A vital reminder of the importance of academic freedom, Threatening Anthropology offers a meticulously detailed account of how U.S. Cold War surveillance damaged the field of anthropology. David H. Price reveals how dozens of activist anthropologists were publicly and privately persecuted during the Red Scares of the 1940s and 1950s. He shows that it was not Communist Party membership or Marxist beliefs that attracted the most intense scrutiny from the fbi and congressional committees but rather social activism, particularly for racial justice. Demonstrating that the fbi’s focus on anthropologists lessened as activist work and Marxist analysis in the field tapered off, Price argues that the impact of McCarthyism on anthropology extended far beyond the lives of those who lost their jobs. Its messages of fear and censorship had a pervasive chilling effect on anthropological investigation. As critiques that might attract government attention were abandoned, scholarship was curtailed.
Price draws on extensive archival research including correspondence, oral histories, published sources, court hearings, and more than 30,000 pages of fbi and government memorandums released to him under the Freedom of Information Act. He describes government monitoring of activism and leftist thought on college campuses, the surveillance of specific anthropologists, and the disturbing failure of the academic community—including the American Anthropological Association—to challenge the witch hunts. Today the “war on terror” is invoked to license the government’s renewed monitoring of academic work, and it is increasingly difficult for researchers to access government documents, as Price reveals in the appendix describing his wrangling with Freedom of Information Act requests. A disquieting chronicle of censorship and its consequences in the past, Threatening Anthropology is an impassioned cautionary tale for the present.
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“An enthralling expedition into the heart of academic darkness. David H. Price brilliantly confirms that there are no depths to which policemen and professors will not sink.”—Alexander Cockburn, coeditor of CounterPunch and columnist for The Nation
“David H. Price’s painstaking account of political repression in anthropology after the Second World War is a unique contribution to the history of the field. More than that, it may foreshadow what some today may entertain. Let us hope not, but let us not be naive.”—Dell Hymes, editor of Reinventing Anthropology
“Threatening Anthropology is a bold piece of scholarship, one that breaks the silence on many issues in the American trajectory that have changed only a bit since the Cold War and—given recent indications—might still come to the foreground in such a way as to make the McCarthy era look like play.”—Laura Nader, University of California, Berkeley
About the Author
David H. Price is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Saint Martin’s College in Lacey, Washington. He is the author of the Atlas of World Cultures: A Geographical Guide to Ethnographic Literature.
Product Details
Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Duke University Press Books (March 24, 2004)
David H. Price is a Professor of anthropology at St. Martin's University in Lacey, Washington. He has conducted cultural anthropological and archaeological fieldwork and research in the United States and Palestine, Egypt and Yemen. He is a Pacific Northwest native, a founding member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, and a frequent contributor to CounterPunch. He is writing a three volume series of books examining American anthropologists' interactions with intelligence agencies: Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Persecution of Activist Anthropologists (2004, Duke), examines McCarthyism's effects on anthropologists; Anthropological Intelligence: The Use and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War. (in press, 2007, Duke) documents anthropological contributions to the Second World War, and a third volume will explore anthropologists interactions with the CIA and Pentagon during the Cold War. His latest book, Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State critically examines current trends in the militarization of anthropology and American universities.
Threatening Anthropology tells how the FBI and senate committees spied on and harassed hundreds of anthropologists working for racial equality. Price gathered a lot of new documents and information and his analysis left me thinking in new ways about McCarthyism and how the FBI was used to enforce racist policies in the 1940s and 1950s. Price uses thousands of documents to show that the FBI was used to persecute pioneering scientists threatening widespread bigotry.
Threatening Anthropology is a consuming, thought provoking book. Because there is a lot of dense information I thought I would slowly work my way through this over three or four weeks, but the writing and subject matter pulled me right in and I read it in a few days like I would a well written novel. Price really brings the reader into the story by richly describing the historical setting and then delving into dozens of individual stories telling how several dozen anthropologists like Melville Jacobs, Richard Morgan, Gene Weltfish, Ashley Montague and Margaret Mead were followed and harassed by the FBI because their fights for equality was seen as some sort of foreign communist plot. Price uses extensive FBI documents and correspondence to establish this story and brings an anthropological perspective that made me rethink what McCarthyism was.
I used to wonder if the McCarthy like witch trials could happen again, and Price's detailed analysis and current political developments leave no doubts in my mind that we could do this again very quickly. This book has a lot to say to us all today and deserves to be read by anyone concerned about the abuses of the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security in the war on terrorism, and the past examined here looks a lot like the present. As Price says in the final pages of his book, "Today, much as in the past, free thought, civil liberties and academic freedom are curtailed under conditions of fear as America appears to be preparing for another lengthy ill-defined war." But Price doesn't leave us there, he gives us hope by analyzing past defenses against McCarthyism for us to use in the present.
Threatening Anthropology is a beautifully written, meticulously researched account of how J. Edgar Hoover, Senator Joseph McCarthy and others attacked anthropologists educating the public on scientific findings supporting racial equality. I passed this book on to non-anthropologist friends who found it to be a real page turner and were moved by the impassioned story Price artfully tells. This is a rare book that is carefully written for a board public readership, yet is so thoroughly researched and footnoted that historians and other scholars will find this to be an important contribution.
This book will send shockwaves through the anthropological community. It should lead anthropology's historians to rethink their silence on the events documented here. How can it be that we learn so late that so many anthropologists from Franz Boas until now have been tormented by FBI spies? Have others known of these events and remained so silent for so long?
While I studied anthropology during the decades discussed in this book I had no idea that my colleagues suffered the attacks detailed here, but I felt the pressures to avoid controversial advocacy that are documented here. Price may go too far in his criticism of postmodernism's contributions to anthropology's current crisis, but I find the historical positioning of his critique provocative.
Threatening Anthropology should be read by all Americans concerned about the growing powers of the FBI and CIA.
Lots of good documentation allows Price to establish just how far the FBI went to torment scientists challenging racist and sexist popular views. It is as if J Edgar Hoover spied on Margaret Mead, Oscar Lewis, Ashley Montague and every other living anthropologist just because they believed that all people are equal. All the FBI files used in this book left a real chill with me, but it also left me more committed to speaking out and being more of an activist.
A good book for any general reader questioning the Patriot Act and who wants to know why the FBI had its powers limited before Congress passed the "Patriot Act."
