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Sources on Academic/Professional Complicity

Here are a few books on the subject.

Universities and empire : money and politics in the social sciences during the Cold War. Edited and introduced by Christopher Simpson. New York : New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.

Academic freedom in action: an up-to-date account of the counter-insurgency activities pursued by scholars round the world under the banner of ’academic freedom’. Hoch, Paul. London, Sheed and Ward, 1970.

The Cold War & the university : toward an intellectual history of the postwar years. Noam Chomsky ... [et al.]. New York : New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co., c1997.

The Cold War and American science : the military-industrial-academic complex at MIT and Stanford. Stuart W. Leslie. New York : Columbia University Press, 1993.

Posted: November 3, 2007 1:47 am by Joshua Jackson | 0 comments
Tags: complicity, human rights, Iraq, militarism, torture, war crimes, war on terror

Anthropologists With Guns

Hey all you anthro students out there! Are you bored to death in that stifling classroom environment? Are you ready to escape from the tedious lectures of your professors and the endless course readings they assign? Sign up with Uncle Sam, grab the nearest rifle, and suit up for a real adventure in the "field" (the battlefield, that is).

That's right. As part of the Pentagon's latest counter-insurgency strategy, the War Department has been recruiting anthropologists and social scientists in the hopes of actually understanding the cultures they're trying to dominate.

Thankfully, not everyone has responded to the call, and some academics in the discipline are speaking out against this blatant manifestation of ivory-tower imperialism (see the Network of Concerned Anthropologists).

Posted: November 3, 2007 12:32 am by Joshua Jackson | 0 comments
Tags: Afghanistan, anthropology, complicity, counter-insurgency, human rights, war crimes, war on terror