David H. Price

anthropologist, author

David Price is Professor Emeritus at St. Martin’s University, where he taught anthropology for 30 years. He conducted cultural anthropological and archaeological fieldwork and research in the United States, Palestine, Egypt, and Yemen. His three-volume series of books for Duke University Press uses documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and archival sources to critically examine American anthropologists’ interactions with intelligence agencies: Threatening Anthropology (2004), documented McCarthyism’s chilling impacts on anthropologists; Anthropological Intelligence: The Use and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War (2008), examined anthropological contributions to the Second World War, and his Cold War Anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Rise of Dual Use Anthropology (2016), chronicled interactions between military and intelligence agencies during the Cold War. His book Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State (2011, CounterPunch Books), criticized U.S. military and intelligence agencies efforts to harness anthropology during the post 9/11 terror wars. His 2022 book The American Surveillance State: How the U.S. Spies on Dissent (Pluto Press) critiques FBI and US police political surveillance practices as threats to democratic movements. His newest book, Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA (2024, University of Washington Press) draws on declassified CIA documents and a massive archival collection to document how the CIA used the Asia Foundation in the 1950s and 1960s for covert political ends. He served on the American Anthropological Association (AAA) committees investigating anthropologists’ interactions with military and intelligence agencies (2006-2009), and on the AAA task force which wrote the Association’s current code of ethics (2008-2011); and he has served on the Society for Applied Anthropology’s Public Policy Committee (2009-2012). He is a founding member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.