James Der Derian on Academics at War
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06.20.2010
Academics are no longer just ivory tower analysts. The Defense Department has recently hired civilian anthropologists and social scientists as on-the-ground advisers to soldiers in something called the Human Terrain System. James Der Derian of Brown University talks to Anne Strainchamps about the controversy and his film "Human Terrain: War Becomes Academic."
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Montesquieu On the mores of the vanquished people
As I listened to this segment I was reading M's The Spirit of the Law: Part 2, Book 10, Chapter 11; On the mores of vanquished people. "In these conquests, it is not enough to leave the vanquished nation its laws; it is perhaps more necessary to leave it its mores, because a people always knows, loves and defends its mores better than its laws
The French were driven out of Italy nine times because, say the historians, they were insolent to women and girls. It is too much for a nation to have to suffer not only the conqueror's pride but also his incontinence; not only both these but also his indiscretion, probably the more trying because it multiplies outrages to infinity."
I wonder if Mr. Der Derian has read Montesquieu. If he has then it would seem that his objections to the role of anthropologists in this context has its roots in a desire that American military interventions be unsuccessful.
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