ISSN 2562-9948
Worshipping Minerva Today, March 19, marks the start of what for the Romans was the Festival of Minerva, based on a cult of worship of a goddess of “wisdom” and “war.” It is also the 10th anniversary of the start of the U.S. war against the people of Iraq, and, as many will forget, the […]
Read More…Here is a medley of updates concerning previous posts on this blog: Concerning Montgomery McFate’s doctoral dissertation: Montgomery McFate’s PhD dissertation (when she was Montgomery Cybele Carlough) has been digitized in its entirety and is available for download by persons using libraries with subscriptions to ProQuest. What follows are some of the significant details about […]
Read More…(This post comes thanks to some leads on the James Petras website and Petras’ own essay on the Minerva Research Initiative, “Procuring Academics for Empire: The Pentagon Minerva Research Initiative“.) In late December of 2008 I posted about the news of the first recipients of the Pentagon’s Minerva Research Initiative, but until I saw the […]
Read More…One Canadian Response As part of a broader framework of Canadian responses to the militarization of anthropology, and in particular the potential for American influence in this respect on Canadian anthropology, I am pleased to announce that the subject occupies several pages of the current issue of Culture, the newsletter of the Canadian Anthropology Society […]
Read More…Thanks to David Glenn at the Chronicle of Higher Education (“Pentagon Announces First Grants in Disputed Social-Science Program,” 23 December 2008), I learned of today’s announcement from the Pentagon of the first seven awards to be made to social science projects that applied under the Minerva Research Initiative. The Pentagon also announced that it had […]
Read More…The time has come for academic professional associations, funding agencies, and universities to oppose the violation of international law and Iraqi sovereignty by the Pentagon’s Minerva Research Initiative. Both on this blog (here and here), and The Chronicle of Higher Education, we explored the ethical violations represented by the call to applicants for Pentagon social […]
Read More…First, a video. On 27 August 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense hosted a workshop about the Minerva Research Initiative. Among the speakers was Craig Calhoun, president of the Social Science Research Council, cheerfully calling for enhanced and widened collaboration between academia and the military. Thomas Mahnken of the Pentagon is also presented as he […]
Read More…The U.S. Social Science Research Council has launched a series of articles in a special section of its website devoted to what it calls the Minerva Controversy. Among them is Hugh Gusterson’s “Unveiling Minerva.” This is a list of some of the key points he makes in his article: (1) Gusterson persuasively likens Pentagon funding […]
Read More…Hugh Gusterson has a new article out titled, “Project Minerva Revisited,” in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for August 5, 2008 — well worth reading carefully, since it contradicts and corrects some of the ways that the agreement between the National Science Foundation and the Pentagon have been presented to the public. It is […]
Read More…In the Washington Post article for which I was interviewed (I am the “but”, appropriately at the end), there was a suggestion that a project critical of U.S. foreign policy should be submitted to test the openness of the Minerva Research Initiative and its Pentagon-funded counterpart at the National Science Foundation. I do not recall […]
Read More…Concerning the post titled A SPY IN OUR MIDST, both the discussion has continued on this blog, with more blogs joining in and picking up on the Mother Jones story. See: If I Ran the Zoo‘s, “Small World, but not in a Disney Kind of Way.” See also Dylan Kerrigan’s “Anthropology and the Military” on […]
Read More…Thanks to David Glenn of The Chronicle of Higher Education for writing to indicate that what some hoped for would be leeway in undertaking funded research free of constraints and conditions imposed by the Department of Defense, has been significantly minimized. As David Glenn explained, the National Science Foundation released its Minerva-related solicitation on Wednesday, […]
Read More…This struck me the first time that I read the Department of Defense’s “Broad Agency Announcement,” soliciting project proposals for the new Minerva Research Initiative. One of the areas of research for which applications are invited is titled the “Iraqi Perspectives Project.” Part of the description of the background of this research field reads as […]
Read More…David Glenn, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 30, 2008 Minerva Takes Flesh: Pentagon and Science Foundation Sign Social-Science Deal In a memorandum of understanding that was signed today, the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation agreed to work cooperatively to support social-science research on topics of interest to the Pentagon. As widely expected, […]
Read More…For this post I am once more referring to the contents of this document, just released by the U.S. Department of Defense, soliciting proposals for grants under the Minerva Research Initiative (MRI). The following is a series of topics of concern raised by this document. HOW TO MAKE IMPERIAL RESEARCH INSIDIOUS: On page 2 we […]
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ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY 