Boundary displacement: Area studies and international studies during and after the cold warBruce Cumings

• Economic and political power

• Hard to find acknowledgment of “astonishing levels of collaboration between universities … and the intelligence arms of the US”

Working for the state as a scholar?

• No moral position or blame scholars

• Total war vs peacetime

• Working for the state is not always wrong:1. In case of total war: take away freedom including

academic ones2. Clear difference between domains of state and

university: taking a leave of absence from the classroom

3. Classified work does not continue after reentry to university

In ordinary times complete separation of intelligence and academics

Some background information

Office of Strategic Service (OSS) director William Donovan + Social Science Research Council (SSRC) + American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) “a slate of [academic] advisors” presented a postwar collaboration between intelligence and academics influenced the division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) into separate research and operation branches

WWII conflict between Moscow and Washington clear boundaries between ‘area studies’ and ‘international studies’

1943 first American ‘area’ organization : Association for Asian Studies (AAS)

Countries were categorized as friend <> enemy Example: communist studies for China and North-Korea

and modernization studies for South-Korea and Japan

Changes in area studies by world events

studying areas in a specific way (namely communist studies) end of cold war and Western communism economic or political development

world without borders collapsed area studies into international studies

New globalism as Japan’s economic bubble burst emerging of the US’s power:we were now living in a world economy

The state and foundations were the quickest to adapt to this.

Clinton administration now major emphasis on foreign economic policy

Foundations reduced support for area studies interregional themes : development and democracy

Shift in source of power: State > cold war transnational corporations >

international market Expectations of area experts

Area and international studies in the cold war

1946 OSS’s Soviet division relocated to Colombia university

1947 $740.000 Carnegie corporation for Russian research centre

Area and language studies the Ford foundation $270 million to 34 universities

Funding important area programs fellowships that scholars to spend years in the field difficult languages

CIA and FBI involvement

Transform area studies by enormous government funding

But government was not to be publicly involved in this An intelligence agency, impartial and objective

Harvard Russian Research Centre Deeply involved with CIA, FBI and other

intelligence/military agencies Foundations (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford)

worked with state and centre some cases launder CIA funding

These scholars : subject of FBI investigation and some denounced other scholars to FBI

Major figures in postwar development of Russian area studies in the nation as a whole

1949 President James B. Conant of Harvard and the FBI established arrangements and the center’s work were made available to the bureau.

FBI

“Only a bit of an exaggeration to say that scholars studying potential enemy countries either consulted with the government or risked being investigated by the FBI”

FBI investigations in the early fifties: Any rumor, wild charge, left of center joined

organization, name entered on a petition (like peace or racial integration), subscription to suspicious magazine enz.

Checking credit records, tailing around, monitored lectures, questioned colleagues and students and campus informants

Korean war and the John Reed club at Harvard

Colombiauniversity

Philip Mosely : Colombia’s Russian research centre OSS research and analysis branch veteran Head of council on foreign relations Member of various boards and committees at Ford

foundation Prominent leader of the American Political Science

Association

Arranging recruitment interviews between CIA and students

Testified before the Subversive Activities Control Board in 1953: unnamed “respondent’s” views and policies “do not deviate from those of the Soviet Union”. Testimony was part of the Justice Department’s attempt to get Communist Party USA to register on the McCarren Act jailing of members

Mosely <> Ford foundation <> CIA

Ford foundation in close consultation with the CIA helped shape:

postwar area studies Collaborative research: modernization studies +

comparative politics later mediated through Social Science Research Council projects

According to Christopher Simpson: “For years, government money… not always publicly acknowledged as such – made up more then 75% of annual budgets of institutions such as…”

By official sources in 1952 “fully 96% of all reported [government] funding for social sciences at that time was drawn form the US military”

Many books central to the political science profession in the 50/60’s were first internal classified government studies

Washington university

1949 fired three professors for their political view : Two who denied but later admitted membership in the

communist party One uncooperative with university and state inquiries

First important academic freedom case in cold war period set up a model

Allen (president) had close contact with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI: by November 1948 seeing an FBI agent weekly

Allen advised by William Donovan to construct a model argument

International studies during the cold war

MIT’s Center for International Studies (CENIS) “taken on projects under pressure” to do work that the

CIA wanted done CIA director had a hand in hiring policies Killian (president) states it is destructive for an

academic institution to have “people who are supposed to be pursuing knowledge and teaching people under limitations as to whom they can talk to and what they can talk about”

Area and International studies after the cold war

National Security Education Act (NSEA now NSEP) Need for area expertise after the cold war In exchange of receiving the scholarship recipients

need to consult with national security agencies

Several area associations opposed this program Even indirect links to US national security agencies Students may appear to be “spies in training” “need firm assurance that the selection process will be

free from political or bureaucratic interference… it would not seem acceptable , for example, to have candidates screened on the basis of their political views..”

Laundries for department of defense funding?

Guarantees have been bypassed and committees responsible for monitoring the CIA have been ignored or subverted

NSEA funding stopped for some time and then few scholarships were available in 1996

So what is happening now?

Decline in government + foundation funds. Mellon and Ford foundation want to focus on cross-regional scholarship

Rational choice theory the only possible paradigm of global development no diversity of humanity no use for an area specialist

Denial of links with US government in the past, denial of it happening now

Current US administration ‘doctrine’ is US based global corporations using buzzwords: world without borders, increasing globalization, multiculturalism enz.

Tackle globalization but not by abandoning scholarly knowledge and resources that we already have

What to do?

1. Abolish social sciences and group them under political economy

2. Regroup area studies in away make one “centered” in between ones native home and studied foreign area

3. Raise funds for academic work on the basis of the corporate identity of the university

4. Abolish the CIA and get the intelligence and military agencies out of free academic inquiry

Rethinking area studies, once moreReviewed by Andrew Gordon

Learning places:The afterlives of area studies

Critique on area studies

Insufficient attention to social cultural theories - or - wrong theories (modernization theory)

Overemphasizing national particularities

Insufficient stress on comparative or global context

critique on the critique on area studies

“old song”

John Dower “E.H. Norman and the uses of history”

Vexing features of the book

2. Tendency to set up “straw men” Book: traditional area studies and obsession of

mastering language: magic key to knowledge

Reviewer: linguistic fluency necessary tool by no means sufficient

3. Unreflective of own position Giving critique while doing the same About the first chapter:

“If he is right in what he says, we might as well all commit suicide together , for we live in a world empty of hope or joy, marked by “fierce intensification of competition … and finally the fragmentation and atomization of society””

Arguing the academy was a healthier place in some prior age When? The critiqued cold war era? 19th or 20th century with it’s racial and religious barriers?

Valuable and convincing evidence that universities today are “selling their souls to corporations as much as the state”

Area studies versus disciplines Towards an interdisciplinary, systemetic country approach Hans Kuijper

The problem

Area experts :language, literature, antiquities, arts, technical developments, religion, folklore, social structures/changes, legal system/practice, political affairs, military affairs, philosophical legacy, public health, education system, farming, energy sector, economy, business management, geological features, flora, fauna, population composition/change, media landscape or environmental problems etc. of an area of their choice

to be well schooled in the related science/discipline not making statements on a subject outisde their

expertise or the area in general

Country view is incomplete

Theoretical framework: systemized knowledge

The solution

Cooperation between professionals : manysided area studies

Area as well as era (Middle ages)

Scientific cooperation

Meaning“.. An interdisciplinary group consists of persons differently trained, and organized into a common effort on a common problem with continuous communication among the participants.”

Actively listening to each other and being careful that ‘cooperation’ does not just mean division of labor

Necessity of cooperationOne man can not really know two disciplines, but two men knowing two disciplines can inspire each other

There should be otherness in sameness, but the latter should not be hindered by the former

Cooperation

Possibility (pitfalls?) of cooperation

Difference concepts between disciplines Know the difference between concepts, words Power of metaphor and analogy Pitfalls of binary logic Information visualization

Incompatibility of quantitative and qualitative research

One can not do without the other

Unification of knowledge is possible if everyone is ready to have a respectful and learningful dialogue: what is right rather than who is right

Comparative research

Knowledge of oneself is necessary : gained through knowledge of the other and vice versa

Without contrast we can’t perceive or understand anything

Problem is to be unprejudiced especially for westerners

Can comparative research be done? Only applicable to this country or other countries as well?

Both camps do not give enough attention to national/inter-cultural communication which is a process

conclusion

Interdisciplinary study is possible if the ambition is to attain comprehension

Divides area students: Pretending to be experts: jack of all trades (but master

of none)their knowledge is mile-wide but inch-deep

Inch-wide and inch-deep ex: master a language but not have a degree in general linguistics

Mile-deep and inch-wideamateuristic, shallow: mono disciplinary approach

‘ignorant scholars’:lecture on disciplines on which they have no groundings

Mile-deep and mile-widecomputer-supported cooperative work