Public Engagement

Should anthropologists work with the military, the CIA, and other national security agencies? Last Tuesday's on-line Chronicle of Higher Education had an article on this vexing topic, which is of considerable pertinence to public engagement by university researchers in the social sciences. Entitled "Anthropologists Discuss Where to Draw Ethical Lines in Dealing With National-Security Agencies" and written by David Glenn, it describes a panel discussion of the Ad Hoc Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology With the U.S. Security and Intelligence Communities , a temporary committee of the American Anthropological Association. Some of the points that were raised:

• Damage may occur to the reputations of scholars and the discipline as a whole.
• All anthropologists might come under suspicion if some were known to be employees of national-security agencies
• All scholars doing fieldwork in certain countries might find it more difficult to develop relationships with people who provide cultural information.
• All scholars doing fieldwork might all be at higher risk of being arrested for espionage.
• National-security agencies need the expertise of anthropologists on "cultural complexity".
• Working for the military may be troublesome, but not using scholarly expertise to defend against terrorists may be worse.
• Such arrangements are often secret from colleagues, violating scholarly norms of openness and free flow of information.
• Professional credibility can be damaged when others make inappropriate use of scholarly findings.
• Avoiding interactions with the issues raised by national-security concerns may lead to the anthropology association becoming "ethically pure but intellectually impoverished."
• If anthropologists avoid working with national-security agencies, others—perhaps less qualified—may take their place.
• How is working for national-security intelligence organizations different from other kinds of "applied anthropology" in which corporations or government agencies expect control over dissemination of results?

There are important modern instances of academics being forced to deal with ethical dilemmas brought about by a confrontation between their scholarly skills and the demands of the broader society: e.g., the Manhattan Project, the Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA technology, and restrictions on foreign students being able to work on defense-related projects. The dilemmas faced by anthropologists (and other social scientists) are significant additions to this list.