The Scholar and the State

This paper draws attention to the 2003 Congressional Testimony on funding International and Area studies. The Congressional subcommittee was presented with testimony by Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who claimed that certain academic centers of area studies had boycotted defense and intelligence-related funding thereby exhibiting an unwillingness to abide by U.S. national security interests. This paper assesses the accuracy of this claim and investigates the stakes made by such a claim. The paper presents some of the history of the debates about such funding in the area of African studies and raises the larger question of the relationship of scholarly activity with State interest. To do so, it connects these more contemporary debates with earlier debates about the relationship between anthropological work and colonial rule.