The Minerva Consortium

From Savage Minds

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Camelot Revisited: The Department of Defense’s New Plan for Academia
Posted by oneman

In a recent speech before the Association of American Universities, Defense Secretary Robert Gates described his ideas for a new military-academic partnership. The “Minerva Consortium”, as he calls his vision, would offer funding and research assistance for researchers across academia, in order to build up the military’s understanding of the world the operate in and create a pool of experts the military can draw on.

More...

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The text of SECDEF Gate's speech is here.

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Originally Posted by marct

From Savage Minds


The text of SECDEF Gate's speech is here.

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Thanks a lot--I'd gone all morning without anything pushing my blood pressure into the red zone.

Summary of the blog entry: "It would really irritate me if people doing policy relevant research had more money than I do for my irrelevant research."

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

Thanks a lot--I'd gone all morning without anything pushing my blood pressure into the red zone.

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Now Steve, you know I only posted it when the sensors mentioned that your blood pressure was dropping to unacceptably low levels :D!

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

Summary of the blog entry: "It would really irritate me if people doing policy relevant research had more money than I do for my irrelevant research."

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LOLOL - One line from the speech that really caught my attention was

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The government and the Department of Defense need to engage additional intellectual disciplines – such as history, anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary psychology.

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Evolutionary psychology? Man, perilously close to bringing biology back into Anthropology - something that is generally verbotten (see here from here). Actually, I thought the SM entry was pretty mild on the whole ;).

There are some very interesting, IM, areas in this proposed consortium including a number that I would really like to work on since they tie diretly into my own research. Then again, the likelihood that my university would join or that DoD would even consider accepting a Canadian university is prety darn low :(.

This issue is of intense interest to me. One of my institute's missions is to serve as a bridge between academia and the U.S. Army. We do this in a number of ways: 1) our own professors are active in their academic professions; 2) we co-organize conferences with universities and scholarly organizations (I'm heading for one this Sunday dealing with AFRICOM where our partner is Women in International Security); 3) we publish policy-relevant research by academics, some contracted, some gratis; 4) we have a couple of visiting professor slots (currently held by Phil Williams of Pitt and Sheila Jager of Oberlin); and, 5) we are trying to get pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships.

My sense is that certain disciplines and subdisciplines are inherently adverse to--depending on one's perspective--cooperating with the military or doing policy relevant research. Anthro seems to be the worst. Within political science, there is a lot of hostility from Middle East and Latin America specialists, some from Africanists, and less from other subfields.

Hi Steve,

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

This issue is of intense interest to me. One of my institute's missions is to serve as a bridge between academia and the U.S. Army....

My sense is that certain disciplines and subdisciplines are inherently adverse to--depending on one's perspective--cooperating with the military or doing policy relevant research. Anthro seems to be the worst. Within political science, there is a lot of hostility from Middle East and Latin America specialists, some from Africanists, and less from other subfields.

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Oh, I agree that, on the whole, there is a lot of vocal antipathy from within Anthropology to the military, especially the US military. I read Hugh Gusterson's piece in the latest Annual Review of Anthropology and was pretty peeved with his "conclusions".

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More empirically, certain subjects are urgently in need of ethnographic study.

• In war-torn countries: life alongside landmines, the role of diasporic communities in inciting war, the cultural consequences of childhood soldiering, war orphans, the new mercenary companies, suicide bombing, and insurgency, the role of religion in combat, the efficacy of truth and reconciliation commissions, and resource conflicts and war.
• Within the United States: veterans groups; the cultural dynamics of basic training; ROTC; military blogs; the debate on gays and the military; the Senate Armed Services Committee; military contractors and lobbyists; the militarization of public health since 9/11; video games; Hollywood war cultures; and activist campaigns against military recruiting,landmines,and new weapons systems.

Anthropology has much theoretical and empirical work to do to illuminate militarism, the source of so much suffering in the world today. If we sell our skills to the national security state, we will just become part of the problem.

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What truly bothered me was that this appeared, to me at least, to be the agenda of an activist and not a scientist. Now, I have nothing against people being activists, but I do have a major problem with people passing off activism as science.

In a similar manner, and again speaking personally, I have only a limited interest in public policy, but I happen to have a great interest in the perceptual and symbolic models that shape policy and in how that relates to lived reality (implementation). To me, both of these are scientific issues surrounding how humans construct, negotiate and maintain their "realities". Let me toss out the last part of Hugh's conclusion:

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Anthropology has much theoretical and empirical work to do to illuminate militarism, the source of so much suffering in the world today. If we sell our skills to the national security state, we will just become part of the problem.

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and take this a clause/meme at at time.

• Anthropology has much theoretical and empirical work to do to illuminate militarism, - Totally agree, this is a very valid statement, IMO, on an area of research.
• the source of so much suffering in the world today. - Analog of the "guns kill people" meme; unproven, except in the most obvious sense, and an irrelevant and misleading statement
• If we sell our skills to the national security state, - a) assuming a market exchange relationship, b) assuming that your[our] skills are not already being sold to other actors, c) assuming that "the State" is the sole purchesor of these skills (what about AQ?), d) assuming that "the state" exists in a specific form (i.e. "national security" with implications of X-Files-esque paranoic conspiracy theories).
• we will just become part of the problem. - analog to "if you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem" meme; unjustified assumption of reality as a series of polar oppositions; uncritical and unthinking in that by denying any relationship of X to Y a strong (negative) relationship between X and Y is created.

I think you get what I mean when I say that this agenda is that of an activist and not a scientist ;).

On t'other hand, I think that the Minerva consortium, if handled well, has the possibility of actually allowing some of the scientists inside Anthropology to get some good research done. A present, that's only a glimmering hope - we'll just have to wait and see.

I myself could see some value in an ethnographic analysis of the delusional leftist ideology that seems to dominate much of academic anthropology.

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

I myself could see some value in an ethnographic analysis of the delusional leftist ideology that seems to dominate much of academic anthropology.

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I'm just reading an LA Times article linked in one of the Inside Higher Ed comments on that very subject :D.

I'm thinking this through. If I'm going to go out and do field research among academic anthropologists for an ethnographic analysis, I'll need to fit in enough to not alarm them. I'll go for birkenstock's with socks, and a Che Guevara tee shirt. That should work.

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

I'm thinking this through. If I'm going to go out and do field research among academic anthropologists for an ethnographic analysis, I'll need to fit in enough to not alarm them. I'll go for birkenstock's with socks, and a Che Guevara tee shirt. That should work.

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Well, in California, maybe :rolleyes:. Up here in Canada, sandals and socks are fairly normal from, oh, March to December :D. If you really want to fit in in terms of clothes, don't wear a suit - toss on jeans and an old shirt w/ a sweater. Oh yeah, if you want to fit in with the real Anthropologists, etter practice up on drinking :D. If you want a friendly field run, come on up to Ottawa for CASCA next month.

So anthropologists aren't like NGO types who never wear anything except black on black on black? You can go into a packed auditorium in DC and pick out the NGO folks by that uniform.

But, in fairness, other tribes have their uniforms. Military guys in civilian clothes will have a navy blazer, khakis, and a J.C. Penny tie that is knotted about three inches too short. Cheap digital watch set to beep every fifteen minutes required. One of those green, cloth covered notebooks a plus. My own tribe--the primal wonks--is more in the Brooks Brothers or Joseph Banks suits with french cuff shirts, a fountain pen (Visconti in my case--Mont Blanc is too "look at me--I just passed the bar exam"!), and a mechanical movement Swiss watch (mine is Oris).

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

So anthropologists aren't like NGO types who never wear anything except black on black on black? You can go into a packed auditorium in DC and pick out the NGO folks by that uniform.

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Nah - just look for the worst dressed men and the women with the biggest jewelry :wry:. And what's wrong with black on black?!? I like the way I look in a tux (or riding cape for that matter; more importantly, s does my wife ;)).

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

But, in fairness, other tribes have their uniforms. Military guys in civilian clothes will have a navy blazer, khakis, and a J.C. Penny tie that is knotted about three inches too shrt. My own tribe--the primal wonks--is more in the Brooks Brothers or Joseph Banks suits with french cuff shirts.

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I used to play "guess the sub-discipline" at American Sociology Association meetings - too simple a game :D. Yeah, clothing and other forms of appearance (hair styles and length, jewelry, body stance, etc.) are all tribal markers.

Anthropological Perspectives on Clothing, Fashion, and Culture

These links should clear up any confusion between Africans in trousers, and NGOs in conferences with Anthropologists :cool:

Abstract Clothing research has attracted renewed interest in anthropology

An Anthropologist's Dress Code: Some brief comments

Steve, sounds like the military are still attending "Dress for Success" (Typical DIA classes back in the early 80s). I bought my shirts from Land's End however :D

I once wore a $1200 suit when I got called for jury duty, figuring no lawyer would want someone on the jury dressed better than they were. That cost me three days of my life.

At least, in evoking Minerva, the ancient Roman goddess of warriors and wisdom (and commerce, poetry, medicine, crafts--she was apparently a bit of a professional student), the Pentagon didn't come up with a credibility-zapping name, like the "Center for the Non-Lethal Study of Indigenous Peoples" or somesuch.

A couple of random thoughts:

ROTC, Foreign Languages, the Off-Campus Movement

I appreciated the SECDEF's comments regarding ROTC and study of foreign languages. I find it interesting that, since my own undergraduate experiences back in the 1980s, my alma mater has since eliminated its foreign language department. The university now encourages students to study abroad for a semester or two. It seems like it would be a good thing for future Army (in my case) leaders to be exposed in this way, not only for language-acquisition, but for developing cultural awarness. Too many lieutenants' first experiences with someone unlike themselves happen inside the sandbox. Better to build perspective prior to deployment.

As a personal aside, I also appreciated his comments regarding ROTC-off-campus movement. Back in the day, it was the sociology faculty that initiated such a movement on my undergraduate campus. ROTC was subsequently moved into an off-campus building, but the program there, I'm pleased to report, continues to this day. Ironically, the sociology tribe backfilled the office space that had been academically cleansed of the warrior caste.

The morale to the anecdote: As a potentially secondary effect, I'd hope that efforts such as the Minerva Consortium would help break down some walls within the ivory tower, and build some mutual understanding among those wearing tweed jackets and those wearing a uniform.

Applied vs. Basic Soft-Science

I wonder whether Minerva Consortium efforts might also result in some questionable avenues for academic research. I recently spent a couple of years on the campus of a land-grant (heavy on the engineering, design, and applied-science stuff) university, on which some architecture professors were targeting "homeland security" grant monies. Homeland security was a big pot o' gold, particularly when compared to the grant amounts typically available to the humanities.

In this citizen-soldier-taxpayer's opinion, the research proposals I encountered there passed the common-sense test only if they resulted in a deliverable product/concept applicable, in the relatively short-term, to the soldier/field/battlespace.

In short, in comes down to Ye Olde Question of applied vs. basic research. The proposed applications had better make sense, too. In terms of architecture, for example, I'm all for studies such as "how to construct or manufacture lighter and stronger blast-walls," but not so much a fan of "how to make temporary U.S. military housing feel more like home, while also making the exterior reflect the cultural context of its surroundings."

In terms of anthropology, I'm more apt to argue for a hands-on "community planning" approach--how can we support governance at a local level, for example--rather than a more purely academic approach about this sheik, his father, and his father's father.

Anyone have any king-and-grantmaker-for-a-day suggestions on how to ensure any future Minerva research funding would best be used? What metrics would be applied?

In the meantime, I'll be dusting off my senior design project--an interpretative dance about building community consensus around a village center constructed of concrete-impregnated Kevlar.

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

I once wore a $1200 suit when I got called for jury duty, figuring no lawyer would want someone on the jury dressed better than they were. That cost me three days of my life.

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Should have worn the $12,000 suit then :eek::D!

On another note, do you have any gut feeling if this new consortium/program will influence SSI at all?

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Originally Posted by marct

Should have worn the $12,000 suit then :eek::D!

On another note, do you have any gut feeling if this new consortium/program will influence SSI at all?

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My $12,000 suit was at the cleaners.

Hard to say. We're not looking for new missions but if OSD comes a callin, I'm sure we'd answer.

Hi Randy,

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Originally Posted by Randy Brown

At least, in evoking Minerva, the ancient Roman goddess of warriors and wisdom (and commerce, poetry, medicine, crafts--she was apparently a bit of a professional student), the Pentagon didn't come up with a credibility-zapping name, like the "Center for the Non-Lethal Study of Indigenous Peoples" or somesuch.

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Probably because she was the last surviving Etruscan deity in pantheon of late comers :D. But, yes, a good name choice.

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Originally Posted by Randy Brown

I appreciated the SECDEF's comments regarding ROTC and study of foreign languages. I find it interesting that, since my own undergraduate experiences back in the 1980s, my alma mater has since eliminated its foreign language department. The university now encourages students to study abroad for a semester or two. It seems like it would be a good thing for future Army (in my case) leaders to be exposed in this way, not only for language-acquisition, but for developing cultural awarness. Too many lieutenants' first experiences with someone unlike themselves happen inside the sandbox. Better to build perspective prior to deployment.

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Touch hard for me to comment on since we don't have anything like that up here. I will note that my university (Carleton in Ottawa) is actually expanding its language programs (especially Mandarin) as well as international placements. The program I teach in, Directed Interdisciplinary Studies, really pushes placements and has for decades.

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Originally Posted by Randy Brown

I wonder whether Minerva Consortium efforts might also result in some questionable avenues for academic research. ...
In terms of anthropology, I'm more apt to argue for a hands-on "community planning" approach--how can we support governance at a local level, for example--rather than a more purely academic approach about this sheik, his father, and his father's father.

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I find myself in a rather odd position here; I am primarily a theoretician who does an incredible amount of applied work. If we use the physical sciences as a model, I would think that the best avenue to take would be some fairly wide open basic research. I think that limitations to studies of governance issues or community building is a major mistake (BTW, I've studied and theorized about these issues in a variety of settings). Also, as an FYI, one of the classics in kinship studies, E.E. Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer used fieldwork that was paid for by the Colonial Office at the request of the British military.

One of the things I would like to see would be a bonus for multi- / inter-disciplinary proposals that incorporate both theoretical and applied research from many different disciplines.

I found the article disturbing based on the meetings and audience. DOD, is attempting to use a hierarchical model to reach academia and by going through the University presidents hopes to achieve some objective. Yet University presidents are basically figure heads who are seeking funds. Especially the R1 types. Oh, and don’t let me started on R1 theory theocracies where applied science is a death knell. So, if they (DOD) want to get academia involved their method is to jump past the independent researchers and grab the top people who have the least influence on the scholarship being done.

Why didn’t they invite the top researchers in the disciplines they want to see completed? It wouldn’t take a genius to roll up the names of the top researchers in specific disciplines. Oh, wait they are trying to repair the discord that exists. I can just imagine my University President going down to the gray beards in liberal arts (R1s are heavily populated by aging baby-boomers) and saying forget the 60s lets go place nice with the Army. Oooh. That might be fun to watch….

Minerva? The virgin goddess of warriors? Virgins and warriors are few and far between on our campus.

Hi Sam,

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Originally Posted by selil

I found the article disturbing based on the meetings and audience. DOD, is attempting to use a hierarchical model to reach academia and by going through the University presidents hopes to achieve some objective. Yet University presidents are basically figure heads who are seeking funds.

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Well, I suspect he already had an in with that group given that he used to be one. While university presidents may be figureheads, they do have influence on some policy decisions, especially if there are great wacks of money involved.

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Originally Posted by selil

Why didn’t they invite the top researchers in the disciplines they want to see completed? It wouldn’t take a genius to roll up the names of the top researchers in specific disciplines. Oh, wait they are trying to repair the discord that exists. I can just imagine my University President going down to the gray beards in liberal arts (R1s are heavily populated by aging baby-boomers) and saying forget the 60s lets go place nice with the Army. Oooh. That might be fun to watch….

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Yeah, I can just imagine his talking with Hugh, David and Katherine :eek:!!!!

Actually, his best bet is to establish a series of "independent researcher" funding awards for social scientists who have been marginalized in the academy (by guess who?) and for junior faculty and PhD students working in the areas.

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Originally Posted by selil

Minerva? The virgin goddess of warriors? Virgins and warriors are few and far between on our campus.

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Total misunderstanding of the root meaning of "virgin" - technically it means "unowned by a man" and she certainly was that :D.

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

Military guys in civilian clothes will have a navy blazer, khakis, and a J.C. Penny tie that is knotted about three inches too short. Cheap digital watch set to beep every fifteen minutes required. One of those green, cloth covered notebooks a plus.

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Which is exactly why I lean heavily towards board shorts, t-shirts, and Vans!

One way out of jury duty is to let them know you are in favor of the death penalty, even for misdemeanors, and carried out publicly.

Isn’t some sort of muted English tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, a silk cravat topped of with a meerschaum de rigueur for the staid, solemn scions of academe? :confused:

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Originally Posted by Umar Al-Mokhtār

Which is exactly why I lean heavily towards board shorts, t-shirts, and Vans!

One way out of jury duty is to let them know you are in favor of the death penalty, even for misdemeanors, and carried out publicly.

Isn’t some sort of muted English tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, a silk cravat topped of with a meerschaum de rigueur for the staid, solemn scions of academe? :confused:

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OK, I plead guilty to the tweed jacket (bought in Edinborough) and the meerschaum pipe. But I ain't got no cravat. I did break down and drop like $700 on academic regalia about five years ago. Have worn it exactly once. I figure I'll amortize it by getting buried in it. The upside is that no matter how fat I get, I'm not going to outgrow it.

I think there's a generational divide, though. We old fart academics wanted to look like we were one of those wrong-side-of-the-road driving English types. Hence the tweed and pipes. The younger ones want to pretend they're living in Berkeley during the Summer of Love.

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Originally Posted by marct

I find myself in a rather odd position here; I am primarily a theoretician who does an incredible amount of applied work. If we use the physical sciences as a model, I would think that the best avenue to take would be some fairly wide open basic research. I think that limitations to studies of governance issues or community building is a major mistake ...

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My apologies! My example of "community planning" was a ham-handed attempt to juxtapose an example of a concrete/applied something with a presumedly more abstract something-else. On the civilian side, my graduate work was an interdisciplinary mix between Community and Regional Planning (CRP) and Architecture--the applications of cultural landscape (political, geographic, historical, economic) to nuts-and-bolts problems like designing a structure, organizing citizens, or writing a municipal code. I hope that helps explain where I was coming from--and where I was trying to go.

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Originally Posted by marct

One of the things I would like to see would be a bonus for multi- / inter-disciplinary proposals that incorporate both theoretical and applied research from many different disciplines.

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I realize this isn't want you meant by "bonusing," but your comment caused me to wonder about the possibilities inherent in a Nobel Prize or X-Prize incentive. Would an annual Minerva Prize have any merit? (A virgin-warrior statue of some sort would seem to be the most likely physical presentation ...)

Also, I'm loathe to suggest a Minerva Journal, but wouldn't it also follow that the consortium would create/encourage opportunities for peer-reviewed publication?

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

My sense is that certain disciplines and subdisciplines are inherently adverse to--depending on one's perspective--cooperating with the military or doing policy relevant research. Anthro seems to be the worst. Within political science, there is a lot of hostility from Middle East and Latin America specialists, some from Africanists, and less from other subfields.

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warning: I'm about to get on a hobby-horse here :wry:

This is assuming, of course, that academics know how to do policy-relevant research. My sense is that most--including most political scientists--don't, for a variety of reasons, ranging from writing style to the lack of an instinctual understanding (or practical experience) of how policy processes happen, and how they can be affected.

On the flip side, I think there are an awful lot of people on the policy and intel side who aren't very good at utilizing the resources of the academic community.

As for ME specialists, you're right that there has been enormous reticence to engage with the policy community, in part for the usual ivory tower reasons, and in part because of strong distaste for US policy in the region. I do think that has changed a lot since 9/11, however--certainly some of the very brightest colleagues that I know in the field have regular interactions with the policy community. Indeed, it seems these days that I see them more at policy workshops than I do in regular academic settings.

On, and just for the record. I don't own a suit--I almost always wear black-on-black. :D

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Originally Posted by Umar Al-Mokhtār

Which is exactly why I lean heavily towards board shorts, t-shirts, and Vans!

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Blue Jeans, shirts with computer logo's on them, and Teva's.

Once criticized by a senior faculty member for not wearing a tie I pointed out an AS400 and said pick that up. He didn't want to get dirty of course. So I told him you can't teach in my lab then. He agreed and told others to leave me alone. I thought because he agreed. Awhile back he said the reason he supported me was he thought anybody who could possibly pick up an AS400 was to scary to argue with.

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Originally Posted by SteveMetz

Thanks a lot--I'd gone all morning without anything pushing my blood pressure into the red zone.

Summary of the blog entry: "It would really irritate me if people doing policy relevant research had more money than I do for my irrelevant research."

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You got to thinking about Stephen Garcia and how the Cocks' chances of winning more than 6 games this season went down the tubes with his latest fiasco in 5 points or was it that you were watching a rerun of the UF game last year and noticed Spurrier checking what time it was in the 3rd quarter on National TV...:p

Just kidding...

Hi Randy,

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Originally Posted by Randy Brown

My apologies! My example of "community planning" was a ham-handed attempt to juxtapose an example of a concrete/applied something with a presumedly more abstract something-else. On the civilian side, my graduate work was an interdisciplinary mix between Community and Regional Planning (CRP) and Architecture--the applications of cultural landscape (political, geographic, historical, economic) to nuts-and-bolts problems like designing a structure, organizing citizens, or writing a municipal code. I hope that helps explain where I was coming from--and where I was trying to go.

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Totally, and no worries ;). I'm afraid that I tend to react badly when I see "applied only" requirements :wry:. One of the reasons why the gov't support model worked so well in the physical sciences was because it supported basic, theoretical research which, in turn, opened up a whole slew of new applied area. I really think that this should be a similar initiative, although it is much harder to quantify.

[quote=Randy Brown;45347]I realize this isn't want you meant by "bonusing," but your comment caused me to wonder about the possibilities inherent in a Nobel Prize or X-Prize incentive. Would an annual Minerva Prize have any merit? (A virgin-warrior statue of some sort would seem to be the most likely physical presentation ...)

Hmmm, might not be a bad idea, but I imagine that there would be a lot of resistance inside the academy for it. Maybe the way to go would be something along the lines of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies crossed with the Esalin Institute.

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Originally Posted by Randy Brown

Also, I'm loathe to suggest a Minerva Journal, but wouldn't it also follow that the consortium would create/encourage opportunities for peer-reviewed publication?

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Peer review publication is a real problem in the social sciences, and it's one of the reasons why the disciplines are fragmenting. One of the fairly standard tactics is for a cluster of people to start their own journal, cite each other and build up their cv's that way - basically creating a splinter discipline and using that to get tenure track positions. This has some implications for setting up a peer review process....

For example, who is doing the peer reviewing? What is a "peer"? Given the fragmented nature of most of the social science disciplines, how do you handle the radically divergent theoretical assumptions that would show up in articles? (That, BTW, is another reason to support basic theory research...).

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Originally Posted by Rex Brynen

warning: I'm about to get on a hobby-horse here :wry:

This is assuming, of course, that academics know how to do policy-relevant research. My sense is that most--including most political scientists--don't, for a variety of reasons, ranging from writing style to the lack of an instinctual understanding (or practical experience) of how policy processes happen, and how they can be affected.

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Really good point, Rex. I've done some, looking at immigration and integration issues in Canada, and I can certainly agree with you that it is tricky. I suspect part of it comes from a very simple misunderstanding of what should be in the deliverables and what end states are desired.

I don't know Marc,

I've thought a few times about starting a journal of interdisciplinary studies. No two authors can be from the same "discipline" within the University system on a paper. I don't like silo's.

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Originally Posted by selil

I don't know Marc,

I've thought a few times about starting a journal of interdisciplinary studies. No two authors can be from the same "discipline" within the University system on a paper. I don't like silo's.

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We've been looking at starting one at Carleton out of our Institute (pure E-journal). The plans are actually fairly advanced, but have been held up by a bunch of unrelated administrative problems (like getting a new Director!). I'll let you know what happens once I talk with the new Director but, if your interested, I think you would be a great person for the Ed Board :D.

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Originally Posted by marct

We've been looking at starting one at Carleton out of our Institute (pure E-journal). The plans are actually fairly advanced, but have been held up by a bunch of unrelated administrative problems (like getting a new Director!). I'll let you know what happens once I talk with the new Director but, if your interested, I think you would be a great person for the Ed Board :D.

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I'd like that. I think in many ways we've forgotten about holistic research.

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Originally Posted by selil

I'd like that. I think in many ways we've forgotten about holistic research.

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Will do - and I agree, holistic research has been structurally mitigated against :wry:. Most universities pay a lot of lip service to inter-disciplinarity, but they usually fail to come through in terms of hirings, tenure and promotions. It's also usually fairly hard to get published in top tier journals as well, which is often a tenure requirement, if you try and transcend the core of a single discipline.

Sharon Weinberger at Wired.com's "Danger Room" has just posted a link excerpting an open letter by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, responding to SECDEF's Minerva Consortium proposal.

Personally, I find most of the concerns reasonable, if a little breathlessly stated. I take exception to one, however, which fails to come to terms with its own philosophical underpinnings: "The University becomes an instrument rather than a critic of war-making, and spaces for critical discussion of militarism within the university shrink."

The apparent assumption being that the academy is ideally and inherently a might-is-never-right enterprise, rather than an environment in which the lessons of history (or any other discipline) may be fairly explored--and perhaps even applied.

In other words, the role of the university should be to apply criticism to all comers, rather than just "war-making," as the organization so inelegantly calls it. At least, thus sez this citizen-soldier-scholar-brewer-patriot ...

See "Pentagon's Project Minerva Sparks New Anthro Concerns" at:http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/0...erva.html#more

From Savage Minds

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AAA issues statement on Minerva
Posted by Strong under AAA , Anthropology at war


Below I append a statement issued today by AAA President Setha Low in response to the defense department’s Project Minerva. AAA is making the rather clever suggestion that projects funded through Minerva be subjected to peer review through established federal channels and agencies, such as NSF, NEH, and NIH. Low writes: “Lacking the kind of of infrastructure for evaluating anthropological research that one finds at these other agencies, we are concerned that the Department of Defense would turn for assistance in developing a selection process to those who are not intimately familiar with the rigorous standards of our discipline.” This statement in particular appears to voice one worry or criticism that many have articulated about the ‘culturing-up’ of the US security apparatus: that it is being done in a shoddy way. It further raises the issue of formal procedures concerning ethical oversight, since, presumably, NSF, NEH, and NIH all require strict adherence to common rule guidelines. (Though we know that DoD also requires this.)

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Full text of the letter at SM and at the AAAs site.

Offered here for the good of the cause, Sharon Weinberger at Wired's "Danger Room" updates her Minverva Consortium coverage with news that a Broad Agency Announcement has been released, detailing:

A. What types of proposals could be funded:
(1) Chinese Military and Technology Research and Archive Programs
(2) Studies of the Strategic Impact of Religious and Cultural Changes within the Islamic World
(3) Iraqi Perspectives Project
(4) Studies of Terrorist Organization and Ideologies
(5) New Approaches to Understanding Dimensions of National Security, Conflict, and Cooperation

B. Available funding levels under the program (total funding $50 million U.S., with typical awards anticipated to range from $1 million to $1.5 million per year).

C. The who-and-how of white-paper review.

Enjoy!

Hi Randy,

I downloaded and read the BAA in all of its bureaucratic glory :wry:. I'm still bothered by the way that #2 reads; I think it should be more general, along the lines of "Studies of the Strategic Impact of Religious and Cultural Changes" anywhere - period. Restricting it to "the Islamic World" is, IMO, both futile and, at the same time, needlessly limiting.

What bothers me about it most of all is that it is a needless limitation. I was chatting about the area with the guy who owns my local corner store (nice guy, from Ethiopia originally). One of the points that came out is that religious (in the broad, Geertzian sense) fanaticism appears in every religion and ideology. This implies that it is a human universal; IMO related to how humans process symbol systems and concommitant changes in brain neurology. This is what we should be studying, not some artifially limited group.

Marc

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Originally Posted by marct

... religious (in the broad, Geertzian sense) fanaticism appears in every religion and ideology. This implies that it is a human universal; IMO related to how humans process symbol systems and concommitant changes in brain neurology.

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You mean biology has an impact on society and culture? :eek:

Has anyone told the people at Savage Minds?

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Originally Posted by J Wolfsberger

You mean biology has an impact on society and culture? :eek:

Has anyone told the people at Savage Minds?

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Oh, I suspect they know that deep down ;). After all, someone had to know something to concoct the PC koolaid :D.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by marct

Oh, I suspect they know that deep down ;). After all, someone had to know something to concoct the PC koolaid :D.

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I wouldn't be so sure. Even a blind pig finds an acorn occasionally. :wry:

Another link regarding Minerva Consortium by way of Wired's Danger Room blog. This news article is from the NYT, and discusses both the Minerva effort and a separate (?) forthcoming group of grants from the National Science Foundation.

Don't want y'all to think I'm single-sourcing, what with my repeated links to Wired, but I'm down in the bunker this week, and my information collection capabilities are less than optimal. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm currently concerned less about Small Wars, and more about Big Waters ...

FYI, Marct, I'm still noodling on the question of how to incentivize decidedly smaller academic, professional, for- and/or non-profit reading, writing and research. I'll let you know if and when I come up with the proverbial million dollar idea. Cheers until then!

Hi Randy,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Randy Brown

FYI, Marct, I'm still noodling on the question of how to incentivize decidedly smaller academic, professional, for- and/or non-profit reading, writing and research. I'll let you know if and when I come up with the proverbial million dollar idea. Cheers until then!

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No worries - I'm still thinking about it too :D. Anyway, I hope the flooding hasn't driven you out of your home (driven to drink being a completely different matter ;)).

Marc

On the Floods of 2008: No worries here on the personal front, as my family is holding the high ground. Still, thoughts, prayers and donations to the American Red Cross and other relief agencies are, no doubt, always appreciated.

On ways to incentivize (bad, business-jargony word, but the only one at hand) research, I'm still liking the X-Prize kind of model. Once again, Wired.com's Sharon Weinburger is apparently monitoring my brain waves, given her article on "More Prizes for Homeland Security Ideas", in which she states:

Quote:

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It's interesting to watch the proliferation of "prizes" in national security, seen in these cases, as well as in DARPA's Grand Challenge. It's become apparently an effective way to generate widespread interest, leverage private sector funding and generate publicity.

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I don't know whether I've stated it clearly in past conversations, but my interest in this area relates to the generation of lessons-learned (in a small-wars context, 'natch). I figure that if Family Handyman or Better Homes and Gardens (full-disclosure, I'm the former editor of a couple of Better Homes-brand special-interest publications) will give you a couple of bucks for household hints, there might be a similar model for soliciting lessons-learned.

Something for future talk, or perhaps eventually a separate thread ...

Gates, to his credit, is much more interested than Rumsfeld was in mobilizing the human sciences in the “war on terror.”

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... But the tragedy of his initiative is that the very thing that makes it so appealing—at last, the Pentagon is seeking expert input from the academy—could also doom it to failure.

If American policymakers get the answers to these questions wrong, the people in the region will surely suffer, and more Americans will die unnecessarily—be it in more Middle Eastern wars, in future 9/11s, or both.

“So what?” you might ask. Isn’t that their problem? Graham Spanier, the president of Pennsylvania State University and a Minerva booster, recently told the New York Times that scholars who oppose Pentagon funding simply “shouldn’t apply.” This glib sentiment has an obvious appeal, but U.S. policymakers would be well advised to think hard before taking Spanier’s advice.

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Much more at Foreign Policy...

You know, a lot of what Hugh writes in that FP piece is correct: the people applying will be self-selecting and that will cause a bias in the research results. Personally, I think that some of that bias may be worked around since the BAA for Minerva specifically states that a) they want people at non-American institutions applying and that b) they are interested in basic research. We will have to see how it plays out in reality, but I think that the agreement between the Pentagon and the NSF may help on the next round of funding.

Here it is on DefenseLink. Titles of the topics that won do not seem too impressive to me at least.

--The Evolving Relationship Between Technology and National Security in China: Innovation, Defense Transformation, and China’s Place in the Global Technology Order
--Finding Allies for the War of Words: Mapping the Diffusion and Influence of Counter-Radical Muslim Discourse
--Iraq’s Wars with the US from the Iraqi Perspective: State Security, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Civil-Military Relations, Ethnic Conflict and Political Communication in Baathist Iraq
--Terrorism Governance and Development
--Emotion and Intergroup Relations
--Climate Change, State Stability, and Political Risk in Africa
--ECIR - Explorations in Cyber International Relations