The New York Times recently ran an article describing a U.S. Department of Defense program that embeds groups of anthropologists and other social scientists with combat brigades deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. This article suggests that combat operations, and civilian casualties, have dramatically decreased since the arrival of anthropologists, leaving the military more time for security, peacekeeping, and reconstruction efforts.

Anthropologists have always worked in some capacity with the U.S. government, which has led to numerous ethical crises within the discipline in the last century. Franz Boas, considered a founder of American anthropology, was famously censured by the American Anthropological Association for writing a letter to political journal The Nation in 1919 exposing the spying activities of anthropologists in the field. Anthropologist David Price describes the story behind Boas’s censure, anthropology’s role in the history of American intelligence activities, and the state of contemporary anthropological ethics on this matter.

However, the anthropologists described in the New York Times piece are presumably not pretending to conduct research while actually spying for clandestine services. The article describes some of the ways that anthropologists have contributed to military goals by investigating the problems (poverty, land disputes) facing communities caught in a war zone.

What are the ethical decisions related to working under the aegis of U.S. Army brigades in a combat environment? What if your training contributes to the death and injury of others, but contributes to the military’s success? What if your insights are responsible for decreasing the need for combat operations? How might medical anthropology serve the good of all in a war zone?