May 12, 2008

New Details of 'Minerva' Project Emerge, as Social Scientists Weigh Pentagon Ties

The Department of Defense hopes to finance the earliest projects in the fledgling social-science program known as the Minerva Consortium by the end of 2008, a Pentagon official told a group of writers last week.

In a roundtable discussion with military-oriented bloggers, Thomas G. Mahnken, deputy assistant secretary for policy planning, offered only sketchy details about the program, which was announced last month in a speech by Robert M. Gates, the secretary of defense. The program will offer grants to groups of universities to investigate topics including “religious and ideological studies” and the Chinese military.

During last week’s roundtable, Mr. Mahnken said the program’s budget would be relatively modest: “millions of dollars,” but not tens of millions.

Asked why the Pentagon was turning to civilian universities for the projects, rather than working with its own research centers and think tanks, Mr. Mahnken said that the government ought to be able to draw on university expertise in the social sciences, just as it does in physics and engineering.

Mr. Mahnken acknowledged that some social scientists had greeted the program with skepticism, but said that the university presidents he had contacted were enthusiastic. “Many of these folks are people for whom this is uncontroversial,” he said. “I mean, they come from the physical sciences, they come from engineering, and government funding is part of the way they do business.”

Among the most visible skeptics are scholars in the informal group known as the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, which issued a statement last month criticizing the Minerva proposal. That statement is part of a broader debate about relations between anthropologists and the military, much of which has centered on the Pentagon’s Human Terrain System.

At last year’s annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, its members passed a resolution that supported a ban on secrecy in ethnographic research. The association’s president, Setha M. Low, said in an interview last week that the group’s ethics committee and executive board were crafting language for the ban. Depending on how it is worded, the new rule might effectively forbid the association’s members to take part in the Human Terrain program and certain other military projects. (In a separate controversy, the ban might also forbid much of the work that private-sector anthropologists do for corporate clients.)

Ms. Low, a professor of environmental psychology at the City University of New York, said that she hoped to release a draft rule by September 15 that would be debated at the association’s annual meeting two months later. The rule will be put before the group’s members in an e-mail ballot before it is made final. —David Glenn

Comments

1. Regardless of the outcome of the vote or the wording of the resolution, the American Anthropological Association does not have the authority or legal power to “forbid” its members from doing anything not on its own premises or at its own meetings.

   — Joseph F Foster    May 12, 03:49 PM    #

2. So, should anthropologists only work on left-wing causes like terrorists groups?
   Should those anthropologists spend more time trying to get rid of DOD contracts that their colleagues and friends are working on?
   for example
   Setha M. Lo’s employer City University of New York, get from DOD NAVY, Department of the $83,612
   ARMY, Department of the (except Corps of Engineers Civil Program Financing) $60,00
   from http://www.fedspending.org/fpds/index.php?reptype=a

   And GMU get ARMY, Department of the (except Corps of Engineers Civil Program Financing) $3,873,439
   NAVY, Department of the $1,686,094
   Defense Threat Reduction Agency $1,024,999

   Please don’t tell me it is not relevant.

   — Mike    May 12, 04:12 PM    #

3. Surely professional organizations have a right to weigh in on ethical concerns about research affecting human beings. If any administration has earned suspicion for its obsession with secrecy and questionable ethics in conjunction with the control of foreign populations, this is it, yet the early reactions printed here have a defensive, “how dare they” tone. More troubling, yet typical in this age, is the observation about university presidents being ‘enthusiastic’ about this kind of thing. Kind of wonder if there’s any funded research they would NOT support.

   — Midwest Prof    May 12, 06:13 PM    #

4. Yes Prof. Midwest (#3), professional societies “have a right to weigh in…”. But the AAA’s weight is rather light. It does not issue licenses to its members nor anyone else and it has no authority to enjoin its members from working for Human Terrain, or the Office of Naval Intelligence, or anybody else they may decide to work for. It is hardly “defensive” to point that out, but a mere clarification of fact. The original posting said that “the new rule might effectively forbid the association’s members to take part in the Human Terrain program and certain other military projects. …” I pointed out that it will not do any such thing because the American Anthropological Association cannot “forbid” us from doing anything. Though I belong to the AAA (and have for nearly 40 years), I am not its property, it does not pay my salary, and I do not need its permission to work for the ONI if I want to. They can “weigh in” on whatever they want to and anthropologists can work for whomever they want to.

   — Joseph F Foster    May 12, 11:21 PM    #

5. We were put on notice, with these simple words: “…Beware of… unwarranted influence from the Military Industrial Complex…” Guess nobody was listening…
   President: Dwight D. Eisenhower
   David Worth
   Berkeley

   — David Worth    May 13, 09:39 AM    #

6. They could, I suppose, opt to deny membership to those who violate the ban.

   — a different Dan    May 13, 09:46 AM    #

7. And the Fulbright U.S. Student Program come out of the State Department, with a longstanding mandate to create cadres of young individuals who have finely tuned sensibilities about other cultures. All this with a mind to improving our relations with other countries and lessening the “tragic” misunderstandings that start conflicts. [Remember: the program began in 1946.] Pretty subversive stuff…

   — Pat Taylor    May 13, 09:58 AM    #

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