Battle in the Scholarly World

By Ellie McGrath

An anthropologist fights Stanford over a code of ethics

His brilliance is unquestioned, and so is his ability as a researcher. But late last month, Steven Mosher, 34, a candidate for a doctorate in anthropology at Stanford University, was expelled by his department without public explanation. Although the reasons why Mosher was so sternly punished remained murky, his case was being hotly debated last week by academics since it raised questions about the ethical standards and political difficulties of anthropological research.

Mosher, who speaks fluent Cantonese, won a coveted research grant to go to China in 1979 to study a community. The Chinese allowed him the unusual opportunity of choosing where to do his field work. He picked the Starwood Brigade, the ancestral village of his Hong Kong-born wife Maggie So, from whom he is now divorced. Officials even traveled from Peking to tell Brigade leaders to cooperate with Mosher. During the course of his nine-month stay, Mosher put together the most detailed firsthand account of village life in contemporary China by a Western scholar.

He also became emotionally involved in the life of his villagers. Outraged to see women who were seven, eight, and even nine months pregnant forced to undergo abortions, he protested to then Vice Premier Chen Muhua, head of the national birth control program. Chinese officials were soon complaining to visiting American scholars that Mosher was abusing his status as a researcher. At various times the Chinese accused Mosher of traveling in forbidden areas, trying to smuggle old coins out of the country, bribing villagers to gain information and bringing in an unauthorized female companion from Hong Kong. Mosher has denied all those charges.

Mosher left China for Taiwan in June 1980, and in May 1981 took a step that angered Peking and appalled many anthropologists as well: he published an article in the Times Weekly magazine in Taipei that described the mandatory birth control program in Chinese villages. The article was illustrated with photographs of women in advanced states of pregnancy who were about to have abortions. Peking saw the article as anti-Chinese propaganda. Zhao Fusan, a top official of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warned Kenneth Prewitt, president of the Social Science Research Council, that if Mosher were not disciplined, there could be "negative consequences" for scholarly exchanges. In February 1982, Fusan asked Stanford to "deal with this matter sternly."

The university set up a fact-finding committee that looked into all the accusations against Mosher, including those by his exwife, who independently charged that he had acted unethically. After hearing Mosher's side of the case, twelve mem bers of the anthropology department voted unanimously to expel him for "behavior inappropriate for an anthropologist." Mosher, who plans to appeal the decision to the Stanford administration and may take the case to court, insists: "I was expelled because Stanford chose to believe the charges brought against me by the Chinese and chose to believe that by publishing articles and photographs in Taiwan that I gravely endangered innocent villagers."

Stanford's anthropology chairman, Clifford Barnett, will not discuss the specific causes of dismissal, but says that the Taiwan article was "not the issue." A number of leading scholars familiar with the Stanford investigation agree that the article was not the cause of the expulsion. Says Charles Townes, chairman of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China: "The problem is not one of freedom of speech. It's one of unprofessional behavior."

Mosher now admits that he was foolish to have published the article. Many leading U.S. anthropologists believe that it violated the profession's code of ethics by failing to disguise the women pictured and to protect their privacy. In addition, officials who allowed Mosher to take the photographs were exposed to possible punishment by higher authorities. Says Prewitt: "What Mosher discovered is an important contribution to anthropology. How he reported it is a tragedy for the field."

Prewitt and many other experts, including Stanford's Barnett, agree that Mosher had a right to publish his research. The usual practice, however, is to write an article for a professional journal. Mosher eventually did that, contributing a report, without pictures, to the scholarly Asian Survey journal. A book, titled Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese, will be published by Macmillan in the fall. Says Mosher: "I have an obligation to the Chinese whose lives I shared to document the reality of village life under Communism."

Anthropologists admit that some scholars might not print anything at all about so controversial a subject. Field research in some totalitarian countries, says Columbia University's Thomas Bernstein, demands "a great deal of tact and sensitivity." He concedes: "If I knew that my publication of some material would cause my colleagues to be barred from China, I would think really hard." Some U.S. scholars working in India and Pakistan are careful not to offend their host governments for fear of being expelled. Americans who work as exchange scholars in the Soviet Union can afford to be a bit more aggressive because the Soviets want permission for their researchers to operate in the U.S.

In the past two years, the Chinese government has sharply restricted access by U.S. scholars. The program that sent Mosher to China now has only four humanists and social scientists working in the country, in contrast to the 50 or so Mosher recalls from his day. No one is allowed to study villages, where about 75% of all Chinese live. But American scholars do not blame Mosher for the crackdown. Says Norma Diamond, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan: "The kind of extensive social investigation that anthropologists require has never been understood or welcome in China." Many believe that the Chinese were just looking for an excuse to turn away foreigners. Says Harvard Professor Merle Goldman, a member of the committee that gave Mosher his funding: "I don't think Mosher was wholly responsible as an academic. He played right into their hands.''

-- By Ellie McGrath.

Reported by Ross H. Munro/ Washington and Donald Shapiro/ Taipei

With reporting by Ross H. Munro, Donald Shapiro This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.