Given the HTS program, the dismissal by some of AAA’s statement concerning it (see this DoD press conference transcript on the subject: http://www.defenselink.mil/DODCMSShare/BloggerAssets/2008-05/05070811525420080507_DrMahnken_transcript.pdf) and tragic death of the of the first, and we can only hope the last, of its social scientist members (http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil/Bhatia%20News.htm), it would behoove us to wrestle a bit more deeply with the implications of a program like this.

Speaking as an anthropologist currently wrapping up a year of fieldwork with soldiers and veterans for my dissertation about the “War on Terror”; I agree anthropological voices have much to contribute here, but I feel strongly that we need not take DoD money or accept DoD agendas to do so.

Plus, given the defensive and even paranoid self protective stance so pervasive in the military and broader defense community (not to mention the Pentagon’s single mindedness which Oneman hints at), I’d guess they’ve got their own ideas about academic freedom which we might find hard to recognize.

The Pentagon’s rethinking of this should make me a lot more comfortable than it does. Ultimately, it seems to me that the Pentagon has their own goals, and it’s an organization that generally tends to achieve its goals. But I think they are savvy to the implications of another PR disaster like Camelot. The very suggestion of a wide-scale concerted investment in social science research by the military suggests the return of a Cold War style psych ops/propaganda kind of foreign policy, ostensibly with terrorism replacing Soviet communism as the evil force we’re “protecting” our client nations from. As before, intellectuals in client nations get verrrry nervous when our military starts looking too closely into their everyday cultures and “national character”.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/28/minerva