Word: mosher
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dismissing Steven Mosher [March 14], Stanford University's anthropology department may be trying to protect future research projects in China. But what is the value of a whitewashed view of life there? Our scholars should prefer doing no research to being used as propagandists for the host country. If Stanford valued truth and ethical pursuits, it would reward Mosher, not punish...
...expulsion of Steven Mosher from Stanford points up the growing division between academics and their ethics. With the Mosher case in mind, a professor can now say to a student: Go off and do independent research, but if you happen to see something that is wrong, remember that your field is not "values" or "justice." Above all, keep in mind that the area must be kept open for future independent researchers. Because of Mosher, anthropology may suffer a great loss in China. Because of Stanford's reaction, one wonders if anthropology as a discipline of study has not suffered...
...Steven Mosher may not be regarded by the educational community as blameless, but perhaps humanity outweighs academic etiquette. We hardly have a free scholarly environment when a man of Mosher's integrity and compassion must bury his knowledge in obscure periodicals for fear of unleashing public outrage...
Prewitt and many other experts, including Stanford's Barnett, agree that Mosher had a right to publish his research. The usual practice, however, is to write an article for a professional journal. Mosher eventually did that, contributing a report, without pictures, to the scholarly Asian Survey journal. A book, titled Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese, will be published by Macmillan in the fall. Says Mosher: "I have an obligation to the Chinese whose lives I shared to document the reality of village life under Communism...
...past two years, the Chinese government has sharply restricted access by U.S. scholars. The program that sent Mosher to China now has only four humanists and social scientists working in the country, in contrast to the 50 or so Mosher recalls from his day. No one is allowed to study villages, where about 75% of all Chinese live. But American scholars do not blame Mosher for the crackdown. Says Norma Diamond, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan: "The kind of extensive social investigation that anthropologists require has never been understood or welcome in China." Many believe that the Chinese...