"
Kojo
Nnamdi
Show, WAMU,
August
6,
2008
http://wamu.org/programs/
kn/08/08/06.php#21269.
14
Asher, p.
3.
15
http://www.aaanet.org/issues/pol
icy-advocacy/upload/Minerva-Letter.
pdf.
There were
complaints
in the 1960s
that
Project
Camelot was
largely
run
by
program
officers trained as
psychologists,
and that these did not
understand research
norms in other
disciplines
more relevant to
counterinsurgency
research.
(See Jacobs,
1967).
16
Hugh
Gusterson,
"Project
Minerva
Revisited,"
The Bulletin Online
August
5,
2008,
http://thebulletin.org/print/web
edition/columnists/hugh-gusterson/
project-minerva-revisited.
17 Personal
communication,
Thomas
Asher,
September
11,
2008.
18 On
PRISP,
see
Hugh
Gusterson and
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David
Price,
"Spies
in Our
Midst,"
Anthro
pology
News
September
2005,
http://
www.aaanet.org/press/an/infocus/prisp/
gusterson.htm.
19 Robert
Haddick,
"Can Counterinsur
gency
Ever be Used
Again?" Foreign Policy
May
29, 2009,
http://www.foreignpolicy.
com/story/cms.php?story_id=4955.
20
http://www.aaanet.org/issues/
AAA-Opposes-Human-Terrain-Sys
tem-Project.cfm.
21
Hugh
Eakin,
"Iraqi
Files in U.S.:
Plunder or
Rescue?" New York Times
July
1,
2008.
22
http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/
columnists/hugh-gusterson/the-us
militarys-quest-to-weaponize-culture;
http
: //www.
foreignpolicy.
com
/story/
cms.php?story_id=4398.
23 Personal
communication,
February
12,
2009.
24 Laura
Nader,
"The Phantom Factor:
Impact
of the Cold War
on
Anthropol
ogy,"
in Noam
Chomsky
et
al,
The Cold
War and the
University:
Toward
an Intel
lectual
History of
the Postwar Years
(New
York: Free
Press, 1997), pp.
107-146.
25 Catherine
Lutz,
"The Perils of Penta
gon Funding
for
Anthropology
and Other
Social
Sciences,"
http://essays.ssrc.org/
minerva/2008/ll/06/lutz/.
26
John Tirman,
"Pentagon
Priorities
and the Minerva
Program,"
Online
paper
October
2008,
http://www.ssrc.org/
essays/minerva/2008/10/09/tirman/.
27 Talal
Asad,
On Suicide
Bombing
(New
York: Columbia
University
Press, 2007).
28 See Robert A.
Pape, Dying
to Win: The
Strategie Logic of
Suicide Terrorism
(New
York: Random
House, 2005).
29
Horowitz, pp.
36-7.
30 See Noam
Chomsky
et
al,
The Cold
War and the
University:
Toward an
Intel
lectual
History of
the Postwar Years
(New
York: Free
Press, 1997);
Paul
Edwards,
The
Closed World:
Computers
and the Politics
of
Discourse in Cold War America
(Cambridge,
MA: MIT
Press, 1996);
Henry
Giroux,
The
University
in Chains:
Confronting
the
Milita
ry
-In dustrial-Academ ic C
o
mplex
(Paradigm
Publishers, 2007);
David Kai
ser, American
Physics
and the Cold War
Bubble,
forthcoming;
Stuart W.
Leslie,
The
Cold War and American Science: The Mili
tary-Industrial-Academic Complex
at MIT
and
Stanford
(Columbia
University
Press,
1994);
Rebecca
Lowen,
Creating
the Cold
War
University (Berkeley,
CA:
University
of California
Press, 1997);
Christopher
Simpson,
Universities and
Empire: Money
and Politics in the Social Sciences
During
the
Cold War
(New
York: Free
Press, 1998).
31 Richard
Lewontin,
"The Cold War
and the Transformation of the
Academy"
in Noam
Chomsky
et
al,
The Cold War and
the
University:
Toward an Intellectual His
tory of
the Postwar Years
(New
York: Free
Press, 1997), pp.
1-34.
32 David
Price,
Threatening Anthropology:
McCarthyism
and the FBTs Surveillance
of
Activist
Anthropologists
(Duke
University
Press, 2004).
33
Nader,
"The Phantom Factor."
34 Marshall
Sahlins,
"The Established
Order: Do Not
Fold,
Spindle
or
Mutilate,"
in
Irving
Louis
Horowitz,
The Rise and Fall
of
Project
Camelot: Studies in the
Relationship
Between Social Science and Practical Politics
(Cambridge,
MA: MIT
Press, 1967) pp.
71-79.
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