Simpson, Christopher, ed. Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War. New York: The New Press, 1998. 277 pages.

This is a collection of ten heavily-footnoted essays by scholars. Most of them examine the role of American universities and government funding during the Cold War. Classic examples of this included CIA-funded centers at MIT, Harvard, and Columbia. There was also a heavy CIA presence, usually through the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations, in the development of international studies and area studies on other campuses. Research in such topics is often hampered because documents are still classified, so this book can be considered the tip of the iceberg.

Ellen Herman contributes an excellent chapter on Project Camelot, which was the Pentagon's ambitious 1963 plan to research Latin American populations, in order to develop a database for waging psychological warfare. Editor Christopher Simpson does the introduction, and has also treated his specialty, the influence of psywar spooks in the development of social science and communications studies, in his book "Science of Coercion." Finally, Lawrence Soley writes about the invasion of the big corporations. Since Vietnam, these have replaced the Pentagon and CIA on campus, and have compromised many universities just as thoroughly. Soley also treats this better in his own book, "Leasing the Ivory Tower."
ISBN 1-56584-519-6

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