At many N.C. universities, an introductory anthropology course would deliver on a promise similar to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Anthropology 10 course description:

ANTH 10: General Anthropology
An introduction to anthropology, the science of humans, the culture bearing animal. Topics considered: human evolution and biological variations within and between modern populations, prehistoric and historic developments of culture, cultural dynamics viewed analytically and comparatively.

Under lecturer Alison Greene, however, this introduction to anthropology became “a daily diatribe against [President] Bush’s Iraq policy,” according to the March 2003 Carolina Review. In a May follow-up, publisher Steve Russell cited examples of Greene’s commandeering the course to attempt indoctrination. Greene showed a film entitled “Greetings from Iraq,” on the suffering of Iraqi people after the first Gulf War. She assigned the book Guests of the Sheik, which discussed life in a Shiite Muslim village in southern Iraq (a book that in itself is not out of the purview of even a general anthropology course), but she did so apparently to have an excuse for “injecting more political material into the course.”

Greene also introduced as course text a personal email from a friend of hers identified only as a “retired military expert” who “appears to claim that nuclear weapons are the only weapons of mass destruction” — but she neither distributed the email to the class nor clarified its author’s actual qualifications.

Greene’s course has also been discussed online at PoliticallyRight.com. UNC-CH masters student Chris Speck wrote that Greene “would lecture on [the Iraq war] directly, or make off-hand comments if her lectures did not deal specifically with Iraq. She showed the class anti-war websites such as www.iraqbodycount.com.”

Speck interviewed several people in the class. The following comments are taken from Speck’s article:

• “On the very first day of class she told us that she was against the war in Iraq and that she intended to make this a topic of discussion. … In some lectures she would spend a half an hour talking about Iraq’s weapons program”

• “If she didn’t talk about Iraq in every class, she did it at least once a week. … I told her that I would like to see her teach both sides of the argument, and she told me that she felt she only had enough time to present one side. She said that students can always turn on CNN to get a more pro-American view.”

• “I remember one time when she was discussing [iraqbodycount.com] and one guy raised his hand and asked where the site was for the civilian casualties that had been used by Saddam as human shields, and she basically dismissed it and didn’t pay attention to him.”

• “In a class that I’m paying for, that is part of a requirement, I would like to have a teacher that is more unbiased.”

What CR termed “the most egregious example of Greene’s fixation on Iraq” was a section on Greene’s midterm exam. Following are questions 37-39 from that exam, with the “correct” answer given in bold:

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37. In the video, Greetings from Iraq, the filmmaker demonstrates that U.N. sanctions mandated following the Gulf War of 1991
a. effectively weakened Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.
b. produced rampant inflation.
c. resulted in dramatic increases in malnutrition and related diseases among children.
d. made basic medicines and hospital supplies difficult or impossible to acquire.
e. ANSWERS “b.,” “c.,” and “d.” are all TRUE.

38. According to material presented in lecture written by a retired military weapons, munitions, and training expert, ____________________ are “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). In contrast, ______________________ are “area denial” and or terror weapons.
a. only nuclear weapons; chemical and biological weapons
b. only nuclear and biological weapons; chemical weapons
c. nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; land mines
d. only nuclear and chemical weapons; biological weapons
e. only chemical and biological; nuclear weapons

39. Using the definition above in combination with the findings of U.N. weapons inspectors, it is possible to state definitively that Iraq clearly _________________ “weapons of mass destruction.”
a. possesses, has used, and intends the future use of
b. does NOT possess
c. has exported
d. intends to supply terrorist groups with
e. formerly possessed but now has destroyed all of its
——————————————–

In the May issue, CR publisher Steve Russell interviewed Greene by telephone. According to Russell,
In the telephone interview, Greene quickly dismissed student concerns, although she acknowledged that “a small number have been expressing upsetness.”

When asked specifically about her students’ negative perceptions of the materials present in class, she said, “What I present in my teeny tiny bit of time has turned out to be too controversial, too hard for them, too upsetting, too threatening.” It would appear that she believes that the concerned students are not intelligent enough to appreciate her methods. “A lot of people coming from North Carolina high schools do not have experience thinking critically,” Greene later said.

Apparently more do than Greene expected, thus the “upsetness” over, in one student’s words, her “turn[ing] the class into a political machine” and that he “didn’t sign up for POLI 41,” the disgust over testing based on an unsupported and unverified personal email message, and the complaints that, in another student’s words, she “throws stuff out without empirical support.”