The September 11 effect on anthropology

Conventional wisdom among scholars of the Middle East is that the September 11, 2001 attacks left behind a threatening professional environment. Graduate students and faculty alike speak of hostile infiltrators in their classrooms, inevitably bitter tenure battles and the self-censorship that both can produce. Time and time again, in our interviews with anthropologists of the Middle East, they describe their jobs as a minefield. They may have problems explaining research on politically sensitive topics to their universities' institutional review boards; they may see their grant funding denied or withdrawn; they may encounter prejudice among colleagues on hiring and tenure committees; and they may experience conflict with students when presenting critical perspectives on the US-led war on terror. The recruitment efforts have met with little success, as they run up against the anthropological Code of Ethics and anthropologists' political sensibilities, both of which prohibit such collaboration.