Sponsored by the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies, the Office of the Vice President of Research, the Joukowsky Institute at Brown University, and the American Anthropological Association.
Location: Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute.
The current United States annual military expenditures match those of the rest of the world combined, exceed levels during the Cold War, and absorb over 40% of current tax revenues. In 2008, the US government committed around $711 billion to its military, compared with $1.8 billion to higher education.
Federal and State resources, together with a sense of civic responsibility expressed in many University mission statements, have always attracted scholars to seek and use government funding for their work. This was especially true during the 1960s, when scholars contributed to government policies on economic development and nation-building around the world.
Current initiatives like the Minerva consortium, offering $50 million over five years for social science research, are in this tradition. Now, though, many citizens question the legality and morality of US foreign policy, as well as government priorities, and raise concerns over the ethical and intellectual implications of such collaboration. This creates quandaries for researchers.
When a postgraduate student receives Department of Defense funding to study Chinese military preparedness, is the product scholarly knowledge or military intelligence? If an untenured professor diagnoses US society as militaristic, and is then accused by students or watchdog organizations of anti-Americanism or bias, how does a tenure committee untangle politics and scholarship, with an eye to principles of academic freedom? How do universities reconcile their commitment to transparency and openness—stated in Brown’s mission statement as “the spirit of free inquiry”—with a world of restricted, classified and proprietary knowledge?
Brown University and the American Anthropological Association are among organizations seeking to navigate these quandaries. Our panelists offer institutional or individual perspectives on the Minvera controversy, issues of openness and secrecy, working with the military, and how (if at all) a new administration in Washington alters the calculus.
Introductory remarks by Keith Brown, Watson Institute
Chaired by Clyde Briant, Vice President of Research, Brown University
Confirmed Speakers:
Rob Albro, American University and CEAUSSIC
Minerva and the Challenges of Transparency and Interdisciplinarity
Norm Hebert, Office of Sponsored Projects, Brown University
The Pragmatics and Principles of External Research Funding
George Marcus, University of California Irvine and CEAUSSIC
Individualist Ethnography and the Imperative to Collaborate in the Era of Public Anthropology
David Kennedy, Interim Director, Watson Institute and Vice President of International Affairs, Brown University
Law and the Porous Boundary between the Work of War and the Work of Peace
Catherine Lutz, Brown University Department of Anthropology, co-founder of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists
On Militarization and the Construction of Citizenship
Video from this event:
Event Summary
Panel Debates Military Funding of Scholars as AAA Commission Meets at BrownA special commission of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) met at the Watson Institute this week to continue analyzing the implications of social scientists’ work with the military. A public panel on the subject, part of the two-day gathering, aired opinions on various sides of the debate. The Chronicle of Higher Education summarized the discussion by quoting Institute Professor Catherine Lutz and Interim Director David Kennedy ’76. “We’re not simply helping the state when we take military funding. We are in fact restructuring and reshaping our discipline as an accessory to various kinds of state projects,” said Lutz. Kennedy, however, urged scholars not to categorically reject collaborations with the Pentagon, noting the roles played by military personnel themselves in exposing abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison and in other recent scandals. A video of the public panel is now available here.
The panel was sponsored by the Watson Institute, the University's Office of the Vice President of Research, Brown's Joukowsky Institute, and the American Anthropological Association.