The executive board of the American Anthropological Association recently released a formal condemnation of the Human Terrain System, a new program that embeds social scientists with combat brigades in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to The Chronicle's David Glenn only six teams are operating on the ground today, but the military plans to deploy a total of 22 nine-person teams in Iraq and another four teams in Afghanistan by July. 

Since its inception more than a year ago, the controversial project has been the source of heated debate in academic circles, and it promises to monopolize a great deal of the discussion at this week's annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. 

The AAA's assessment highlighted five specific areas of ethical concern and concluded that "the HTS program creates conditions that are likely to place anthropologists in positions in which their work will be in violation of the AAA Code of Ethics" and "that [the military's] use of anthropologists poses a danger to both other anthropologists and persons other anthropologists study." In light of that, the executive committee expressed its "disapproval of the HTS program."

At his blog, From an Anthropological Perspective, Marcus B. Griffin offers a point-by-point rebuttal of the executive committee's statement. Griffin also has an essay in The Chronicle Review this week in which he explains how he handles the issue of informed consent in a war zone. Griffin is currently serving with an HTS team in Iraq. And Steven Miska, a lieutenant colonel in the combat brigade in which Griffin is embedded, writes about how his unit benefits from the applied expertise of social science. "The question of whether anthropologists and other social scientists should serve on Human Terrain System teams is not about the personal politics of those who participate. Nor is it about the initial decision to invade Iraq (which I did not support)," Miska writes. "It is about giving us the best chance of success now that we are committed to the Iraqi cause."

David Vine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University, is far warier of the HTS program. "Anthropologists are being used as new military tools -- weapons, as some proponents describe them -- to directly and indirectly assist counterinsurgency operations and troops whose job requires taking human lives," Vine writes in The Chronicle Review.

The debate over the HTS program shows no sign of abating and, as David Glenn notes, it may be years before we have a complete understanding of how the military is attempting to put social-science knowledge to use on the battlefield.