Would Peter Feaver accept funding for his research from a communist foundation if no strings were attached? I doubt it.

The source of funding matters to academics, partly for ideological reasons (as Professor Feaver notes), but partly for pragmatic reasons (which he ignores).

Take my own research on antinuclear activists. It has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. The activists I studied allowed me to attend their planning meetings and to ask probing questions about their reasons for joining antinuclear groups. When I initially approached them, their first question was, “Who is paying you to find out about us?” If my answer had been “The Pentagon,” I would have had a grant but no research subjects.

The anthropologists who can tell us the most about the sources and dynamics of violence, terrorism, and Islamic radicalism in the Middle East will face the same dilemma. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that they might as well give up field research if they accept Pentagon funding. If they can’t assure, say, Muslim Brotherhood members that they aren’t taking Defense Department money, their research will be compromised. That is why, unless it becomes a truly civilian program, Minerva is doomed to fail.

—Hugh Gusterson