Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the Fbi's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists / Edition 1

by David H Price

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822333388
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2004
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.00(d)

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.

Read an Excerpt

Threatening anthropology

Mccarthyism and the FBI's surveillance of activist anthropologists

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By David H. Price

Duke University Press

ISBN: 0-8223-3338-4

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Chapter One

A Running Start at the Cold War: Time, Place, and Outcomes

Since historical memory is one of the weapons against abuse and power, there is no question why those who have power create a "desert of organized forgetting." But why should those who have been the victims sometimes act as if they, too, had forgotten?-Sigmund Diamond

At first glance it might seem odd that anthropologists were among those citizens who were dragged through the shameful disarray of security and loyalty hearings of post-World War II America. American anthropology never had its "Hollywood Ten," although many more than ten of its practitioners were persecuted by congressional hearings and by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. But the very premise of anthropology-with its commitment to cultural relativism and the inherent worth of all cultures-made it a natural target for these attacks. The nature of these attacks clarifies much about the real issues of McCarthyism and about the promise of what anthropology offered public policy makers regarding issues of racial, gender, and economic equality. Anthropology's radical view of racial equality made anthropologists obvious targets; and some anthropologists' ties to Communist, Socialist, and other progressive activist organizations made them easy targets.

Theformative roots of McCarthyism are much more complicated than Richard Nixon rooting around the pumpkin patch; the entrance of the Soviet Union into the global arms race; or even the creation of a host of secret national security policies after the war. The appearance of McCarthyism was more of a mutant resurrection than it was a new birth sui generis. What came to be known as McCarthyism was part of a long, ignoble American tradition of repressing the rights of free association, inquiry, and advocacy of those who would threaten the status quo of America's stratified political economic system. Despite a general lack of proof of consistent ties to Communist organizations, the anthropologists who were paraded before various public, private, local, state, and national loyalty hearings shared the fundamental trait of progressive social activism.

The most common activities drawing the attention of anti-Communist crusaders included participation in public education programs, public advocacy, social activism, and protests, but the basic concerns of these actions were issues of racial equality. Throughout the twentieth century, American anthropologists argued against racial discrimination and against the biological basis of the notion of race. It is to the credit of the discipline that anthropologists during this period aggressively combated the racial prejudice permeating American society. In the end, these public actions mattered more than the presence or absence of demonstrable ties to Communism. Under these loyalty witch-hunts, Communists, Socialists, and liberal Democrats were equally recognized as a threat to the postwar status quo (and they were real threats to the systems of social and economic inequality they wished to demolish) and this threat provided the justification for persecution. McCarthyism's public spectacles transformed the development of anthropological theory, limiting both the questions anthropologists asked and the answers they found.

The seeds of the Cold War were firmly planted during the last days of World War II. America's entry into the war brought the application of anthropological methods and skills to the service of warfare at previously unseen levels. John Cooper (1947) estimated that over half of America's anthropologists contributed to the war effort. During the war, anthropologists found themselves doing everything from using their anthropological credentials as a cover for espionage (Madden 1999; Price 2000b; Price 2002b); conducting national character studies for organizations such as the Office of War Information (Doob 1947; Winkler 1978), the Office of Strategic Services, and the Ethnogeographic Board (Bennett 1947; Price 1998a; Leighton 1949:223-25; Mead 1941; Winks 1987); compiling important war-effort data; undertaking dangerous cloak-and-dagger operations for the Office of Strategic Services (Chalou 1992; Coon 1980; Price 1998d); and assisting in the detention of Japanese Americans for the War Relocation Authority (Suzuki 1981; Drinnon 1987). The full range and scope of anthropological war work is too varied to recount here, but it is important to recognize that as the majority of the American public became immersed in America's war effort, anthropologists from all fields and theoretical orientations also joined in. These activities brought the FBI into their lives when background investigations were needed for sensitive war work.

In the mid-1940s few Americans could comprehend the brutal reign of domestic fear that soon followed. In 1945 anthropologist Ruth Landes wrote a piece for the Nation describing the morale and functioning of Washington's wartime bureaucracies. Commenting on Congressman Dies's loyalty committee, Landes lightly observed that "so little self-esteem is allowed indeed to many federal officers that they look to sources like the lists of the old Dies committee for assurance that they still matter. Only last year a Washington official showed me proudly a copy of testimony filed with the Dies committee about his alleged subversive opinions" (1945:365). By the end of the decade the consequences of such testimony before the Dies committee were severe, and such jesting and boasting became a thing of the past.

At the war's end most anthropologists returned to college and university campuses. But new fears and a new military industrial complex radically transformed these anthropologists and the universities to which they returned (Lowen 1997). These changes affected the world to be studied and the experiences of those who studied it, and the domestic political developments of this period cast shadows of distrust and jingoistic simplicity over all of American academia, thus limiting the nature of anthropological inquiry for decades to come.

The GI Bill of Rights brought the most significant postwar impact on American anthropology: it allayed an economic crisis, rewarded the war's victors, and set new standards of education for a generation of Americans. The GI bill created students-lots of students-thereby opening colleges and universities to a new generation. Under the GI bill any veteran of the armed services with an honorable discharge was eligible to receive enough financial assistance to cover the expenses of a college education. The record level of first-generation college attendance was a vital element in the coming retooling of America's workforce and class structure as the children of America's proletariat entered the halls of academia previously reserved for members of America's elite class (Murphy 1976:5).

As a result anthropology classes swelled, not just with a new breed of anthropology majors but with future engineers, chemists, teachers, historians, and other students needing to fulfill social science requirements. As the GI bill brought this mass of new bodies to campuses, however, it also negatively affected the opportunities for other individuals to work and study in America's universities: in all, 7.8 million World War II veterans used the GI bill's educational benefits and 2.2 million students flooded the country's two-year and four-year colleges and universities, thereby displacing a generation of women who had entered academia during the war (Bennett 1996:242). As a generation of male vets was welcomed into the classroom, a generation of women was all but excluded (Rossiter 1995:27).

The GI bill expanded the career opportunities for archaeologists and cultural, physical, and linguistic anthropologists (Patterson 1999:161-64). This new generation of anthropologists had grown up during the Great Depression, with many coming from families with ties to labor, Communist, and Socialist movements. They not only brought their political experiences and viewpoints with them but in many cases it was these experiences themselves that led them to the field of anthropology in the first place.

Walking on Eggshells: Postwar Reorganization of the American Anthropological Association

While American anthropology departments were poised to swell with this generation of bright new students, its oldest professional organization, the American Anthropological Association (AAA), was about to self-destruct by spinning into a half-dozen different scientific societies. In spring of 1945 a Temporary Organizing Committee was established, consisting of Homer Barnett (Chair), Julian Steward, John Provinse, Clyde Kluckhohn, and Frank Roberts (Frantz 1974:9). The dynamics of this reorganization weakened the association's ability to protect anthropologists facing McCarthyism's attacks. The reorganization was in part brought on because of subfield factionalism (as archaeologists and cultural, physical, and linguistic anthropologists had already created specialty associations) and the concerns held by the growing departments at the universities of Chicago, Michigan, and Berkeley, which were separated geographically from the increasing power base of the eastern corridor. Attempts to coordinate the reorganization of the association were complicated by numerous factors: the status of nonprofessional anthropologists, the impact of such a reorganization on a dozen regional and specialty associations, and the question of what was to be done with "professionals" not trained in anthropology.

In the end it was the obvious financial benefits for all that brought the AAA together for the reorganization. It was clear that the newwealth of funds available to researchers in the postwar and coming Cold War world could enrich anthropologists if they had an organized body both to represent them and to lobby for their inclusion in the coming funding feast. The prime concern of the reorganized AAA was to "mobilize the profession" to a position advantageous for funding (RAAA: "Committee of Nine Report," 3/9/46). Julian Steward helped bring various factions together for the reorganization by arguing that in a competitive funding environment "it is better to mobilize all anthropologists rather than just a section of them. The point of view that anthropology stands for is well known but it will be better in the final pay-off when the money is allotted if anthropology has made a case for itself" (RAAA: "Committee of Nine Report," 3/9/46). As the AAA'S membership grew, diverse research interests created new pressures on the association. These pressures led to a postwar reorganization that ceded increased centralized power to the president and the executive board. The prerevised AAA constitution did not afford the executive board much authority to act on behalf of the general membership throughout the year, without the authorized approval of the rank and file at the annual meeting.

The Cold War brought a stunning variety of governmental agencies-and lots of money-to support anthropological research of interest to the new national security state. There was funding to study the languages and cultures of remote places that would potentially become the staging ground of the Cold War's many battles. Some of these agencies predated the war (e.g., the National Research Council, Office of Naval Intelligence) and were simply reinvigorated by this flood of cash and redirected with new purpose, but many others came into being in the postwar world (e.g., the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, and National Institutes for Mental Health) (Vincent 1990:292-96). There was also a postwar boom of private-foundation funding for anthropological research, although even these funds were not immune from the politics of Cold War interests (Saunders 1999; Ross 1999). After some conflicts over specific articulations of the AAA'S reorganization, the promise of large amounts of funding-much of it conditional on the Cold War-was the glue that bound the association together.

The reorganized bylaws of the AAA charged the executive board to pursue funding opportunities for association members by specifying that "officers were obligated to maintain records of professional anthropologists, to serve as a clearinghouse for professional and scientific anthropological matters, to publish a bulletin for Fellows on activities of professional interest, to hold referenda on urgent matters, and to establish liaison with other scientific organizations and institutions" (Frantz 1974:12). The CIA covertly contributed to the maintenance of these rosters in the postwar and early Cold War period, and it was during this time that the FBI opened its file on the AAA (Frantz 1974:7; Price 2000a, 2003a).

As the fragile coalitions comprising the reorganized AAA were hesitant to enter the frays of controversy, the newly reconstituted AAA was in a position weakened by its inability to defend the academic freedom of anthropologists suffering the attacks of McCarthyism. The surviving correspondence of the AAA finds members concerned that the association keep its distance from controversies involving AAA members. For example, in 1949, after the Committee on Scientific Freedom was formed, Harry Hoijer wrote to President Irving Hallowell with his concern that the committee would overstep the duties of the association by protesting the firing of accused Communists (RAAA: HH/IH 7/20/49). Similarly, as we will see, after Richard Morgan was fired from the Ohio State Museum under circumstances suggesting that his rights to academic freedom had been violated, Emil Haury wrote to President Shapiro that it was his "conviction ... that our Association is a professional one and that we must proceed with the greatest caution in involving either the Board or the membership in matters lying outside of this area. Morgan's difficulty should be handled by the American Civil Liberties Union or by the American Association of University Professors although I am somewhat doubtful if Museum personnel falls within the scope of the latter organization" (RAAA: EH/HS 9/16/48). Such views were widespread. But in practice the ACLU assisted primarily non-Communist professors under attack, and at times it even privately cooperated with various loyalty boards and secretly turned over materials that had been given to them in confidence by Marxists, while the American Association for University Professors (AAUP) was weak and ineffectual in its defense of professors attacked as Communists (Salisbury 1984; Schrecker 1986:308-32). Some members of the AAA board and the association at large believed that if the accused individuals were Communists then they were probably getting their just desserts.

The association's executive board worked hard not to be distracted by McCarthy's intrusions into the terrain of academic freedom. It instead focused its energies on capturing the fruits of the Cold War economy for its membership. By ignoring these attacks, many of its members were rewarded through the increased availability of funding for this newly legitimized branch of the social sciences. Such were the benefits to be accrued by the academy in the Cold War economy.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Preface
xvii

1 A Running Start at the Cold War: Time, Place, and Outcomes 1

2 Melville Jacobs, Albert Canwell, and the University of Washington Regents: A Message Sent 34

3 Syncopated Incompetence: The American Anthropological Association’s Reluctance to Protect Academic Freedom 50

4 Hoover’s Informer 70

5 Lessons Learned: Jacobs’s Fallout and Swadesh’s Troubles 90

6 Public Show Trials: Gene Weltfish and a Conspiracy of Silence 109

7 Bernhard Stern: “A Sense of Atrophy among Those Who Fear: 136

8 Persecuting Equality: The Travails of Jack Harris and Mary Shepardson 154

9 Estimating the FBI’s Means and Methods 169

10 Known Shades of Red: Marxist Anthropologists Who Escaped Public Show Trials 195

11 Red Diaper Babies, Suspect Agnates, Cognates, and Affines 225

12 Culture, Equality, Poverty, and Paranoia: The FBI, Oscar Lewis, and Margaret Mead 237

13 Crusading Liberals Advocating for Racial Justice: Philleo Nash and Ashley Montagu 263

14 The Suspicions of Internationalists 284

15 A Glimpse of Post-McCarthyism: FBI Surveillance and Consequences for Activism 306

16 Through a Fog Darkly: The Cold War’s Impact on Free Inquiry 341

Appendix: On Using the Freedom of Information Act 355

Notes 363

Bibliography 383

Index 405

Editorial Reviews

"That Price had the drive, the stamina, and the imagination to pursue this arduous task for more than a decade is an effort for which all anthropologists, and all of those interested in the history of the McCarthy years, must be profoundly grateful. . . . Price's book . . . is an illuminating contribution to 'anthropology's understanding of itself'-one that should be on the shelf of every serious student of the history of U.S. anthropology."

American Anthropologist - George W. Stocking Jr.

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

From the Publisher

"This book is a spellbinder, a creative contribution to the history of anthropology, to understanding post-9/11 reactions, and to recalling threads of repression in American society that are continuous. It is a provocative, seminal contribution to scholarly history."

The Historian - Laura Nader