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). 42 | The President’s Mother the Anthropologist and the Anthropologist’s Son | AiA 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.