Word: mosher
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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...
...university set up a fact-finding committee that looked into all the accusations against Mosher, including those by his exwife, who independently charged that he had acted unethically. After hearing Mosher's side of the case, twelve mem bers of the anthropology department voted unanimously to expel him for "behavior inappropriate for an anthropologist." Mosher, who plans to appeal the decision to the Stanford administration and may take the case to court, insists: "I was expelled because Stanford chose to believe the charges brought against me by the Chinese and chose to believe that by publishing articles and photographs...
...Mosher now admits that he was foolish to have published the article. Many leading U.S. anthropologists believe that it violated the profession's code of ethics by failing to disguise the women pictured and to protect their privacy. In addition, officials who allowed Mosher to take the photographs were exposed to possible punishment by higher authorities. Says Prewitt: "What Mosher discovered is an important contribution to anthropology. How he reported it is a tragedy for the field...
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...