Description
Book SynopsisAn archival history of governmental investigations of anthropologists in the 1950s, based on over 20,000 pages of documents obtained by the author under the Freedom of Information Act
Trade Review“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
"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." -- George W. Stocking Jr. * American Anthropologist *
"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." -- Laura Nader * The Historian *
Table of ContentsPreface
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
