McGill Hour
“Should We Send More of our Professors to War Zones?”
Professor Carroll, Political Science Department
Thursday, Oct. 8 from 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. in the McGill TV Lounge
In 2006 the U.S. military established the Human Terrain System, a program designed to meet its urgent need for cultural, social and political knowledge on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately a group of professors, many of whom had no direct experience of either the U.S. military or the countries where they were headed, donned body armor and joined brigade combat teams, hoping to somehow help. The result of this bold experiment was sometimes tragic, sometimes comic and often scandalous, as numerous commentators have pointed out. But sometimes it also succeeded, though perhaps in ways not foreseen by its founders. Drawing on her own experience as a Human Terrain Team social scientist in Iraq and on emerging accounts of others’ work in the program, Professor Carroll will help us consider what use an academic can be on the battlefield and whether, in the future, more professors should be prepared to go to war.
Sponsor: The McGill Project
Contact: Maggie Collett
margaret.m.collett@vanderbilt.edu