FW: Upcoming AAA mail ballot on uses of anthropologists

[Harriet J. Ottenheimer]

And here is the info on the 2007 PRISP program: 
http://www.diajobs.us/careers/programs/pricsp.html#program
What is not mentioned, here or in the 2004-6 pilot program page, is the 
fact that Roberts scholars must not divulge their status as Roberts 
scholars.  Thus you would not ever know which of your students are 
participants in this program.  One result of this kind of secrecy is 
that it now makes all anthropology students suspect.  As such this 
program poses significant danger to our profession and it should be 
closely watched by AAA.
--Harriet

Susan Ervin-Tripp wrote:
> We Must Fight the Militarization of Anthropology
>
> By ROBERTO J. GONZALEZ
>
> When students take introductory courses in cultural
> anthropology, they learn the techniques necessary for
> understanding daily life in peasant villages or among bands
> of hunter-gatherers. Professors teach them about the
> importance of building rapport with informants, the insights
> gained from cultural immersion, and the benefits of
> linguistic fluency - while interacting with people in the
> Amazon Basin, the Kalahari Desert, or the Australian
> outback.
>
> But students rarely learn that today a small but growing
> number of Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Department,
> and State Department officials and contractors are promoting
> militarized versions of the same techniques as key elements
> of the "war on terror." Military and intelligence agents
> seem to be particularly interested in applying academic
> knowledge to interrogation and counterinsurgency efforts in
> the Middle East and Central Asia, and at the U.S. detention
> facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
>
> Recent events have dramatically demonstrated that
> anthropological and other scholarly information is a
> potentially valuable intelligence tool. But history tells us
> that such information can easily be misused when put into
> the wrong hands. That is why we, as scholars, must make a
> continuing effort to speak out against the misappropriation
> of our work. Last summer the governing council of the
> American Psychological Association, under tremendous
> pressure from the rank and file, passed a resolution
> prohibiting members from engaging in torture or training
> others to use it - although the statement allowed members to
> assist in interrogations. In late fall, a colleague and I
> presented a resolution at the annual meeting of the American
> Anthropological Association unambiguously opposing torture
> and the use of anthropological knowledge as an element of
> torture. Those present at the business meeting unanimously
> passed the statement. Now we must find ways to promote a
> wider discussion of the issue.
>
> Early evidence of using culture as a weapon came from the
> Abu Ghraib scandal revealed in 2004. That year the
> journalist Seymour M. Hersh reported in/ The New Yorker/ on
> the brutal practices of U.S. personnel at the Iraqi prison.
> Hersh included a quote from an unnamed academic who noted
> that the anthropologist Raphael Patai's 1973 book/ The Arab/
> /Mind/ was "the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior." Hersh
> implied that Patai's depiction of "sex as a taboo vested
> with shame and repression" in Arab cultures provided U.S.
> interrogators with culturally specific material that could
> be used to recruit Iraqi informants - and, with or without
> official approval, to develop torture techniques tailor made
> for Iraqi prisoners. If true, that marked a new and
> dangerous phase in applied anthropology. (Ruth Benedict's
> classic study of Japanese national character,/ The/
> /Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture/,
> published in 1946, had helped the U.S. military - to create
> a peaceful post-World War II occupation in Japan.)
>
> Widespread concern erupted among anthropologists about how
> interrogators might use readily accessible ethnographic data
> for the abuse and torture of prisoners. Would the
> possibility lead anthropologists to censor themselves? Would
> they be recruited for interrogation or counterinsurgency
> work? Would collaboration with spy agencies or interrogation
> teams create global mistrust of scholars conducting research
> abroad? Those and many other questions arose in rapid
> succession.
>
> In some cases, the answers appeared quickly. In October
> 2005, the anthropological association, the discipline's
> largest professional organization, posted a CIA job
> announcement in several of its journals. The association
> accepted the advertisement without wide consultation of its
> members. Many anthropologists were outraged. (By this time,
> reports about the CIA's extraordinary rendition program and
> its secret prison network had appeared.) The CIA's covert
> dealings with anthropology-association officials during the
> cold war had set an ominous precedent, as had the
> involvement of social scientists in the ill-fated Project
> Camelot, a 1960s counterinsurgency-research project planned
> by the Pentagon for use in Latin America. The CIA's job
> announcement was eventually retracted, and the anthropology
> association assembled a special committee to examine the
> roles played by anthropologists in military and intelligence
> work.
>
> Other anthropologists were troubled by the findings of the
> historian Alfred W. McCoy, who has recently analyzed how
> interrogation techniques used by U.S. spy agencies have
> rapidly evolved over the last several years to incorporate
> behavioral-science research. His 2006 book,/ A Question of/
> /Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on/
> /Terror/, examines how physically brutal torture methods were
> augmented by the work of American and Canadian psychologists
> in the 1950s and 1960s. Their research, with covert
> government financing, led to the discovery that sensory
> deprivation, disorientation, and self-inflicted pain could
> more effectively (and more rapidly) break down the human
> psyche than could physical assaults.
>
> Such social scientists unwittingly paved the way for what
> McCoy calls a "distinctively American form of torture,"
> relying primarily on psychological assaults, which would be
> used extensively by the CIA and its proxies during the
> latter half of the 20th century. The techniques were
> codified in a 1963 counterintelligence manual, now
> declassified, which makes chilling reading even today.
>
> The latest developments in the science of suffering have
> provided another component to the interrogator's tool kit -
> cultural manipulation. Since 2002, U.S. interrogators have
> used Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (so-called
> Biscuit teams) of psychologists and other social scientists.
> According to McCoy, U.S. agents at Guantanamo Bay have
> created a "de facto behavioral-research laboratory" that
> goes beyond using psychological stressors by attacking
> "cultural sensitivity, particularly Arab male sensitivity to
> issues of gender and sexual identity."
>
> Last December even more news appeared regarding the use of
> social-science expertise by military and intelligence
> agencies when George Packer, a staff writer for The New
> Yorker, reported the emergence of anthropological
> counterinsurgency experts. His article profiles the
> Australian anthropologist David Kilcullen, who is under
> contract at the State Department's counterterrorism office.
> Among other things, Kilcullen is in charge of writing a new
> counterinsurgency manual. In his work, Kilcullen refers to
> counterinsurgency as "armed social work" and maps out a
> range of extremists, providing a guide for military
> personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. At times it reads like an
> anthropology fieldwork guide: "Know the people, the
> topography, economy, history, religion, and culture. Know
> every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader,
> and ancient grievance. Your task is to become the world
> expert on your district." At other times, Kilcullen's tone
> is brazenly militaristic: "Counterinsurgency is a squad and
> platoon leader's war, and often a private soldier's war.
> Battles are won or lost in moments: Whoever can bring combat
> power to bear in seconds, on a street corner, will win."
>
> Meanwhile at the Defense Department, a new office, the
> Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain, has been created
> to tap into social-science knowledge. Its director, Steve
> Fondacaro, is recruiting social scientists to join
> five-person teams in Iraq and Afghanistan as cultural
> advisers; pilot teams are scheduled to begin work in the
> spring. Fondacaro has at least one anthropologist on his
> staff.
>
> The fact that Kilcullen and others are eager to commit
> social-science knowledge to goals established by the Defense
> Department and the CIA is indicative of a new anthropology
> of insurgency. Anthropology under these circumstances
> appears as just another weapon to be used on the battlefield
> --not as a tool for building bridges between peoples, much
> less as a mirror that we might use to reflect upon the
> nature of our own society.
>
> Spurred by such revelations, Kanhong Lin, a graduate student
> at American University, and I crafted the resolution
> opposing torture and the use of anthropological knowledge as
> an element of torture that we brought to the anthropology
> association. At the group's annual business meeting, nearly
> 300 anthropologists - the largest number in years - packed the
> conference auditorium and unanimously adopted the
> resolution.
>
> The resolution is being submitted to the full membership by
> mail ballot this spring. It is important that all our
> members, particularly those who were not at the business
> meeting, know what led up to the meeting's vote. It is
> important that scholars in other fields know, as well. At
> the anthropology conference, there was widespread discussion
> of whether the earlier resolution by psychologists - who
> condemned scholarly participation in torture, but not in all
> interrogations - had gone far enough. These are issues that
> scholars need to discuss widely.
>
> Although academic resolutions are not likely to transform
> U.S. government policies, they do articulate a set of values
> and ethical concerns shared by many scholars. We who adopted
> them hope that the recent resolutions will extend and
> amplify dialogue among anthropologists - and others - around
> issues of torture, the "war on terror," and the potential
> abuse of social-science knowledge. We also hope that they
> will prompt us to directly confront - and resist - the
> militarization of the social sciences at this critical
> juncture in the history of the American academy.
>
> Roberto J. Gonzalez is an associate professor of
> anthropology at San Jose State University. He is most
> recently the editor of/ Anthropologists in the Public Sphere:/
> /Speaking Out on War, Peace, and American Power/ (University
> of Texas Press, 2004).
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