Review Essay The President’s Mother the Anthropologist and the Anthropologist’s Son: Anthropological Issues and US President Obama

The Manufacturing of a President: The CIA’s Insertion of Barack H. Obama, Jr. into the White House. Wayne Madsen, Raleigh, North Carolina: Lulu Press, 2012, ISBN: 978-1478260646, xviii + 377 pp. Pb: $20.00.

David Lempert

ABSTRACT: Barack Obama was the fi rst son of a PhD anthropologist to serve as President of the United States, and some popular press linked his political views and actions, which were allegedly in violation of international law, to failures in American anthropology to uphold in- ternational law as well as to personal failures by anthropologists to transmit the professional ethics of the discipline to their off spring. This essay examines those critiques and identifi es defi ciencies in anthropological presentations of ‘multiculturalism’ and in anthropology’s ad- herence to international law. It also reviews the cultural self-identifi cation of President Obama, drawing att ention to the sub-cultures of ‘expat’ communities like those in which President Obama was raised and in which many practising anthropologists and their children live.

KEYWORDS: cultural rights, ethics, expatriate community, international law, multiculturalism, Obama family

Recent books from both outside and inside our dis- the socialisation of children resulting from this collu- cipline link anthropology directly to policies of the sion, which is exemplifi ed by the career and policies former US President Barack Obama1, whose mother of Barack Obama, whom he identifi es by his various was an anthropologist, as well as his half-sister. This names as Barack Hussein Obama/Soebarka/Soetoro. essay examines the allegations made in a recent book Rather than identify as ‘African’ or ‘Indonesian’ or by journalist Wayne Madsen (which partly rely on ‘hyphenated-American’, Madsen claims that Obama those made in another recent book by Janny Scott has a new kind of identity that was ‘manufactured’ in 2011 about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fi rst Presi- by Dunham and the national security state with no dential mother who was a Ph.D. anthropologist) that national att achments (i.e. national history, culture directly implicate Dunham and American anthro- and land att achments, other than those to a specifi c pologists in the policies of President Obama and of governmental agency and its goals) or ethnic at- the United States. Madsen charges that the American tachments. He sees this unsustainable ‘culture’ as anthropology community not only collaborated for one motivated by primitive drives of power, obedi- decades with policies of the national security state ence and human control in service to a hidden elite apparatus of the United States that he views as geno- bureaucracy. cidal and internationally criminal, but that the world Although many (perhaps most) of Madsen’s claims is now bearing witness to a new acultural identity in are unfounded innuendo, lacking in credibility and

Anthropology in Action, 25, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 41–48 © Berghahn Books and the Association for Anthropology in Action ISSN 0967-201X (Print) ISSN 1752-2285 (Online) doi:10.3167/aia.2018.250105 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Att ribution Noncommercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license (htt ps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). For uses beyond those covered in the license contact Berghahn Books. AiA | David Lempert

irresponsible to the point of libel, the implications of national laws and treaties that the US government the issues raised in this book, I would argue, strike had signed, respecting fundamental civil liberties, so closely to the heart of anthropology and the role cultural and natural rights, and ideals of civilisation of anthropologists – as professionals, as citizens, and and humanity. What Madsen now believes that he even as parents and simply as human beings – that received instead was a growing police state apparatus, this is not a book that can simply be dismissed and global and planetary destabilisation, destruction of the ignored by the profession. In my view, there are three American social compact, and a dismantling of rule of related and important anthropological issues raised law. He is looking for someone or something to blame. in Madsen’s book that are important for discussion Rather than take personal responsibility for his in our profession: political choices and off er potential solutions and mechanisms for changing US institutions and politi- (a) The fi rst is on the relationship between the cal culture, Madsen claims that he and others were national security state and anthropology as deceived by an apparatus of a national security state a result of anthropologists failing to establish and corporate power that ‘manufactured’ not just the clear professional adherence to obligations of deception but also the person who represented it – international law. Barack Obama. (b) The second is on the implications of modern Apparently because Obama’s mother was an an- ‘identities’ and ‘multicultural ethnicities’ and thropologist and because many anthropologists were what the implications may be for current and originally vocal supporters of international laws and future generations who are being encouraged treaties for cultural rights, environmental protec- to ‘invent’ their identities and who may choose tions, and sustainability that were also originally part to fi ll the ethnic identity vacuum they face of the professional ethic of anthropology and/or per- with hollow, institutional identities or drives haps because of Obama’s multiracial/multicultural/ of power, violence and control. international background, Madsen expected Obama (c) The third is on what books like this one tell to present a diff erent identity and ethic. Probably so us about contemporary political culture and did many others in the United States and globally. views of political power in the administrative Madsen does not appear to be surprised by the security state and in the era of globalisation. large number of other politicians who supported the They highlight contemporary mythologies and same views as Barack Obama in the United States or ideologies of the weakness of the individual overseas; among these were the former presidential against the apparent omnipotence of agencies candidates and Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton of control and suggest the existence of a ‘dark’ and John Kerry, Senator John McCain, and Governor or ‘shadow’ politics. Mitt Romney, and former Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. Perhaps Madsen does not This essay will briefl y present and deconstruct Mad- focus on them because they are of European descent sen’s main argument. It will then scrutinise the argu- and visibly a part of what C. Wright Mills (1956) ments Madsen presents that are relevant to his critique called the ‘power elite’, with the national security of American anthropology, to Dunham as an applied state furthering their private fi nancial and class/eth- anthropologist, and to the ethnic identity of Barack nic/institutional interests. Obama, the anthropologist’s son, weighing them for To explain his sense of being cheated, Madsen their veracity as if they were presented in a court of claims that ‘the 44th President of the United States, law. The essay will then discuss the three key issues the son and grandson of CIA operatives, was in es- for anthropology that Madsen raises indirectly. sence a “Manchurian candidate” groomed from an early age to be inserted into the White House at the proper time’ (xi). He states that ‘President Obama Presenting and Deconstructing serves not the interests of the American people but Madsen’s Argument those of a small wealthy elite who have instructed him on how to carry out his major and even minor Wayne Madsen tells us that he feels cheated. He duties’ (xii). He further alleges the ‘distinct possibil- claims that, in voting for Barack Obama for President ity that the president of the United States was raised in 2008, he and others believed, or had reason to be- within a household where mass murder of civilians lieve, that they were voting for a candidate who took was not considered a crime against humanity but a seriously his oath to the US constitution and to inter- macabre blood sport’ (100).

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Once he comes up with this single explanation, and to enjoy the free exchange of ideas and opportu- Madsen looks for facts to fi t the theory. He identifi es nity for choice of fi eldwork, topics and approaches activities of the CIA, fi nds possibilities of activities of that was apparently available to the President’s the Obama family that could remotely be linked to mother and to his half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, when those activities, and then draws the conclusion that they studied anthropology. Madsen creates the infer- they must be linked. The logic throughout the book ence that President Obama’s policies have restricted follows a single, fl awed patt ern in multiple examples or distorted the fi eld of anthropology, created a cli- that can be paraphrased as follows: ‘One third of mate of fear and caused the fi eld to regress, but he anthropological funding through foundations for does not directly address how. overseas research like Ford came from the CIA dur- ing the 1960s and 1970s. Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was an anthropologist who received Scrutinising Madsen’s ‘Facts’ Ford Foundation funding during the 1970s. There- fore, Dunham worked for the CIA’. Or similarly, ‘The Madsen does not present a single shred of direct CIA recruited students at Occidental College and at evidence that Obama’s mother, father, grandparents Columbia University. Obama went to school at Oc- or (before his Presidency) Obama himself worked for cidental and Columbia. Therefore, the CIA recruited the national security state. Not a single person has Obama’. The possibilities and implications of anthro- come forward to off er testimony to such eff ect, and pologists’ relationships with the national security there is no writt en evidence proving these charges. state (even if they are indirect) are interesting, but Madsen asserts that evidence has been cleansed, that Madsen off ers no alternate hypotheses and conclu- important records have been sealed or destroyed sions (some of which may be more valid and even (including passport records, school records and gov- more disturbing). ernment employment records) and that witnesses Madsen does not distinguish between the CIA (particularly in Indonesia) have been threatened and other national security state agencies that have (introduction). grown at an explosive rate in the United States (and Some of Madsen’s claims are clearly false and globally) over the past several years, apparently could be considered libellous (including statements beyond any eff ective public control and with litt le about well-known anthropologist Cliff ord Geertz). He transparency. Nor does he distinguish between actu- misrepresents the work of at least one anthropologist ally working for the national (or international) secu- (David Price) in order to further his claims. At times, rity state as an employee (or contractor) and enabling he bludgeons the reader with falsehoods. A respon- or supporting it through shared ideology and inter- sible publisher, editor and lawyer vett ing this book ests. Madsen also does not clearly explain whether would have kept the book solely focused on the facts. he opposes the national security state (that he calls Nevertheless, Madsen does off er a number of the ‘CIA’) and the Obama Administration because he claims that can be used to construct important theo- fi nds that they violated international law, because he ries and hypotheses that have a bearing on anthropol- fi nds that they were not under any eff ective citizen ogy and on contemporary politics. Though Madsen’s and legal control, or because he believes that they claims do not meet a legal standard of proof, I appear to have been captured by oligarchic interests believe they are still signifi cant for history and for and a self-aggrandising ideology. Nor does he ex- anthropology.2 Madsen’s evidence to support the as- plain the kind of relationship between government sertion that Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and universities and researchers for the collection of worked under ‘non-offi cial cover’ (‘NOC’) as a CIA international information and for the international agent within any one of the many organisations intervention of which he does approve, and why he where she worked is not convincing. However, there supports it. He off ers no vision and no solutions for likely would have been CIA agents in such status problems he identifi es in anthropology, in university in the organisations where she worked (such as the funding, in international research, in international US Agency for International Development [USAID] relations, in the selection of government offi cials and and its contractors). She lived and worked in the in the tasking and oversight of the national security same communities and offi ces as people who were state. CIA offi cers, and there is no evidence anywhere that One might also reasonably ask whether it is even she sought to assure that they were accountable to possible today for an anthropology student or pro- international law or standards and that the law and fessor to receive the breadth and quality of education various publics and peoples were being protected by

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the government offi ces where she worked. Madsen’s presidency for 30 years also sounds more like it is book raises questions about how Dunham could have taken from the script of books and fi lms (like Jerzy studied Russian at the height of the Cold War at the Kosinski’s fi lm Being There [1971] and Ira Levin’s University of Hawaii with her fi rst husband (Barack’s novel The Boys from Brazil [1976]) than from the realm biological father), and why she would have married of logical possibility, but Madsen hints at other ways an Indonesian lieutenant colonel whom she also met of exerting infl uence. Obama almost certainly found there if she didn’t already have some inclination to- benefactors in high places with ties to funds, since wards supporting the institutional objectives of the this is the reality of the US political system (perhaps US national security state and the interests it served. what we might consider to be ‘oligarchy’). The idea That is really as far as the evidence Madsen presents that such a benefactor facilitated the appearance of on Dunham goes. scandalous information in the press to clear away The specifi c allegation that Madsen makes several his rivals is consistent with this. Today, it is widely times and then begins to state as proven fact, that acknowledged that the national (or international) se- Dunham went to survey the political leanings of Indo- curity state of governments throughout the world is nesian villagers and then provided names for govern- collecting personal information all of the time with- ment death squad targeting as part of the ‘PROSYMS’ out legal oversight. Though Madsen does not off er project to target Chinese-Indonesians and other so- any proof, it is conceivable that the security state now called ‘Communists’ (56), is irresponsible, inappro- uses such information (and suppresses other damag- priate and not credible. Madsen misrepresents an ing information) so as to create indebtedness among article by anthropological historian David Price in political fi gures that it favours. describing anthropologist Cliff ord Geertz as ‘one of the top witt ing U.S. assets in Java’ and calling him Dunham’s ‘de facto “control offi cer”’ (96). He also Implications for Anthropology misuses Price’s work to suggest that Price believes that Dunham was funded by the CIA and was re- The implications of Madsen’s book for anthropology sponding to the CIA (120; see also Price 2003). The are nonetheless disturbing, and it is worth looking at chronology of Dunham’s employment and activities each of three issues in turn. in Indonesia does not even put her in the fi eld in Java until 1975. The Relationship between the National Security State There is also no evidence that Barack Obama, Sr., and Anthropology President Obama’s biological father, worked for the The question that Madsen, a non-anthropologist, asks CIA. He received scholarship money to study at Ha- about how the son and brother of an anthropologist waii and Harvard. That made him a likely candidate can apparently grow up without any consciousness for US government contacts of many forms. But this of the most fundamental ethical principles of anthro- book proves nothing more than that. Madsen’s case pology, particularly when these principles are fi rmly that Obama worked for the CIA before becoming embedded in international law, should rightly make President is also too weak to take seriously. Obama every anthropologist squirm. does fi t a classic profi le of someone whom the US It would be partly comforting if Madsen’s premise intelligence services would recruit. He was highly were true, and that some anthropologists had become mobile (geographically rootless), and from a broken corrupted and co-opted such that they no longer up- family without any strong community ties and that held the basic principles of law or human morality had a history in military or government service. He or the basic belief even of human or planetary sur- also had a possible dual nationality and had foreign vival, and that they passed this psychopathology on language skills. These qualities are almost tailor-made to their children in the way they taught and raised for the spy trade. Nevertheless, though Obama’s fi rst them. If a few anthropologists somehow went over job, at 22, may have been for a CIA front organisation to the ‘dark side’ for whatever reason, there would collecting fi nancial information, Business Interna- still be a way to identify them, hold them accountable tional Company (BIC), there is not a shred of evidence and move on. But the picture that Madsen presents presented in the book that he was actually recruited is not just of a few wayward anthropologists and by the CIA or that he ever worked for the CIA prior their children. It is of a profession that has become to his presidency. detached from its own humanistic principles, from The idea that a cabal was standing in the shad- its standards and reason for being, and from interna- ows preparing Obama for a meteoric rise to the US tional law (Lempert, 2012a).

44 | The President’s Mother the Anthropologist and the Anthropologist’s Son | AiA

What the argument in Madsen’s book is really authored an ethics code for practising anthropolo- suggesting, quoting anthropologists like Ralph Beals gists and published it in one of our leading journals, (and his 1966 report, which was long suppressed) Practicing Anthropology (Lempert 1997). Recently, I along with Margaret Mead’s response in 1971, is that have also been designing accountability indicators to anthropology has so long been corrupted that it has hold international interventions directly accountable now for decades done nothing to ensure that those to international law (Lempert 2011, 2012a). I have whom it educates at any level, or who are members called for the unionisation of professionals and for of anthropological organisations and who work as licensing and enforcement schemes. This isn’t just the professionals, take any enforceable oath of any kind ‘right’ thing to do or a question of self-interest for our to international law and to the ethics of the profes- profession, though it is also that. Upholding these sion when they work in practice. principles and international laws are now prereq- Dunham only had a BA in anthropology (from the uisites for human and planetary survival as well as University of Hawaii) when she fi rst went to Indo- stability. From my perspective as a lawyer who has nesia. It was only much later that she earned an MA taken oaths to the law, I fi nd Madsen’s wider critique and then a PhD there. But she received those higher of anthropologists to have merit. degrees aft er working for those agencies that Madsen It should be an embarrassment to all of us that identifi es as violating international laws, including issues like these are now being raised in ridicule on the most basic laws that should be the basis for certi- us by journalists like Madsen because we, as anthro- fi cation as an anthropologist – certifi cation to ensure pologists, have not shown the competence and do adherence to the discipline’s ethical code for protect- not appear to care enough to practise what we preach ing the survival and sustainability of cultures and (and perhaps no longer even preach it). The sugges- against seeking to transform them for any outside tion that the son and half-brother of two anthropolo- (colonial) purpose. gists, who is also a lawyer but has no concept of or If the presentation in Madsen’s book on this is ac- concern for these most fundamental precepts that are curate (it is possible that it is not), apparently at no not only embedded in international law, basic moral time did Dunham stand fi rmly behind these princi- doctrine in Western culture, and oaths of professional ples or att empt to teach them to her son. While there associations (in anthropology as well as oaths of law- is no evidence to suggest that Dunham directly par- yers) but are also part of obligations to raising and ticipated in violations, Madsen suggests that the or- teaching children (and one’s students) is perhaps the ganisations that she associated herself with routinely most damning statement of our profession that one did. He also asserts that others in the fi eld, such as can make. Cliff ord Geertz, anthropologists at her university, the University of Hawaii, and those in the American An- Modern ‘Identities’ and Multicultural Ethnicities thropological Association, did nothing tangible that The political campaign and autobiographical nar- is on record to enforce these standards in any eff ec- rative that Barack Obama (Soetoro) presented tive way. Instead, he suggests that they all worked to throughout his US political career and repeated in undermine international law and to open the door to the international mass media is one of a ‘Black’ man fi nancial and political manipulation of the discipline of African descent identifying with US minorities and its members in ways that favoured use of foreign and also with developing nations. Madsen, by con- cultures for foreign fi nancial and political gain. trast, says that Obama has no real national or ethnic The area in which Dunham did work as an anthro- identity at all as a result of his parents’ and maternal pologist on her dissertation research, that of small- grandparents’ supposed national security state af- credit community banking projects for women and fi liations and institutional allegiances. In Madsen’s traditional craft s that are scaled up for export of their view, children who are raised in such households products, I have argued, is one that distorts local cul- and across borders are oft en empty vessels fulfi ll- tural sustainability in violation of international law in ing needs for the national security state. He charges promotion of a globalisation agenda (Lempert 2012b) that Obama used his ‘Black’ identity to infi ltrate while also exploiting women’s and children’s labour minority groups (in Chicago) and the Democratic (Lempert 2011). Madsen’s book, however, does not Party in order to subvert their agendas by following closely describe her work. Nearly 20 years ago, aft er methods that the security state has used to under- fi nding myself routinely pressured to engage in acts mine diverse political and community interests so that violated international law by some of the very that they conform with the goals of American (and same organisations in which Dunham worked, I global) elites.

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With regard to ethnic identity, Madsen’s book sug- Looking more closely at the arguments in Mad- gests that Obama was actually raised as a member sen’s book, though, it is clear that Obama was raised of a privileged Indonesian globalist elite, and that with a specifi c cultural identity, and it is a disturbing Obama’s real identity and surname should be that of one. Obama was raised in the contemporary ‘expa- his adoptive father (Soetoro) or the Indonesian name triate community’ that has its roots in former colo- that his mother gave him as a child (Soebarka): he nial communities of military, colonial administration should have an Indonesian identity, not an African functionaries, missionaries and business representa- one. His nanny was Indonesian, his classmates were tives. The identity of the elite expatriate subculture is Indonesian and apparently he was fl uent in Bahasa an imagined, created identity that is not defi ned by Indonesian. Though he left Indonesia aft er the fourth geography. There is no identifi able ‘expat town’, but grade, he continued his schooling in Hawaii with there may be streets where expatriates live together, upper class Asian-Americans, and his mother con- in the same way that there are ‘Black communities’ of tinued to live in Indonesia and then Pakistan. Apart people who identify as being ‘Black’ and who may or from his skin colour, Madsen argues, there is noth- may not live together. Anthropological terminology ing to suggest any identifi cation in any way with would describe this self-identifi ed elite community Africa. Madsen (based on Scott ’s book [2011]) says as a ‘subculture’ consisting of ‘neo-colonial’ foreign that Obama’s childhood dream was to become ‘Prime implementing agents working not just for the na- Minister of Indonesia’ when he grew up (82). tional security state but for multinational corpora- One can empathise with 10-year-old Barry, as he tions and a host of culture change agencies, teaching was called as a child. He had black skin in an Asian English, proselytising religion, changing local con- country, and he studied in a school with the children sumption and social structure patt erns to serve their of Indonesian elites whose parents were either part economic and political needs, and living ‘separately’ of a brutal genocidal confl ict or were in fear of being as an elite while exploiting in a variety of ways the targeted. Certainly, his classmates must have been natives with whom they come into contact. This par- acting out nightmares. He lived with a mother with ticular elite community is not the ‘expatriate commu- anger at his biological father for hiding the situation nity’ of exiles, refugees and intellectuals that existed of his fi rst wife and family in Kenya. He also lived in early-twentieth-century Paris. It is a subculture of in a household with emerging tension with his In- elites of shared interests and identity, which is oft en donesian stepfather for reasons that we do not know stronger than a group of people with shared national but maybe can guess, perhaps connected with Lolo or ethnographic affi liations. Soetoro’s military service and connected with the There seems to be litt le anthropological study of latt er’s holding a view of women that worked in expatriate communities and how they work as sub- Indonesian marriages but not with an independent cultures of colonialism, though perhaps this author American woman. Who would Obama have identi- is unaware of them. There are, however, good ex- fi ed with, and who would he have trusted? amples in fi ction like George Orwell’s Burmese Days Madsen (and Scott ) say that as a young man in (1934), Rudyard Kipling’s short story collections, and the US mainland at 22 Obama suddenly, for the fi rst works by Graham Greene (The Quiet American [1955], time, decided to defi ne himself the way Americans Our Man in Havana [1958] and The Heart of the Matt er now see him and probably did then – that is, simply [1948]) as well as some published diaries that I have by his skin colour. Madsen says that this is evidence listed elsewhere (Lempert 2014). (I kept one such di- that Obama was a CIA ‘infi ltrator’ in Chicago enter- ary in the Philippines when working for USAID in ing the Black community (281). It is more likely, as the 1980s that has been diffi cult to publish.) one of his ex-girlfriends commented (and that was Obama’s family had the status of elites, but not explored in fi lm, Southside with You [Richard Tanne, that of landed or corporate elites or dynastic/aristo- 2016],), that Obama simply had no idea who he was cratic families in the United States. They were only and was searching for some kind of identity. In that elites due to their status as expatriates. His mother, way, perhaps Madsen is right that Obama was vul- father and stepfather may have never worked for the nerable to being ‘programmed’ by a cult that would national security state, but they were entirely depen- give him a sense of belonging, which is the argument dent on its mission and its largesse, and so was their that he repeats throughout the book. In the contem- overseas community. In Jakarta, he was raised into an porary state, that cult is now oft en the security state elite, with a personal nanny living in his room and or police state apparatus and its lure of power and with maids, in much the way elite whites lived in the violence. rural south. That was Obama’s culture, identity and

46 | The President’s Mother the Anthropologist and the Anthropologist’s Son | AiA means of livelihood. Serving those interests brought (defi ned in the slogans of the 2016 presidential elec- scholarships, contracts and work. Opposing it meant tion as ‘Wall Street’, the ‘military-industrial com- having no means of livelihood in those communities plex’, ‘fossil-fuel companies’, ‘corporations’, ‘the 1%’, unless one was ready to be a maid or a nanny or a ‘neo-liberals’, and ‘the swamp’ of Washington, DC peasant farmer.4 and its bureaucracy) but to no specifi c country or The ‘multicultural’ identity that Obama learnt and culture. That subculture is one that is dependent on ‘chose’ when he returned to the mainland United the exploitation of resources and peoples, converting States is the one that is popularised today as part of minority peoples to a global ideology and enforcing the ‘postmodernist’ assimilative monoculture of glo- its authority through military power. The cultural balisation. Anthropologists promote it as one that is and identity vacuum that Obama’s mother appar- ‘diverse’ and ‘tolerant’ because it promotes choice ently gave him was one that he seems to have been of identities within the monoculture and avoids any taught only to fi ll with hollow, institutional identities confrontation with processes of globalisation and neo- or drives of power, violence and control rather than colonialism that are actually destroying the globe’s with any real appreciation for his ancestors, their remaining six thousand cultures. This view of cul- interactions with nature, and their place in the long- ture is politically ‘safe’ because it promotes an elite term survival of humanity. agenda. It is also empty and detached from the very Though not an anthropologist, Madsen is telling defi nition of culture on which international law is us that we, as anthropologists today, are giving our based and that many anthropologists once fought to children, our students and the world this lack of ap- protect; one based on true cultural diversity and sur- preciation. There can be litt le more shocking or repul- vival. The basic defi nition of our fi eld defi ned culture sive than this mirror image turned back on us of what as a community of peoples in a specifi c environment we are creating and what we appear to have become. and living within that environment and in a network of relationships rooted within it. In place of culture as Contemporary Political Culture defi ned by geography, language and practices, which Finally, there is something disturbing in the underly- were the founding concepts of the discipline, we now ing message that this book sends about the possibili- have political ideologies as cultures (‘socialist’ and ties for sett ing things back right. Madsen’s book plays ‘post-socialist’), hobbies and technological choices as on ideologies of fear and powerlessness, off ering no cultures (‘Internet culture’), individual businesses as solutions and suggesting that dark forces control cultures (‘corporate culture’, ‘organisational culture’), and undermine our hopes. In one sense, promoting single aspects of human needs as cultures (‘fast-food this sort of belief in hidden, unassailable forces that culture’, ‘slow-food culture’) and sexual preferences cannot be changed is the way that cultures perpetu- as cultures (‘gay culture’) among every other indi- ate themselves and prevent change. But all cultures vidual choice, single variable, and permutation. One confront situations where their only choice is to could also defi ne one’s subculture as that of global learn, prepare to adapt and change, or to die. As ap- elites and as part of fl exible networks of powerful plied anthropologists, our role is to understand the technocratic overseers, as one anthropologist does in ‘deep structures’ of power and mechanisms of social her study of ‘shadow elites’ (Wedel 2009). change, as well as to recognise cultural constructs In my view, what Obama’s mother and anthropol- that grow beyond their usefulness to the point of ogy failed to instil in Obama, and what is also one of threatening their cultures (or humanity). Our job is the failures of our discipline as a ‘discipline’ and of ap- to try to recognise the principles and technologies of plied social science, in my view, is the understanding reversing these failures. This seems to now be such a of culture as strategies of peoples rooted in their en- time for this kind of anthropological understanding vironments for their long-term survival. Had Obama and action, not just for major urban cultures like the had that simple understanding, he would have rec- United States but also for the planet. Stressing the ognized multiculturalism as tolerance for a variety of idea of ‘dark’ forces or ‘shadow’ politics will not lead intellectual adaptations of human groups to promote to solutions for anthropology, for social science re- human survival with their environments, and he search, for the role of universities or for the changing would have acted to encourage, respect and protect it of political institutions. everywhere as well as to welcome it in himself. Madsen’s book seeks to deny his own sense of per- Instead, the message he apparently got was a nega- sonal responsibility to present facts carefully and to tive and hollow one. His culture was the expatriate look beyond personalities and shadow forces and ide- subculture of mobile elites tied to shared interests ologies in order to focus on institutional and cultural

| 47 AiA | David Lempert structures and how they can be changed. He similarly she married the Indonesian Army Lieutenant Colo- denies Obama’s ability to accept personal responsibil- nel Lolo Soetoro and then (for reasons not entirely ity, as he denies the specifi c responsibilities of those clear) took Obama out of a private international in the anthropology community to international law school. Dunham enrolled Obama in the Menteng and to human welfare, and the professional responsi- State Elementary School, for Indonesians only and bility of the discipline as a whole. requiring an Indonesian passport that she obtained This essay att empts to challenge Madsen, his col- for him under the name Barack Soetoro or Barack leagues and others to face our responsibilities as pro- Soebarka (p. 69). Madsen suggests that, as a pre- fessionals, as parents and as citizens to uphold and requisite to receiving this passport, Obama had to demand that others adhere to international law, to revoke his U.S. citizenship since Indonesian law did not allow dual citizenship and would have needed uphold and enforce our professional ethics codes so the help of the CIA to do so. Whatever happened they are more than meaningless platitudes, to ensure suggests the knowledge of and perhaps indebted- that our profession is based on principles of science ness to the national security state. and discipline that work towards real technical so- lutions for long-term human survival and sustain- ability rather than just serve as dogmas that actually promote acceptance, passivity and inaction, and to References assure that we are teaching and modelling active applications of skills and morality in practice rather Beals, R. (1966), ‘Report Delivered to the Council of the than just preaching. It is a call on us to lead the path American Anthropological Association’, New York, to cultural change and adaptation before it is too late. 17 November. Lempert, D. (1997), ‘Commentary: Accountability in Anthropological Ethics’, Practicing Anthropology 19, no. 2: 36–39. PhD, JD, MBA, ED (Hon), is a Visiting DAVID LEMPERT, Lempert, D. (2011), ‘Open Lett er to the Spanish Gov- Scholar at the Institute for African and Asian Studies, ernment on Culture and Development Funding’, Humboldt University of Berlin. He is founder of Anthropology in Action 18, no. 3: 58–60. Unseen America Projects, Incorporated and the Di- Lempert, D. (2012a), ‘Open Lett er to World Bank Presi- aspora Bridge Center. He has worked in more than dent Kim: How Your Anthropology Training Is the 30 countries on issues of cultural survival, rights and Key to the Success of the (Currently Failing) World heritage protection over the past 30 years. Bank’, Anthropology in Action 19, no. 2: 37–40. E-mail: [email protected] Lempert, D. (2012b), ‘A Quick Indicator of Eff ectiveness of “Income Generation” and “Sustainable Business Initiatives” in International Development’, Econo- Note mology Journal 2, no. 2. htt p:// www.economologos .com/Lempert_EJ_II_Feb_2012.pdf. 1. This article was originally prepared for Anthropology Lempert, D. (2014), ‘Hidden Truths and Thought Ex- in Action in 2014 during Obama’s presidency. periments in Developing Societies: Popular Fiction 2. There is reasonably good evidence in Madsen’s book, and Development Studies’, Journal of Developing including photographic, to support the claim that Societies 30, no. 4: 389–414. Obama’s maternal grandfather, Stanley Armour Dun- ham, worked for the national security state, though Mead, M. (1971), ‘Report Delivered to the Council of maybe not for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). the American Anthropological Association’, New One could reasonably conclude that he worked for York, 19 November. U.S. ‘military intelligence’ and possibly in Lebanon Mills, C. W. (1956), The Power Elite (London: Oxford as one photograph infers. Similarly, the fact that University Press). Madelyn Dunham, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Price, D. H. (2003), ‘Subtle Means and Enticing Car- managed escrow accounts for the Bank of Hawaii is rots: The Impact of Funding on American Cold War insuffi cient evidence to implicate her in slush fund Anthropology’, Critique of Anthropology 23, no. 4: transfers for the CIA, though the book raises interest- 373–401. ing questions about her career networks. Scott , J. (2011), A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of 3. Madsen does hint at a second theory on the relation- Back Obama’s Mother (New York: Riverhead Books). ship between the CIA and Dunham and Obama that Wedel, J. (2009), Shadow Elite: How the World’s New may be more likely. Madsen makes a prett y good Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, case that Dunham changed her son’s name when and the Free Market (New York: Basic Books).

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