FW: Upcoming AAA mail ballot on uses of anthropologists

[Harriet J. Ottenheimer]

Important also to include a reference to PRISP (the Pat Roberts 
Intelligence Security Program) which pays students large stipends 
($25,000 yearly) to major in such subjects as anthropology and 
linguistics with a commitment to continue on into CIA training after 
graduation).  http://www.intelligence.gov/0-prisp.shtml
We in Kansas are particularly aware of this initiative as it was 
proposed and promoted by Felix Moos at the University of Kansas, in 
Lawrence, and Pat Roberts was a Senator from Kansas when the PRISP was 
initiated.  --Harriet Ottenheimer

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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