Franz Boas
emjohnson | July 9, 2009On July 9, 1858 the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas was born. To honor the man widely held as the "father of American anthropology" the American Anthropological Association offered a tribute for Boas today on their blog. What conveniently went unmentioned was the fact that the AAA censured Boas in 1918 for revealing that American anthropologists were covertly working as spies for the US government.
As Boas wrote to the editor of The Nation:
The point against which I wish to enter a vigorous protest is that a number of men who follow science as their profession, men whom I refuse…