How Anthro Won the War

Franz Boas, founder of American anthropology at Columbia, was censured in 1919 by the American Anthropological Association for condemning anthropological involvement in wartime intelligence-a rebuke that was only lifted in 2005.

Times changed in the interim.

"I don't see a way in which a researcher at a university-someone who is committed to teaching students and conducting detailed, careful, and committed work-can walk a line or produce a line which can be walked between research and the supply of information to the CIA," Columbia anthropology professor Neni Panourgia said.

With the U.S. government's continuing involvement in the Middle East, decades-old debates over whether anthropologists should help the government understand its enemy have resurfaced across the country and at Columbia.

Past Columbia anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict-Boas' most famous disciples-helped gather intelligence during World War II.

"For 100 years anthropology has been trying to get across the message that you've got to understand culture or context if you're going to understand a given event," said commission chairman and University of North Carolina professor James Peacock. "If an anthropologist doesn't help them then they try to do the best they can."

Today, many anthropologists argue that government collaboration unethical because their scholarly work could be used as a tool to kill people. In a 2005 issue of Military Review, anthropologist Montgomery McFate wondered whether it was ethical to refuse to help when possibly unreliable cultural data will still be used to make policy. The Abu Ghraib torture methods were derived from an ethnography written in 1973, McFate noted.

SIPA professor Richard Betts, Director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, has consulted for the CIA in the past. He agreed with McFate's assessment.

"It's better for policy makers to be informed than to be ignorant in deciding what to do about a particular situation," Betts said, adding that anthropologists must be aware that they are doing research relevant to policy.

AAA, the discipline's largest professional organization, formed an Ad Hoc Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology in August.

"Today, most people would be wary of working for, accepting money from or scholarships from the military or intelligence communities," Peacock said.

The AAA commission was primarily a reaction to CIA advertisements being submitted to its publications. The Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, which started offering graduate study stipends in return for 18 months of government service in 2005, was also a catalyst. The commission's eight members include two anthropologists who have done intelligence work and other members who oppose it.

PRISP participants are allowed to choose whether or not to disclose their status, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported in 2005.

Asked via e-mail of any known PRISP participants at Columbia, anthropology department chair Brinkley Messick replied, "This is the first I have heard of this."