There is a short piece today in the Guardian about HTS, Minerva, global counterinsurgency, etc., tied to the Michael Bhatia story. The story also reports on the recent conference hosted by the department of anthropology at the University of Chicago that Oneman attended. While the story mentions a host of characters we have seen quoted in the press before on this issue, including Fosher, Sahlins, McFate, et al, it also quotes John Kelly, who I haven’t yet seen discussing this issue in the press.
The Bush administration is just trying to buy more time, says John Kelly, chair of the University of Chicago’s high-ranked anthropology department and joint organiser of a conference on anthropology and global counterinsurgency held there last month…. The conference also dissected the Counterinsurgency Manual, a military document that became a US bestseller. The manual implies “an endless future of counterinsurgency interventions,” Kelly notes. “It contains no section on withdrawal.”
John Kelly was one of the organizers of the U Chi conference, and from what I can tell, will be the editor of the edited volume from the proceedings (which should be out by the end of the year or early next year — again, from what I can tell).
I have a lot to say about the conference, but I came back to 150 term papers and then finals, so I haven’t been able to sit down and collect my thoughts on the conference. All in all, I’d say it was very successful, a really productive meeting. Although there were military representatives there (including a recruiter for HTS who left after the first big session [out of 4]), there was a minimum of violence and upheaval.
I’ll try to post some highlights after the semester ends next week, if my brain can make sense of the notes I took.