Your comment leads me to highlight a second important issue: It is not clear if HTS “anthropologists” are US military personnel, or if they are US military contractors. Though this legal question is not completely clear, we certainly must not confuse critique or even condemnation of the HTS program (and critiques of individual HTS workers) with a condemnation of those who wear US uniforms AS US SERVICE MEN AND WOMEN. HTS workers seem to be civilians trained in anthropology or other social sciences who have freely chosen to enter a war zone for what must be substantial profit. They are qualified for these jobs because they are anthropologists, and we, their anthropological colleagues are qualified to critique them. One need not point out that a PhD in anthropology can only be earned in “the ivory tower,” if that’s what university anthropology departments are called now.

Clearly, HTS may involve substantial outside consultancy (or is McFate directly employed by the US govt?) and contract work (as HTS employees are apparently now recruited through BAE). The HTS “anthropologists” are not, and do not become, AS FAR AS WE CAN TELL, US service people. They remain distinct from the Army and Navy trained linguists, those trained through the US government intelligence community, etc. Again, the legal dynamics of these employment schemes are unclear. They are frequently compared to “embedded journalists,” yet the parallel is flawed. As far as I know, embedded journalists are not paid by the US govt (or subcontractors). Some transparency about the details of HTS worker employment might shed some light on the ethical issues at stake for anthropologists.

Anthropologists as military contractors would occupy a strange legal position, raising questions about employee rights and intellectual property. Are they serving in the military? Are they civilians? If wounded in the line of work are they eligible for vetrans’ benefits? Worker’s comp? Who can Dr. Griffin’s siblings sue were he to be killed in the line of research?

Is HTS workers’ research subject to IRB approval? Is it proprietary research, the results of which are the intellectual property of their employer, or can they publish? If they publish, will the decision of what results to publish be theirs alone, or will they be approved by the for-profit military contract agency they work for? The US military?

Why don’t you try again – this time, read the words and try to understand the intention behind them without seeing them through the lens of your opposition to the war in Iraq.

Just another little exercise in objectivity. Care to get a bit sweaty?

I’m just glad Jonathan Marks has chosen to say something about military anthropologists, and has chosen to respond to the remarks. We need to hear more from him and people like him!
Anne Gilbert

The geneticists finally got their project in 2005, but privately funded, and called The Genographic Project. They are now advertising that for $50k they will fly you on a private jet and analyze your DNA while you actually get to see poor people first-hand, whose DNA is already incorporated into their narrative of human migrations. I call this “hemo-tourism”.

Chimpanzees kill adults and infants, but only eat the infants. Go figure.

On principal, I am not convinced by grand proclamations like “Anthropological involvement with the military is always unethical.” But when you marshal verifiable facts about a particular instance into a coherent argument, my ears are open. And what you have written here has almost convinced me that HTS just might be bad news.

Sadly, Jon Marks won’t read this comment. On principal, since it’s written under a pseudonym. Maybe others can relay to Mr. Marks my gratitude. For myself, I believe that some conversations cannot be truly open without anonymity. And this is a conversation that needs to be open.