Academia Shows its Patriotism by Blackballing Colleagues who Help the Military…

Posted on October 9, 2007

Now can we question their patriotism? Liberal paranoia is alive and well, anthropologists who help the Army are being accused of bringing "spies" into academia…

WASHINGTON - A new project in which university anthropologists study tribal customs in Iraq and Afghanistan for the US military has prompted a fierce backlash among academics, some of whom accuse their colleagues of engaging in a wartime effort that violates their professional ethics.

The handful of anthropologists working with so-called human terrain teams designed to help commanders navigate the cultural thickets of both countries are being accused of "prostituting science" and presiding over the "militarization of anthropology," the study of the social practices and cultural origins of humans.

Felix Moos, who has been an anthropology professor at the University of Kansas for 47 years, is helping train the human terrain teams at nearby Fort Leavenworth. Colleagues who oppose his actions have called him a "killer for hire."

"Academia looks at me as being too close to the military," he said in recent interview in his crowded campus office, copies of the Nepali Manual of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency strewn about. "It has affected me negatively. I have been accused of introducing spies into academia."

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