Washington — After a year and a half of deliberation, a special committee of the American Anthropological Association released a 62-page report on Wednesday that analyzes the potential ethical pitfalls that confront anthropologists who work with military, intelligence, and national-security agencies.
The report does not propose any blanket bans on scholarly engagement with defense organizations. Instead, it sketches out principles that the committee members believe should guide such work.
“We have essentially two principles that are very important in doing anthropology,” said the committee’s chair, James L. Peacock, a professor of anthropology and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, during a news conference. “One of them is do not harm. Do no harm to those with whom one works or whom one studies. Secondly, be honest and be transparent. Say what you’re doing to all concerned. That means the people you’re working with, the people you’re studying, your colleagues, and the public.”
The committee’s report was released as the anthropological association opened its annual conference here. On Wednesday afternoon the association’s executive board formally received the report, but the board has not yet endorsed it.
The report urges the association to:
Revise its code of ethics to discourage scholars from accepting jobs or assignments that require secrecy as a condition of funds, or that require that final work products be kept secret.
Change the ethics code to emphasize the problem of gaining informed consent in “settings in which it may be compromised, undermined, or rendered impossible to obtain.”
Offer counseling and advice to scholars who are considering work with military, intelligence, or other security agencies.
Create a subcommittee to review job-recruitment advertisements that military, intelligence, and national-security agencies wish to place in the association’s newsletter. The report does not suggest banning such ads, but says that in some cases the ads should contain a notice that urges potential applicants to consult with the association’s ethics committee.
Encourage civil discussion within the organization about these issues. “It is unacceptable,” the report reads, “to demonize people who have chosen career paths in the national-security community, simply because of their political viewpoints, choice of employer, or other affiliation.
The special committee was created two years ago amid a debate over whether the association should accept job advertisements from military and intelligence agencies. During the past six years, such agencies have sought out scholars with specialized knowledge about Afghanistan, Iraq, and other war zones. They have also asked social scientists for insights about how to manage social conflict and public opinion. (In a speech this week, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates praised anthropologists’ work with the military. In the new era, he said, military success “will be less a matter of imposing one’s will and more a function of shaping behavior — of friends, adversaries, and most importantly, the people in between.”)
In the eyes of skeptics, the Pentagon’s newfound interest in social science is broadly pernicious. Anthropologists should not help the military pacify — and, in some cases, kill — local populations, the critics argue. Other scholars, however, insist that anthropological insights can help reduce needless violence in war zones. Recently, that debate has fixated on a program known as the Human Terrain System, in which social scientists embed within military units in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In an interview on Wednesday, several members of the committee said they hoped to tone down that debate and to introduce more complexity. “Our goal is to shift the conversation to a more nuanced level,” said Robert Albro, who teaches international communication at American University’s School of International Service.
The report describes a broad variety of relationships between anthropologists and national-security agencies, most of which are less controversial than the human-terrain program. Those include teaching at military colleges, informally advising the Pentagon about regional conflicts, working for federally financed research organizations like the RAND Corporation, and conducting ethnographic research about the lives of soldiers and intelligence agents.
Two committee members themselves play such roles. Kerry B. Fosher is a staff social scientist at the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, where she offers advice about cultural concepts to military-intelligence officers. Laura A. McNamara is a cultural anthropologist at the Sandia National Laboratories, a unit of the U.S. Department of Energy. There she works with physicists and computer scientists on computational models of human behavior.
The committee members emphasized that, somewhat to their surprise, they developed close friendships despite their differences in approach. (Alongside Ms. Fosher and Ms. McNamara, the committee includes David H. Price, an associate professor of anthropology at St. Martin’s University who is one of the most prominent critics of the Human Terrain System.)
Working on the committee, Ms. McNamara said, “has helped me realize that I care passionately about anthropology as a discipline.”
“We didn’t pull punches with each other,” Mr. Price said. “If I made some strong claim, I would get called on it: Can you back that up? We didn’t just sit and stew.”
The question that originally gave rise to the committee — whether the association will accept job ads from the military or the CIA — will probably not be resolved quickly. Alan H. Goodman, the association’s president, said on Wednesday that he expected the executive board to continue to weigh that issue for another six to 12 months before establishing a final policy. —David Glenn