Hugh Gusterson is a professor of anthropology and international affairs at George Washington University. With a Ph.D. from Stanford, he has conducted fieldwork among nuclear weapons scientists and anti-nuclear activists. He writes about nuclear culture, drone warfare, counterinsurgency, international security, and ethics. His books include Drone: Remote Control Warfare, People of the Bomb: Portraits of America’s Nuclear Complex, and Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the end of the Cold War. Gusterson is a regular contributor to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and his essays have appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, Science, Nature, and New Scientist. He is also president of the American Ethnological Society.
Trump’s threats to Iran’s cultural treasures are the latest in a long history of such tactics. Thousands of artistic and architectural marvels have been destroyed in wars—a travesty that must be stopped.
War monuments and memorials are a source of contention in the United States. It’s time to reimagine the ways we memorialize the heroes and victims of war.
In its first six weeks, the Trump administration has been actively demonizing the mainstream media and the courts. This could be an ominous sign of what is to come.
Viral fake-news stories like Pizzagate are having a surprisingly significant influence, and they are only going to proliferate.
A Trump presidency would mean the end of diplomacy as we know it.
A disproportionate number of mass killings in the U.S. have been committed by military veterans. We should be asking ourselves why.