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What would you do if you learned people in your academic discipline were using their research to further human rights abuses in other parts of the world? For Kanhong Lin, a graduate student in anthropology at American University, the answer was to co-author resolutions for the American Anthropological Association’s consideration (they passed). Lin’s resolutions, which condemn the use of anthropological knowledge in the devising of (culturally-specific) torture techniques, were spurred in part by a 2004 report showing that anthropological knowledge had been used in developing the Abu Ghraib methods. (And while we’re generally loath to throw around gratuitous Nazi comparisons, that’s, like, Mengele creepy.)

12/4/06 Read More from American