December 1, 2007

Anthropologists Vote to Clamp Down on Secret Scholarship

Washington — In the latest round of conflict over anthropologists’ cooperation with the U.S. military, members of the American Anthropological Association voted on Friday to ban certain kinds of secrecy in ethnographic work. In a motion passed by a voice vote during the organization’s annual business meeting here, members decreed that “no reports should be provided to sponsors [of research] that are not also available to the general public and, where practicable, to the population studied.”

The strongly worded motion is not binding, however. Because the motion was not presented to the membership at least 30 days in advance of Friday’s meeting, it will be referred to the association’s executive board. The board, in turn, is likely to put the question to the association’s membership via a mail ballot next year.

The motion would restore four anti-secrecy clauses that were added to the association’s ethics code in 1971, but removed in 1998. A report issued this week by a special committee of the association urged that the secrecy rules be tightened.

In 1971 the association was convulsed by reports that several American anthropologists had clandestinely aided a counterinsurgency campaign in Thailand. This year anthropologists are debating a number of types of scholarly cooperation with the military, including the Human Terrain System, in which social scientists are embedded within military units in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Leaders of the Human Terrain System have said that the ethnographic data collected by the program’s social scientists should generally be kept open and unclassified. In an interview with The Chronicle two weeks ago, however, the program’s deputy director, James K. Greer, said, “When a brigade plans and executes its operations, that planning and execution is, from an operational-security standpoint, classified. And so your ability to talk about it, or write an article about it, is restricted in certain ways.”

In general, however, Mr. Greer said that the program would not discourage its employees from publishing their findings in scholarly journals. “There are certainly some restrictions from the security side,” he said, “but those don’t preclude a social scientist from writing up what they did and how they did it and how it may apply to the body of knowledge for their particular profession.”

Mr. Greer and his colleagues have not responded to a request for examples of how the social scientists’ findings are incorporated into the human-terrain program’s databases.

The new anti-secrecy motion would affect not only military anthropologists. It would also cast a shadow over the burgeoning field of private-sector anthropologists who conduct ethnographic research about consumer behavior for corporate clients. Such researchers are often contractually required to keep their findings confidential. During the business meeting, the motion’s primary author, Terence Turner, a professor emeritus at Cornell University, explicitly said that the motion applies to proprietary corporate research.

At a panel on private-sector anthropology late Friday afternoon, Ken T. Anderson, a senior researcher and anthropologist at the Intel Corporation, said: “I had a bad lunch. And I’m not talking about food. I’m talking about what went on at the business meeting.” Mr. Anderson and his peers offered several reasons why they believe their work can contribute to the public fund of scholarly knowledge, even if many of their specific findings must be kept secret.

In other action at Friday’s business meeting:

• The association resolved that it “opposes any covert or overt U.S. military action against Iran, condemns any public-relations campaigns designed to convince the U.S. public to support military action against Iran, and urges President George W. Bush and members of the U.S. Congress to refrain from using any covert or overt military action, including air strikes, against the country or government of Iran.” (This resolution, unlike all others passed on Friday, was presented to the membership 30 days before the meeting, and therefore is binding. The others will be referred to the executive board.)

• The association voted to urge the U.S. Census Bureau to include a question asking about proficiency in languages other than English, and to stop using the term “linguistically isolated” to describe households where English is rarely spoken. According to the resolution, that classification “promotes an ideology of linguistic superiority that foments intolerance and conflict.”

• The association voted to establish a committee to study the rapidly rising prices of corn, wheat, and other food staples worldwide.

• The members urged that the association’s bylaws be changed so that referenda can be conducted by e-mail rather than by expensive and time-consuming paper mail ballots. (That change would itself require a vote by paper mail.) Several speakers also urged reforms that would give the annual business meeting more weight, so that fewer resolutions would be referred to the executive board. “We need to make a face-to-face deliberative body the place where democracy happens,” said Karen Brodkin, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Comments

1. Thank Goodness the anthropologists are taking a stand against an invasion, either clandestine or open, of Iran. It’s about time. This should be more widely publicized.

   — Elizabeth Sklar Hoyt    Dec 3, 05:43 AM    #

2. Wouldn’t it be nice if the anthropologists were as concerned about promoting freedom, democracy and civil society around the world? What is it about today’s scholars that they seem to side with authoritarianism and repression more than with initiatives which will expand democracy and freedom? America is still the beacon of hope to people around the world, with or without the condescending arrogance of its academics.

   — Robert Sarbane    Dec 3, 08:35 AM    #

3. What makes the AAA think that it has any special competence to advise the US government on war-making? And what makes it imagine that it has the power to “ban” secret research? Such official posturing is pointless. They have no authority to speak for anthropologists on these matters. If the AAA leaders want to influence politics instead of promote scholarship, let them resign and run for office.

   — Mike    Dec 3, 11:21 AM    #

4. I can’t tell you how depressing it is to find how much of the academic world is sold off to commercial interests. We have lost faith in bankers and brokers and accountants, now academics.

   — Paul R. Cooper    Dec 3, 11:24 AM    #

5. That assumes invasion would expand democracy and freedom, Robert – but in regions where a clear exit strategy is not possible after a clear and contained military goal, it tends to have the effect instead of increasing suspicion of our country and motives, as well as miring us in debt and misery for no benefit. We should not trade off the possibility of being a beacon of hope for the reality of being a lame duck in cases where our strategy is not well-planned nor does it have the resources available to be well carried out.

   I do however sigh at the request to remove “linguistically isolated” as a description because it has a potential pejorative connotation. Should the census then say that it is a good thing if no one in a household is capable of communicating with people in the country where its members live?

   — BtA    Dec 3, 11:39 AM    #

6. Last week it seemed that cool sensible heads were prevailing on this complex and not easily resolved issue. But apparently in the general meeting there was a great deal of galloping after principles and now the AAA is in danger of acting too big for its britches. The article says the resolution “forbidding” secret research is “not binding” because it hasnt gone to the full membership. But even if it is passed by the full membership, it wont be “binding”. If I want to work for the Office of Naval Intelligence, I will. I dont need the permission of the American Anthropological Association. And I dont need its approval to keep my tenured faculty position at a large public midwestern university. Anthropologists who work for private companies dont need the AAA’s permission. The AAA has limited power. The most it could do would be to expel a member — and Im not even sure there is provision in the constitution and by laws for that. It might pass a resolution of censure — but so what? Since AAA cant fire anbody except its own staff, its effective power is quite circumscribed. Chiefs who start to act like Kings are apt to have their followers move off and leave them. And the AAA isnt even much of a chiefdom. Its leadership is more like tribal headmen, who have almost no real power and lead by persuasion, and by setting a good example.
   —Fellow, American Anthropological Association

   — Joseph F Foster    Dec 3, 01:29 PM    #

7. What one does with their anthropology expertise is no one’s business but that person’s. How dare an organization exclude service to the United States government from a free American’s rights to work where he/she sees fit. This is beyond the pale of professional standards; it is outright sedition and fascism, and is a prosecutable denial of civil rights.

   — marci    Dec 3, 01:34 PM    #

8. I think European history has a few examples of “forbidding.” Frankly, none served humanity too well. Or is AAA merely forgetting?

   — Dag von Lubitz    Dec 5, 03:10 PM    #

9. Any application of art and science to combat this global threat is a good thing. Wake up AAA. This war has no room for spectators. Everyone will eventually be a participant, like it or not.

   — zak    Dec 12, 10:38 AM    #

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