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Lessons in Terror at John Jay

by Abe Walker


Marc Sageman and Charles B. Strozier at an October Center on Terrorism Seminar
Marc Sage­man and Charles B. Strozier at an Octo­ber Cen­ter on Ter­ror­ism Seminar

In the normally-restrained world of aca­d­e­mic dis­course, the 2007 annual meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Anthro­po­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion stands out as a break with the dom­i­nant cul­ture of self-abrogation and humil­ity. Dur­ing the course of this meet­ing, a fierce and impas­sioned debate broke out over a pro­posed revi­sion to the association’s Code of Ethics that would pro­hibit secret research. The dis­puted lan­guage read, in part, “no reports should be pro­vided to spon­sors that are not also avail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic and, where prac­ti­ca­ble, to the pop­u­la­tion stud­ied.” In prac­tice, this would bar Amer­i­can anthro­pol­o­gists from doing research for the US Depart­ment of Defense and its affiliates.

The pro­posed clause actu­ally wasn’t new. It was added to the Code in 1971 as sen­ti­ment against the Viet­nam War peaked, but was later excised, mir­ror­ing the ascen­dency of the right-wing on the national stage and in the acad­emy. By 2007, as George W. Bush read­ied Amer­i­can forces for the now-infamous “surge,” many anthro­pol­o­gists felt it was again time to take a stand. Anthro­pol­o­gists were attract­ing media atten­tion for their involve­ment in an ini­tia­tive called the Human Ter­rain Sys­tem — a pro­gram in which anthro­pol­o­gists worked directly for the US mil­i­tary in war zones for the pur­pose of col­lect­ing cul­tural and social data. The AAA lead­er­ship had already issued an offi­cial state­ment con­demn­ing Human Ter­rain Sys­tem, but some rank-and-file mem­bers felt it hadn’t gone far enough. The pro­posed change to the code of ethics would go much fur­ther, chastis­ing not only those anthro­pol­o­gists who work directly in the the­ater of war, but also those who con­duct mil­i­tary research from the com­fort of their ivory tower offices.

The AAA lead­er­ship even­tu­ally man­aged to defeat the pro­posal by means of a deft pro­ce­dural maneu­ver, but the events of the meet­ing reignited a long­stand­ing debate about the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the acad­emy. To what extent should aca­d­e­mics col­lab­o­rate with the mil­i­tary? Are research projects that fur­ther a mil­i­tary cam­paign inher­ently uneth­i­cal? Is war­mak­ing com­pat­i­ble with the social mis­sion of the uni­ver­sity? Clearly, opin­ions on these ques­tions are sharply divided along ide­o­log­i­cal lines. But like the AAA’s code of ethics, this debate has its roots in the 1970s.

At 4:00 AM on August 24, 1970, a bomb ripped through the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin – Madi­son cam­pus result­ing in over $2 mil­lion worth of dam­age. The incen­di­ary device was a stolen Ford Econo­line van filled with 2,000 pounds of explo­sives. The tar­get: the Army Math­e­mat­ics Research Cen­ter (ARMC), which had become a mag­net for stu­dent protests because of its per­ceived involve­ment with coun­terin­sur­gency oper­a­tions in Viet­nam. A lone sci­en­tist, work­ing on an unre­lated research project through the night in his physics lab, was killed. Four UW stu­dents were even­tu­ally charged with the bomb­ing; two later served jail time and one remains at large.

For some, this event defin­i­tively marked the shift from a decade of peace, love and under­stand­ing to a decade of anger, vio­lence, and cyn­i­cism. For oth­ers, it marked a strate­gic shift in the anti­war move­ment: rather than march on Wash­ing­ton, stu­dents would now fight the mil­i­tary pres­ence in their own back­yards. Chants of “US out of Viet­nam!” turned to “ROTC Off Cam­pus!” The military-industrial com­plex was recast as the Military-Industrial-University Com­plex. While all but the most fringe ele­ments con­demned the bombers at UW and lamented the tragic loss of life, most anti­war activists agreed that the strat­egy of tar­get­ing campus-military con­nec­tions was essen­tially cor­rect. What fol­lowed was a rash of stu­dent protests that were gen­er­ally less vio­lent, but no less dis­rup­tive. Research facil­i­ties receiv­ing mil­i­tary fund­ing were pick­eted, pro­fes­sors con­duct­ing research for the mil­i­tary were sin­gled out and harassed. These events cul­mi­nated in the largest stu­dent strike and occu­pa­tion wave of Amer­i­can his­tory in the spring of 1972, prompt­ing Nixon to estab­lish the Com­mis­sion on Cam­pus Unrest.

Forty years later, the Global War on Ter­ror — now rebranded the “Over­seas Con­tin­gency Oper­a­tion” by the Barack Obama admin­is­tra­tion — has ben­e­fited from a dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal cli­mate. The New York Times recently ran a fea­ture explor­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of lift­ing many elite col­leges’ long­stand­ing bans on ROTC pro­grams. The Times reported that at Har­vard, 62 per­cent of respon­dents to an infor­mal sur­vey of under­grad­u­ates favored bring­ing the ROTC back on cam­pus, and vir­tu­ally no pro­test­ers showed up to chal­lenge US Cen­tral Com­mand Gen­eral David Petraeus when he deliv­ered an address in Har­vard Yard at a ROTC com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mony. The anti­war move­ment, already run­ning out of steam in the clos­ing years of Bush’s regime, slowed to a sput­ter when a friend­lier face took over the high­est office. The country’s largest anti­war orga­ni­za­tion gave Obama a free ride through the early months of his pres­i­dency, and is only now begin­ning to regroup. What remains of the Left has mainly con­cerned itself with protest­ing the excesses of the bailouts, and protest­ing cuts to edu­ca­tion and social services.

On today’s col­lege cam­puses, the still-open-ended war on ter­ror never man­aged to spawn much of an anti­war move­ment. Instead, the war has man­i­fest itself mainly through the emer­gence of ter­ror­ism research cen­ters. There are already at least half a dozen campus-based cen­ters ded­i­cated exclu­sively to the study of ter­ror, and many more that count ter­ror­ism among their foci. Cam­puses as var­ied as Duke and the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land now house spe­cial­ized anti-terrorism pro­grams. As a rule, most of these cen­ters are not par­tic­u­larly crit­i­cal of US for­eign pol­icy. Some are run by known right-wing ide­o­logues, and a few are scarcely-concealed neo­con­ser­v­a­tive think tanks.

From the out­set, CUNY’s Cen­ter on Ter­ror­ism (COT) has been an anom­aly among this crowd. Undoubt­edly, the founder and direc­tor of the cen­ter, Charles Strozier, is no neo­con hawk. A self-described for­mer “Six­ties rad­i­cal”, Strozier claims his cen­ter is paving new ground by defin­ing “a pro­gres­sive, intel­li­gent approach to coun­tert­er­ror­ism.” In a tele­phone inter­view, Strozier crit­i­cized coun­tert­er­ror­ism pol­icy under Bush with­out prompt­ing, para­phras­ing Obama’s catch­phrase: “Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time.” Later, he noted with dis­gust that Bush had mil­i­ta­rized coun­tert­er­ror­ism oper­a­tions. (Strozier argues with caveats that ter­ror­ism is a prob­lem to be dealt with by police. But this is no longer a par­tic­u­larly con­tro­ver­sial thing to say. In con­trast, Strozier still expresses admi­ra­tion for Obama, describ­ing him as “mov­ing in the right direc­tion.” When pressed, Strozier described the pres­i­dent as hav­ing the “right ideas and right goals” but being “slow in imple­ment­ing them.” (At press time, Obama had not yet made a deci­sion on Gen­eral William McChyrstal’s request for as many as 45,000 addi­tional troops in Afghanistan).

The Cen­ter on Ter­ror­ism is located on the 6th floor of an unas­sum­ing office build­ing on the far west side of Man­hat­tan with a BMW deal­er­ship on the ground floor. The center’s research staff con­sists of a com­bi­na­tion of locally-based schol­ars with CUNY appoint­ments and far-flung experts with­out other local affil­i­a­tions. Although a sim­i­lar pro­gram existed under a dif­fer­ent name prior to 2001, the cen­ter rein­vented itself in the after­math of 9/11, and ded­i­cated itself exclu­sively to ter­ror­ism research.

CUNY pro­vides the cen­ter with office space and essen­tial sup­port, but the pro­gram reports that the “vast major­ity” of its fund­ing comes from out­side sources. Chief among these is the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity, which spon­sors the cen­ter both through one-off grants and through the ongo­ing Grad­u­ate Assist­ant­ship in Home­land Secu­rity. The assist­ant­ships offer a $2300 monthly stipend in addi­tion to tuition reim­burse­ment, stu­dent fees and health insur­ance. While the pro­gram reports that its DHS-funded grad­u­ate assis­tants go on to pur­sue var­ied careers, the appli­ca­tion for the pro­gram includes a 1,000 word essay on “how this assist­ant­ship will help advance your career objec­tives in the field of home­land secu­rity.” In addi­tion, the cen­ter offers a cer­tifi­cate in Ter­ror­ism Stud­ies — one of the only of its kind, and works closely with John Jay’s Crim­i­nal Jus­tice PhD stu­dents who choose to spe­cial­ize in coun­tert­er­ror­ism. Last year, John Jay reported that its fac­ulty had received over $580,000 in DHS grant money.

The COT is not the only CUNY-based research cen­ter that accepts mil­i­tary fund­ing. “The Cen­ter for Advanced Tech­nol­ogy in Pho­ton­ics Appli­ca­tions,” with offices at CCNY and Queens reports on its web­site hav­ing received more than $6 mil­lion over the last five years from the US mil­i­tary sources, includ­ing $600,000 from the Navy for “under­wa­ter tar­get imaging.”

Aside from pass­ing men­tions in a few online pub­li­ca­tions, the Cen­ter on Ter­ror­ism and other CUNY-based research ini­ti­atves with con­nec­tions to the mil­i­tary have largely escaped the notice of the anti­war move­ment. To be sure, the Cen­ter on Terrorism’s pol­i­tics defy sim­ple cat­e­go­riza­tion. Unlike many of its com­pan­ion insti­tu­tions, CUNY’s cen­ter takes pains to include a range of view­points and per­spec­tives on its ros­ter, includ­ing a hand­ful of unabashed lib­er­als. The center’s direc­tor is quick to point out that it spon­sored a con­fer­ence on tor­ture before Abu Ghraib. At its con­fer­ences, the cen­ter has hosted a num­ber of out­spo­ken left­ists, from crit­i­cal geo­g­ra­pher Cindi Katz to fem­i­nist thinker Mar­nia Lazreg, anti-nuclear activist Jonathan Schell, and the direc­tor of Human Rights Watch, among oth­ers. The center’s most recent con­fer­ence was called “Sur­veil­lance Soci­ety: At What Price Secu­rity” and listed “recon­sid­er­a­tions of Fou­cault and Orwell” among top­ics to be covered.

Social sci­ence fig­ures promi­nently in the center’s research. While many of its affil­i­ated fac­ulty are trained as crim­i­nol­o­gists, the cen­ter claims psy­chol­o­gists, his­to­ri­ans, soci­ol­o­gists, and human­i­ties schol­ars within its ranks. To the extent that the war on ter­ror is a socio-psychological war, the social sci­ences have found their mod­el­ing meth­ods are sud­denly in huge demand. The watch­words of the day are ‘cul­tural knowl­edge,’ ‘ethno­graphic intel­li­gence,’ and ‘social networks’ — all con­cepts derived from the social sci­ences, espe­cially soci­ol­ogy and anthro­pol­ogy. Mod­ern mil­i­tary tac­tics depend on deter­min­ing the like­li­hood that res­i­dents of a par­tic­u­lar Afghan vil­lage might become rad­i­cal­ized. Sean O’Brien, a senior employee at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (the Pentagon’s research and devel­op­ment wing) charged with run­ning the agency’s “com­pu­ta­tion social sci­ence” pro­gram, recently spoke glow­ingly of the social sci­ences. In a series of pub­lic remarks he claimed that “increas­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion of agent based social sim­u­la­tions” would make it pos­si­ble for researchers to effec­tively pre­dict future human behav­ior — for exam­ple, who might join a ter­ror­ist cell. More omi­nously, O’Brien argued “we may rev­o­lu­tion­ize the social sci­ences along the way.”

Some cen­ter fac­ulty mem­bers have direct con­nec­tions to US intel­li­gence. The cen­ter counts among its affil­i­ated fac­ulty former-CIA oper­a­tive Marc Sage­men, whose resume includes three years run­ning “US uni­lat­eral pro­grams with the Afghan Muja­hedin.” Sageman’s most recent book, Unmask­ing Ter­ror fea­tures a glow­ing review from for­mer Sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­rity Tom Ridge on the book­jacket. In his Octo­ber 7, 2009 tes­ti­mony to the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, Sage­man read a series of pre­pared remarks enti­tiled “Con­fronting Al-Qeda: Under­stand­ing the Ter­ror­ist Threat in Afghanistan and Beyond,” which reads in part, “counter-terrorism works and is doing well against the global neo-jihadi ter­ror­ist threat.”

But the COT doesn’t only con­cern itself with right-wing ter­ror­ist groups. Another Cen­ter affil­i­ate, Joshua Freilich, runs a project known as the United States Extrem­ist Crime Data­base (ECDB), a “large-scale data-collection effort that is build­ing the first-of-its-kind rela­tional data­base of crimes com­mit­ted by far-right, Jihadist, and ani­mal rights and envi­ron­men­tal rights extrem­ists in the United States.” While some might object to the con­fla­tion of Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ists with “ecoter­rror­ist” arson­ists, the term “ter­ror­ist” is increas­ingly being applied to domes­tic radicals.

Strozier is keen to point out that “pro­gres­sive crit­i­cal thinkers tend to shy away from deal­ing with sub­jects that involve police and mil­i­tary intel­li­gence.” Nowhere has this been clearer than at the AAA. After the Code of Ethics revi­sion was defeated, a group call­ing itself the Net­work of Con­cerned Anthro­pol­o­gists drafted a peti­tion which offered an even stronger ver­sion of the anti-military lan­guage. The peti­tion reads in part, “We believe that anthro­pol­o­gists should not engage in research and other activ­i­ties that con­tribute to counter-insurgency oper­a­tions in Iraq or in related the­aters in the ‘war on ter­ror.’ … [This work] con­tributes instead to a bru­tal war of occu­pa­tion which has entailed mas­sive casu­al­ties.” For these rad­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gists, to con­duct research for the mil­i­tary is to fur­ther the neoim­pe­ri­al­ist project. But for Strozier, this sep­a­ra­tion between the aca­d­e­mic Left and mil­i­taryn­tel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ties is “arti­fi­cial and dan­ger­ous.” Strozier openly acknowl­edges that the field of ter­ror­ism stud­ies is “dom­i­nated by right wing fanat­ics and main­stream cheer­lead­ers,” but describes his cen­ter as “a bea­con of hope in defin­ing an alter­na­tive approach.”

Posted by Abe Walker on Nov 27th, 2009 and filed under Features, Recent Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site

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