ABSTRACT
Teaching culture to the US military was the last thing on author's mind when she completed her Ph. D. in sociocultural anthropology at Northwestern University. The position as the Professor of Operational Culture at Marine Corps University seemed reasonable enough: she would be teaching graduate-level university classes to senior Marine officers, and conducting research and publishing, just as in my current position in civilian academia. Local universities and community and political organizations all desired immediate lectures and roundtables from the UW faculty about Islam, the Middle East, and the current political situation. The growing racism and attacks against Muslims and "Arabs" indicated a depressing ignorance of the social, cultural, religious, and political context of events by the general public. Another ethical challenge has been negotiating the awkward boundary between academic freedom and government property. One of the greatest problems, of course, is that the objectivity of any work produced for and approved by a government organization is suspect.
