Montgomery McFate
Montgomery McFate | |
---|---|
Born | Mitzy Carlough[1] January 8, 1966 |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Harvard Law School (JD, 1997) Yale University (PhD, Anthropology, 1994) University of California, Berkeley (BA, Anthropology) |
Known for | Study of counterinsurgency and insurgent populations, anthropology of warfare |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Anthropology |
Institutions | United States Navy Naval War College, Minerva Chair, 2011– United States Army Human Terrain System, Senior Social Scientist, 2007–2010 United States Institute of Peace 2006–2007 Office of Naval Research RAND Corporation |
Montgomery McFate (also known as Montgomery Sapone[
Early life
McFate was raised in the houseboat community in Sausalito, California, at the time a "hippie" community. Her parents were artists and associates with such figures as Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.[2][5] She grew up in poverty, living on a converted barge with no plumbing. In high school, McFate spent much of her time in the burgeoning early-1980s San Francisco punk scene, but at the same time, was a strong student with an academic focus, earning numerous scholarship that helped put her through college.[2] During this time, McFate was a close friend of Cintra Wilson, and the character Lorna in her novel Colors Insulting to Nature is largely based on the young McFate.[1]
Academic career
She went on to study
While in graduate school, she married a US Army officer, Sean Sapone (the two would later adopt the maiden surname of his mother, Mary McFate). After earning her JD, she spent the next several years, variously, as an associate in a San Francisco law firm, working for
Defense career
It was after the
Over the next several years, McFate worked as a defense
McFate is alleged in several magazine articles to have been the blogger "Pentagon Diva", who briefly ran a blog called "I Luv a Man in Uniform" where she commented on the "hotness" of various Department of Defense officials and analysts.[1][8]
Publications
Books
- Montgomery McFate and Janice H. Laurence, Social Science Goes to War: The Human Terrain System in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN 9780190216726
- Montgomery McFate, Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects at the Margins of Empire. Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN 9780190680176
Articles
- (as Montgomery Sapone) Ceasefire: The impact of Republican culture on the ceasefire process in Northern Ireland, Journal of Conflict Studies, 21(1), 2001. (PDF)
- Anthropology and counterinsurgency: The strange story of their curious relationship, Military Review, March–April 2005, p 24–38.
- Iraq: the social context of IEDs, Military Review, May–June 2005, p 37–40..
- (with Andrea Jackson) "An Organizational Solution for DoD's Cultural Knowledge needs", Military Review, July–August 2005, pp. 18–21. ]
- The military utility of understanding adversary culture, Joint Forces Quarterly, Summer 2005, p 42–48.
- (with Andrea Jackson) The object beyond war: counterinsurgency and the four tools of political competition, Military Review, January–February 2006, p 13–26.
Controversy
Anthropology and the military
The relationship between anthropologists and the military has long been the subject of controversy. Nevertheless, by the late 1960s, most Western anthropologists had come to reject such collaboration as a breach of trust between anthropologist
McFate sought to reverse this trend, holding that it was possible for a mutually beneficial relationship to emerge between the US military and the populations that insurgency sprang from. This approach, however, has largely been negatively received by the anthropological community, and the American Anthropological Association issued resolutions in 2007 and 2008 condemning the kind of military/anthropological collaboration McFate had called for.[citation needed]
The Human Terrain System was condemned by the American Anthropological Association in November 2007, which called it an "unacceptable application of anthropological expertise."[1] The program also came under fire for allegedly poor organization and execution and limited effectiveness.[9]
A 2010 audit by the Army's Auditing Agency (AAA) identified weaknesses in the program's execution.[citation needed] The final AAA investigation, completed in the summer of 2014, did not uncover any significant weaknesses in the program's execution, and found that the program offered significant value to military units.[citation needed]
References
- ^ a b c d "McFate's Mission" by Nina Burleigh, More, September 2007.
- ^ a b c d e f "Montgomery McFate's Mission" by Matthew B. Stannard, San Francisco Chronicle, April 29, 2007.
- ^ "Montgomery McFate" Archived 2010-06-05 at the Wayback Machine, MontgomeryMcFate.com, 2008. Accessed, 2008-12-11.
- ^ "USNWC Faculty Profiles". Archived from the original on 2011-09-20. Retrieved 2011-06-09.
- ^ a b c d e "Knowing the Enemy" by George Packer, The New Yorker, December 18, 2006.
- ^ "There's Something About Mary: Unmasking a Gun Lobby Mole" by James Ridgeway, Daniel Schulman, and David Corn, Mother Jones, July 30, 2008.
- Charlie Rose Show, December 24, 2007.
- ^ "Do Pentagon Studs Make You Want to Bite Your Fist?" by Sharon Weinberger, Wired blog, June 17, 2008.
- doi:10.1038/455583a.
External links
- MontgomeryMcFate.com
- Guide to Specialists: Montgomery McFate, United States Institute of Peace, 2007. (Archived at Archive.org.)
- "Human Terrain Systems", interview with Montgomery McFate, The Current, October 17, 2007. (Scroll down.)[failed verification]
- "Army Brat" by Louisa Kamps, Elle, April 2008.
- "Army Anthropologist's Controversial Culture Clash" by Noah Shachtman, Wired, September 23, 2008.
- "Raised Eyebrows over Keynote Choice" by Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, November 26, 2008.
- "Should anthropologists work alongside soldiers?" by Dan Vergano and Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, December 8, 2008.
- "Brave Thinkers: Montgomery McFate", The Atlantic, November 2009.