A copy of this letter also appeared in the first issue of (sub)TEX

March 28, 1994

Chancellor William H. Cunningham,
The University of Texas System,
601 Colorado Street,
Austin, Texas 78701-2982

Dear Chancellor Cunningham,

Thank you for your March 22, 1994 letter of congratulations acknowledging my election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I would like to once again respond to this recognition from the University as I did in June of 1991, following receipt of both the J. I. Staley Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship. My response concerns the painful irony I feel when I read letters that stress the pride the University takes in our continued association.

The research for which I have been honored concerns the cultural integrity and aspirations of indigenous people in Papua New Guinea. This work stresses the complex connections of rainforest ecology and culture; it also addresses the devastating environmental and human consequences of deforestation and mining. Contrast this with your board membership and the University Geology department's activities on behalf of Freeport-McMoRan Inc. These activities lend credibility to Freeport's West Papua mining projects, operations that produce enormous wealth here while directly contributing to ecological degradation and human rights abuses on the island of New Guinea.

In response to this contradiction I urge you now, as I did before, to break all ties between yourself, the University of Texas System, and Freeport-McMoRan Inc. I further urge you to appoint an advisory board of academic auditors to examine University complicity in local and global environmental and cultural destruction. With the help of such an advisory board I would hope that the University might make proper reparations for its participation in ecological and human rights abuses.

Because your letter uses the diminutive form of my first name and yours, and sends me your best personal regards, you invoke a tone of friendship and common cause. In fact, we have never met, and you have steadfastly refused to respond to all initiatives toward a public or private forum on the University's relationship with Freeport-McMoRan Inc. Given the denial of any opportunity to discuss our respective views, I feel compelled to respond by open letter. With this note then I hope to remind you how strongly my research is in direct opposition to the wreckage and loss, the poverty and pain that the University's association with Freeport- McMoRan Inc. brings daily to the island of New Guinea.

Sincerely,
Steven Feld,
Director, Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnomusicology,
Professor of Anthropology and Music