During a recent speech at the Association of American Universities, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates announced a plan in the works to increase Pentagon support for social science and humanities research.  The project, which he called the “Minerva Consortia,” would develop research programs in targeted areas such as Chinese military and technology studies, Iraqi and terrorist perspectives, religious and ideological studies and new disciplines.

“The government and the Department of Defense needs to engage additional intellectual disciplines – such as history, anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary psychology,” said Gates, who argued that the U.S. understanding world traditions, motivations and languages has been a weakness of the U.S. in the Cold War and today.

During the speech, Gates assured his audience of university presidents that the Minerva Consortia will adhere to principles of openness and academic freedom. “There will be no room for ’sensitive but unclassified,’ or other such restrictions in this project.”

He also discussed current tensions between academics and the military sparked by the U.S. military’s Human Terrain System (HTS) project, the $40 million program that embeds anthropologists and other social scientists in military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. The AAA Executive Board issued a statement in late October 2007 expressing disapproval of the HTS program and citing ways in which the project violates the AAA Code of Ethics.

“It is an unfortunate reality that many people believe there is a sharp divide between academia and the military – that each continues to look on the other with a jaundiced eye,” Gates said. “These feelings – regardless of whether they are based in reality – are not good for our men and women in uniform, for our universities, or for our country.”

In an April 16 article in Inside Higher Ed, Hugh Gusterson, a professor of anthropology at George Mason University, responded skeptically to the proposed plan. He noted that researchers working abroad on Pentagon funding could be perceived as U.S. intelligence agents. Describing his difficulties in conducting research on Russian nuclear scientists in the 1990s, he stated, "I wouldn’t have even bothered if the Pentagon was funding me. It would have been pointless.”

Catherine Lutz, a professor of anthropology at Brown University, also expressed some concerns with the plan, according to the Inside Higher Ed article. “I think there is a very important role for the university in tackling the problems of contemporary life,” Lutz said. “But it is wrong to have an institution that specializes in the use of force soliciting research from universities whose job it is to question that institution at its very core.”

Related Links

Report by the Ad Hoc Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with U.S. Military and Intelligence Organizations - a November 2007 report by a special commission of the AAA on the ethical perils and opportunities of working with the military 

Minerva Consortia speech - as delivered by Robert M. Gates on April 14 at the Association of American Universities meeting