
Patrick L. Schmidt, "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)
New Books in Anthropology
00:00
The Carnegie Corporation and the Russian Research Center
There was like an old boy network factor here. Basically the guy who was responsible for heading out the money at Carnegie just happened to be good friends with the people who ended up receiving it. And partially this is because their logic was, if you have the science to do it, you don't have to be an area expert. I guess what some people would have said is the old fashioned area experts who grew up there or were ex-patriots from there. It didn't matter. If you knew the methods and the techniques, then you could get stuff done scientifically. The Russian Research Center also got money directly from the US government, from the CIA, as a matter of fact.
Transcript
Play full episode