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…Over 470 reports have been published online concerning the relationships between anthropology, other parts of academia, and the military and intelligence agencies since 2001. The items covered here consist of online publications of the mainstream and alternative media, documents online referred to by journalists, statements and reports from professional associations, and journal publications by some […]
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…I will be participating in the upcoming joint meeting of the Canadian Anthropology Society-Société Canadienne d’Anthropologie (CASCA) and the American Ethnological Society (AES), held this year at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, 13-16 May. For those who are interested in further discussion and debate concerning the militarization of anthropology, the role of anthropologists […]
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…In spite of the few articles that raise any kinds of questions or criticisms about the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS), such as the latest by John Stanton, and to a lesser extent the article in Nature News by Sharon Weinberger, the past month has seen a few pieces in the media that distinguish […]
Read More…What an interesting coincidence that on the same day that I report Montgomery McFate’s comment in Nature News critical of anthropological opponents of the Human Terrain System (“Why should anthropology be some leftist religion?” she asks. “I mean, it’s supposed to be a science; it’s not supposed to be a political platform, a substitute for […]
Read More…The Times Higher Education seems to be a bit behind the times, with this title for its article of 25 September, 2008: “Researchers fear Pentagon will infiltrate anthropology.” It’s not a bad article actually, written it seems primarily for people who are new to the debate. I merely take issue with the title, coming after […]
Read More…“Militarizing the Social Sciences” is a very effective overview essay written by Tom Burghardt of Antifascist Calling, and published by Global Research.ca on August 6, 2008. Burghardt covers the Minerva Research Initiative and the Human Terrain System, placing these within the context of a fairly well established tradition of coopting social sciences for national security […]
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…A new article on the Pentagon’s Minerva Research Initiative is out now, by Maria Glod in The Washington Post, Sunday, August 3, 2008, titled “Military’s Social Science Grants Raise Alarm.”
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ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY 