Go Tell It on the Mlountain: CGerald Berreinan and the
]Politcs of Truth
Donnza Brasset
A People's Anthropologist
In his Forward to Gerald Berreman's book The Politics of Truth (1981), the
,anthropologist and folklorist Ved Prakash Vatuk gave Berreman one of the highest
compliments that can be paid to an academic-, "Gerald Berreman chose the path of the
Gita's jnana yogi-knowledge to serve humanity" (v). Beyond having eamned a
reputation as a distinguished anthropologist, Berreman's penchant for socially
relevant research won him two honorary doctorates: the first, from the University of
Stockholm in 1978, and the second from Garwhal University in India the following
year. Both awards lauded the humanism imbued in his scholarship on social
inequality, but the Stockholm award additionally singled him out for being among
"the most prominent spokesmen advocating an independent and critical stance
regarding the political and military interests of superpowers," and named him "one of
the leading figures of our times where social anthropological research is concerned"
(Vi).
Declaring Berreman "a selfless activist in the purest sense" (v), Vatuk added
in his forward that Berreman's humanity prevented him from seeing the people he
studied as mere means to an eviscerated, theoretical end. In Vatuk's view, Berreman
has not used people simplras raw data with which to cook up some
gourmet theories, but has carefully observed people in order to
understand what it is about the human experience which mks one
group turn against another, and in order to try to fmd ways by which
the world might become a place without inhumanity, without war,
and without ' 'ustice. [1981:vii]
Besides eschewing "gourmet theories," as Vatuk put it, Berreman also steered
clear of gourmet writing. Anyone familiar with his work is aware that he has always
wfitten in clear, incisive, and eloquent prose that is readily available to virtually
anyone in the world literate in English. He has assiduously avoilded anthropological
trends toward an increasingly specialized insiders' jargon: toward what Robert
Borofsky referred to as the attempt to keep the intellectually "impure" outside of
,anthropological discourse by ratcheting up the levels of theoretical abstraction
(Borofsky 2000: 1 0).
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It would not have occurred to me 35 years ago when I first read Gerald
Berreman's work, and long before I was privileged to become one of his students, to
think of him as I do now, as a veritable "people's anthropologist." At that time I
believed that anthropology was, in the end, all about a genuine search to find ways of
reducing what was commonly referred to in those years as "man's inhumanity to
man." But anthropology has undergone many changes since then, and I now believe
that Berreman's refusal to see human beings as mere grist for the theoretical mills of
philosopher kings, his willingness to stand up for those who are denied a voice in their
own fates, the accessibility of his ideas, and the lack of affectation in his writing,
readily warrants his characterization as an anthropologist of the people.
Moral Courage and the Poltics of Truth
Perhaps the definitive test of Berreman's personal integrity and moral courage
as an academic was in his active stance against the Vietnam War, and against the
complicity of social scientists-particularly anthropologists-who had conducted
research projects sponsored by the Department of Defense for counterinsurgency
purposes. In the academic world, political dissent against government policy requires
moral courage for the very reason that one is so rarely'supported by colleagues and
other intellectuals sharin'g similar sympathies.
As Edward Said points out, the political habits of many academics have
become undermined by the tacit assumption that their faculty positions are partially
contingent on not seeming too political or controversial (1996: 100). The fundraising
concerns of university administrators become internalized by their faculties and lead
to politically cautious nonms of behavior. Presenting an appearance of balance,
objectivity, and neutrality is understood to smooth the path to job security, to
consultantships, to board appointments, to prestigious committees, to international
recognition, and other symptoms ALof academic stature.
Russell Jacoby (1987) notes additionally that the absorption of intellectuals by
universities breeds a single-minded focus on career paths; on the numerous
monographs, journals, books, and conferences that form the criteria for promotion and
tenure, and which leave little time for political engagement outside of departmental
boundaries. But faculty concentration on career paths has other side effects. In the
last three decades, many New Left intellectuals have had their public advocacy roles
undercut when they became swept away by the postmodern critique of 20'hcentury
social science. On the one hand, according to Jacoby, many of the (usually younger)
Neo-Marxist professors writing in the French post-structuralist mode, have developed
a credible scholarsh'ip assailing the invidious sexist. racist. or elitist world views
permeating much of Western literature and social science. But a great deal of what
they produce is so highly specialized, so ridden with what Jacoby refers to as "self-
devouring" metatheory, inviting "endless spirals of commentary" as to make their
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.work virtually unreadable, if not unread, except by the specialists themselves
(1987: 173).
In the end, their exclusive, highly abstract, and unapologetically esoteric
scholarship renders much of their work so highly inaccessible as to become irrelevant.
Moreover, as Jacoby points out, their language and body of theory have come to look
increasingly like the work it sought to subvert (1987:-141). Due to the obscure
"6curlicues and filigrees" of their prose (Harris 1999:156), many (by no means all)
proponents of the postmodern critique of Western thought, who might otherwise be
capable of a potent challenge to power, have, in effect, rendered themselves politically
impotent.
Even more important than the political passivity of many academics who at
least tacitly share a condemnatory view of the abuses of power, is the predilection of
so many to be co-opted by power. Of these, some can trace their social legitimacy as
far back as the Greek city-states when intellectuals colluded with the whims of
political leaders in crafting state myths and propaganda designed to gain the loyalty of
their citizens. Convinced that consensus is critical to state functioning, these modern
Machiavellians have no difficulty aiding power elites in forgin a role for themselves
as defenders of state interests, whatever the social cost. In the acadenmic world,
particularly in the more prestigious universities, those with this cast of mind tend to
congregate in the international relations branch of political science, where a
disproportionate number of the faculty act as consultants to the world's various
departments of defense. As such, they act as agents, rather than critics, of state power.
For others, their co-option by power has occurred largely through a kind of
socio-cultural default; their supportive stance toward state interests can be traced to
the pervasive and compelling influence of national culture!l In his incisive analysis of
Vthe evolution of power over the mill,ennia, John Kenneth Galbraith (1985) reiterates
'the observations of numerous political theorists who believe that state power is at its
highest level when governed populations submit to state authority without knowing
they are being controlled. State power that works by conditioning populations toward
consen~sus, according to Galbraith, is so highly effective precisely "'because we are so
-extensively innocent of its exercise" (1985:188). Galbraith cites the military as the
most forceful expression of state conditioned power because of the military
e-stablishment's monopoly on state resources. The ideological power of the military
hsbecome so potent a force in modern states that few institutions-political,
economic, religious, educational, and cultural-have been left untouched by its
effects. "Iln its management and control of information," Galbraith says, military
vower is "'by a wide margin, the most comprehensive and successful exponent of
conditioned power" (1985:166).
It follows rather naturally that those challenging military policy are quickly
.met with the approbation of political leaders and their citizenries. This ready reflex to
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marginalize critics of state power is the modern-day legacy of centuries-old devices
used by political leaders who saw the benefit in espousing nationalism and patriotism
as among the most venerable of state values.
Those academics drawn in by state political and military conditioning tend to
be the inadlvertent exponents of state power. These include liberals as well as
conservatives in society, and they frequently fill roles as official state historians, as
political commentators in the media, or as area experts representing national interests.
Such people are not immune to the abuses of power, and many voice their criticisms
of state policy; but like those holding university positions, their custom is to avoid
been seen as overly controversial, because therein lies the potential for stigma,
marginalization, and loss of job security.
In the short-terms, conditioning populations for consensus has to do with
maintaining social hierarchy, with normalilzing social and economic inequalities, and
with legitimizing the coercive power of the state. But, because of the critical rolle
militaries play in the maintenance of their states, it is the long term goal, integral to
military organization, that requires the greatest conditioning effort: preparing their
citizenries for war with other states. It goes without saying that a genuine critique of
the abuses of power thus requires an unusual degree of conviction, courage, and
determination on the part of those who do so.
Despite the obstacles, however, there has always been a small cadre of
individuals who have stood up against the misuse of power, regardless of the silence
of their peers, or of the condemnation of their state leaders and fellow citizens. Some
in this mode have been among the most celebrated intellectuals of the 20e century:
Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, Antonio Gramsci, Hannah Arendt, Chinua
Achebe, C.Wright Mills, Karl Popper, Noam Chomsky, Jose Marti, and Frantz Fanon,
to name a few. What unites each of them--and which is undoubtedly the critical
factor in their celebratory status is the conviction they share that the truly thoughtful
intellect is one who reacts against the abuses of power. Reacts, as Said has remared
by speakingt out when governments manifestly oppress people, when inj'ustices
continue to occur., and when fellow academics and intellectuals become co-opted by
governments and turn a blind eye to the abuses of power (1996: 18).
But Said has been careful to make the important distinction between those
intellectuals who engage their group or national loyalties in an effort t'o safeguard the
survival of their communities during times of extrem'e national urgency, and those
whose community or national loyalties supercede their critical judgment regarding the
abuse of power. In his words'.
loyalty to the group's fight for survival cannot draw in the intellectual
so far as to narcotize the critical sense, or reduce its imperatives,
which are always to go beyond survilval to questions of poHlical
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liberation, to cr'tiques of the leadership, to presenting alternatives
tat are too often marginalized or pushed aside as irrelevant to the
main battle at hand. [ 1996:41 ]
Gerald Berreman has long maintained that those who are informed about the
mechanisms and consequences of exploitative social policies have an obligation to
speak out against them; social scientists, especially, have a responsibility to exercise
'*fe politics of truth" when they have the relevant facts and informed opinions about
social problems. In his words:
I believe that social scientists have much to offer toward the
intelligent and humane solution of those problems, and that they have
a positive responsibility to offer it forthrightly and publicly, wherever
it may be heard, regardless of national or other affiliations. [1981:x]
This is essentially what James Baldwin had in mind when he said that those whho are
armed with an understanding of the social consequences of racial discrimination need'
to bear witness to them and "Go tell it on the mountain," as he put it in the title of one
of his books (1995).
Vietnam Redux
During the late 1960s through the early 1970s, the period that saw the massive
escalation of U.S. forces in Vietnam, Berreman declared both in writing and in public
that the U.S. was conducting a racist war, both externally, towards our Southeast
Asian's enemies, and internally, when African-American, Latinos, and other
.minorities were disproportionately sent to the front lines to die. He referred to our
war planners-people like then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger--was war criminals.
Twenty-six years after the end of the war in Vietnam, Christopher Hitchens,
took up this topic in his book The Trial of Henry Kissinger (200 1). Hitchens' claim is
that Kissinger's umiquely callous indifference to the toll his decisions have taken on
human life and human rights throughout the world qualify him as war criminal by
standard international criteria. Hitchens makes a distinction between what he termed
the usual sort of "depraved realpolitik"' frequently practiced by state leaders in war
and other circumstances, from what he calls "identifiable crimes" committed by
Kissinger that should be placed on a proper bill of indictment for war crimes
(2001:ix). Hitchens' documentation of Kissinger's collusion in the massacre of
huindreds of thous,ands. of Fast Timorese in the middle 1970s,, hv lndonesia  a nolitical
ally of the United States and Kissinger's involvement in the assassinations of heads
of state in Chile and Cyprus, among others, are cases in point.
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For the American citizenry, the most powerful disclosures by Hitchens may
be his evidence that Kissinger, prior to his having joined the Nixon administration, led
the effort to undermine the U.S.-Vietnamese 1968 Paris Peace Accords with a view to
influencing U.S. elections in favor of a Nixon presidency.  Hitchens's data
demonstrates that South Vietnamese leaders were prepared at the time to join the
North Vietnamese in negotiating the terms for the termination of the war. Through
behind-the-scenes intrigue, Kissinger acted as Nixon's informant by privately assuning
South Vietnamese military officials that an in-coming Republican administration
would offer them better terms than would a Democratic one.
"In this way," according to Hitchens, "they undercut the talks themselves and
the electoral strategy of Hubert Humphrey [Nixon's campaign rival]" (2001:6). The
South Vietnamese subsequently withdrew from the Paris talks on the eve of the U.S.
presidential election.s, precipitating a move that terminated the peace plank on which
the Democrats had based their electoral bid; this smoothed the path to the Nixon
presidency. Four years later, the war ended on terms identical to those proposed by
H.anoi for the Paris peace negotiations in 1968. In the interim, approximately 20,000
U.S. servicemen, and an unknown number of Vietnamese servicemen died in battle.
As for Berreman's charge of racism on the part of U.S. war planners, Roger
Morris, a former National Security Councill staff member during the Johnson and
Nixon administrations, described one of his roles at the NSC as "cleaning up
Kissinger's documents" (Morris 2001). Concurring with many of Hitchens' findings,
Morris claimed that Kissinger, along with his circle of peers and protege's, were
indeed racist in their attitudes toward Southeast Asians, and as such held no qualms
about instigating mayof the government's lethal and tortuous machinations i
Vietnam and Cambodia.
Gerald Berreman and others 'likf, him who had summoned the courage to
challenge U.S. policy on Vietnam can derive fturther vindication in former Secretary
of Defense Robert McNamara's public acknowledgment of his culpability in the
personal and national tragedy of that war. In his book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy
and Lessons of Vietnam (1995), McNamara enumerated a veritable litany of mistaken
assumptions and misguided moral judgments that pervaded the day-to-day political
and strategic plang for the war. The highest ranin U.S. government official to
ever admit such grave mistakes in public, McNamara now holds views that are in line
with the early opponents of the war; opponents whose criticism and dissent were
roundly denounced at the time by numerous government officials, including
McNamara himself.
As for the Vietnam War as a whole, the vast majority of those in top U.S.
political, military, and academic circles today are fundamentally united in dubbing the
whole undertaking a political, strategic, and foreign policy mistake: a "blunder," in the
words of some, "wrongheaded" according to others.2 A "wrongheaded blunder"'i
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effect, that resulted in the deaths of close to 3 million American and Vietnamese
servicemen, as well as in countless other human and envirommental devastations. Few
thoughtful people today doubt that among the critical factors leading to the
tnIr11nation of the war in Vietnam were the voices of dissent of those who opposed the
war on moral grounds.
Spies, Prophets, and the Control of Power
Perhaps the most difficult position Gerald Beffeman was to take in his
career-because it was closer to home-was when he challenged those social
scientists, some of whom were colleagues in anthropology, who gathered political and
cultural data in the mid-1960s on Thai villagers for Department of Defense
counterinsurgency operations. Berreman's public condemnation of those conducting
such research led to heated debate within the American Anthropological Association
regarding the obligation and responsibilities of anthropologists towards the people
they study. The debate culminated in the majority of members taking sides with
Beffeman by endorsing the adoption of a code of Professional Responsibility for the
Association, which Beffeman helped draft.
The sentiment of those agreeing with the new code of ethics was echoed
earlier in a point made by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in his response to the
public disclosure of Project Camelot, another government-sponsored program
conceived in the 1960s and designed to identify revolutionary "elements" in Latin
America.   Sahlins asserted that every citizen has the right to engage in
counterinsurgency work, but no onie-scholar or citizen--"has leave ... to so delude
himself and others about the scientific legitimacy and disinterested objectivity of this
work" (1967:78).
Overall, some of the best efforts directed towards undermninmg the misuse of
power in the world-slavery, child labor, civil rights, or envirommental protections-~
have come from a relatively small cadre of intellectuals and disaffected citizens who
have succeeded in pricking the conscience of the majority to act against them.
Nonetheless, the impediments to achieving genuine democratic institutions in society
appear to be expanding. Planetary problems associated with globalization, industrial
pollution, the growing inequities between rich and poor, and an intensification of the
use of military and other fonms of violence against other countries require more than
the struggles of a determined few.
.In his seminal work, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper (I197 1)
implicated the passivity of so many of the world's intellectuals as among the more
importanlt obstacles. to achieving genuine democratic institutions in society. Popper
enjoined fellow academics to "cease posing as prophets," in order to begin the work of
crafting our own fates. As he put it, "when we have given up worrying whether or not
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history will justify us, then one day perhaps we may succeed in getting power under
control" (1971:280).
Studying Power: A Note of Encouragement
Since the study of humanity is the purview of anthropology, most projectsA
undertaken by anthropologists contain the opportunity to engage in socially
responsible scholarship. Research projects that might illumine the worldview, social
networks, normative behavior, and policy motivations of the world's political,
economic, or military elites are among these. Based on my own experience in
interviewing military and corporate elites, I can attest that the field is rich in
possibilities for the anthropologist interested in the study of power. To date, the only
obstacle to such research is the mystique, expressed both in the anthropological
literature on power (and informally, as expressed by students and colleagues)
conveying the notion that access to elites is a difficult, if not impossible undertaking.
In the view of one anthropologist, for example, "the Pentagon, large corporatilons, and
nuclear weapons laboratories ... do not readily welcome strangers with notebooks,"
suggesting that such organizations contain people with security clearances "who ... are
nervous that ethnographers may disrupt their relationships with superiors or
jeopardize the secrets ... they are supposed to guard from outsiders" (Gusterson
1992:63).
I found no such nervousness on the part of my interview respondents at the
Pentagon.  (Military, political and corporate elites are simply not afraid of
anthropologists.) The goal of my research was to describe the values, attitudes, and
cultural assumptions of military elites regarding U.S. policy toward the -Soviet Union
in the context of the Cold War. To that end, I interviewed former and then-current,
chairmnen and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former members of the National
Security Council, high-rakn oXfficers in the intell'igence branches of their services,
senior offi'cials in administrative and faculty positions at prominent military colleges
and universities, a couple of retired CIA directors, and CEOs within top-level defense
industries, among others.
I believe that conjectures about the difficulty of access to such people derives
largely from a misguided notion of the unusual complexity and ambiguity of life
within the confines of the Pentagon, as well as of the organizational features of large
corporations. The Pentagon, for example, is primarily a physical structure that houses
a multitude of groups separated by an enormous diversity of roles, madts,
functions, missions, and sub-cultures. There is, in addition, a complex web of
competingy militarv and civilian deDartments, each of which has its own floors. wMngs,
branches, divisions, units, and sub-units.
Contrary to the widespread belief that the Pentagon is a monolithic entity that
is const'itutionally unfriendly to "strangers with notebooks" (Gusterson 1992:63), each
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wing, story, department, unit, group, or individual in the Pentagon has developed
independent systems of control of information. All of these entities make their own
decisions regarding access to outsiders, and none of them is subsumed under a
particular authority with the ability to exercise absolute control over the entire
organization. In short, beyond the security personnel who check the purses and
briefcases of visitors for concealed weapons-~a practice replicated in many of the
public buildings in Washington-there is no overarching body that monitors the
comings and goings of all manner of civilians with business and other interests at the
Pentagon. Access to individuals for interview purposes is, therefore, primarily a
matter of discretion on the part of the individual with whom one requests an interview.
That this state of affairs chagrins those whose designated function is to oversee visits
to the Pentagon (e.g. The Office of Public Relations) is another matter. In the wake of
the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, some of this may change.
But there is a plethora of other routes to access, such as interviewing senior Pentagon
officials in their own homes or restaurants, as I have done on several occasions.
There is also no mystery about the particular techniques involved in gaiuning
access to powerful milieu, about conducting interviews with high-status individuals,
or about the analysis of interview data. Along witls an abundance of sound
methodological material in anthropology pertaining to qualitative analyses, there is
ahleady a rich literature in sociology and political science describing the variety of
means one can use to gain access to all matter of elite communities (see Hunter 1959;
Ostrander 1993; Herz and Imber 1995; Domhoff 1998; Stasz 1995; Blondel and
Muller-Rommel 1993). A perusal of some of this material would prevent future
scholars in the anthropology of power from having to entirely reinvent the wheel on
the subject.
My purpose in bringing this up is to provide encouragement to would-be
students of power by makin the point that gaining access to elite communities is no
more difficult than gaining access to the kinds of groups more typically studied by
anthropologists. As Laura Nader (1969) pointed out decades ago, colleagues and
students conducting research that would illumine the structural arrangements,
normative values, and social networks of communities of power (among other topics)
could greatly enrich the public discourse on the democratic application of power
across the globe.
At a ninimum, anthropological insights can refine the theoretical
contributions of specialists in international relations, many of whose members
interpret military and political policy to be the result of rational and realistic appraisals
of state interests. Based on my own observations, I can assert that normative values,
competition for promotions, the pursuit of symbolic quantifilers of status and prestige
(which includes economic gain), the internalization of state values, the pragmatic
requirements of military organization, ethnocentrism, distrust of civilian values,
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among many other influences, have at least as profound an effect on military and
political decision-making as adherence to rational appraisals of state interests.
Conclusion
In the end, the hope would be that Jacoby (1987) is wrong in his view that the
intellectuals who care about where society is going, are disappearing, or that most of
them are mired in an academic culture of commitment to neutrality, or drawn into
ever-expanding Defense and corporate realms. "Getting power under control," as
Popper (1971) put it, seems crucial, as corporate and state interests (worldwide)
continue to destroy communities, perpetuate wars, and otherwise undermine the
quality of life on the planet.
The quote by Robert Redfield that was taped to the outside of Gerald
Berreman's office door for many years is as good as any for cutting to the heart of the
engaged anthropologist's role in society: "I have placed myself squarely on the side of
mnid and have not shamed to wish mankind well" (1957:141).
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Stasz, Clarice
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2 In the interviews I conducted with senior officers and other defense officials for my research
on military elites in Washington, D.C., the words "blundee' and "wrongheaded" were the most
commonly used by respondents in reference to thie U.S. incursion in Vietnanm