Besides the fact that these anthropologists have the right to dissent and disagree, one wonders if they know what they are doing and saying? A democratically elected government, executing howsoever unpopular a decision, is being challenged by public sector workers. And they do not want anything to do with the military. So far so good.
So here's the question, do you seriously think that academics exist in a vacuum? Here's a question to the learned academics. Ok, so the members of the academy are not formally supposed to participate in this HTS initiative. Will you refuse to teach a soldier who wants to learn at your stateside school? Will you refuse to teach anthropology to students who have expressed a desire to join the military? Will you as an anthropology professor disown your child if s/he is in Iraq fighting insurgents?
Will you instead help your child out? How about refusing to take tax payer money as your salary in protest? They complain about manipulating local cultures, but then, all their own studies of whatever ilk, influences local cultures.
When they go and study a tribe in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest or a ghetto in Chicago, they influence and manipulate local cultures. So what makes their influencing good and the US military's influencing bad?
Military intervention in academics? Surely that's taxpayer money that you are complaining about. I presume they will refuse to take any monies from any government or private sources?
Its when you start inquiring that you know that outrage and principles have limits, where the limit or boundary lies is where the interesting or amusing part occurs, in this case, its in the amusing part...
Reminds me of the quote, arguments in academia are so bitter because the stakes are so little. In this case, the stakes are so high, so obviously the arguments have to be facile.
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