The Minerva Consortium

[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. 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.

[marct]

Hi Steve,

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.

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".

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.

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:

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.

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.

[Rex Brynen]

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.

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

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.