note: see below for a response from then-UT System Chancellor "Dollar Bill" Cunningham

September 11, 1995

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

Dear Chancellor Cunningham,

I write to resign my appointments, effective December 31, 1995, as Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnomusicology at The University of Texas at Austin.

Although UT has been supportive of my research and teaching, I no longer find it a morally acceptable place of employment. This is because my work, for almost twenty years, has been committed to the causes of ecological and cultural integrity on the Melanesian island of New Guinea. By contrast, you have steered the University toward collaboration in environmental destruction and criminal abuses of human rights in West Papua, the part of New Guinea now known as the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya (West Papua).

I am referring, of course, to your role on the Board of Directors of Freeport-McMoRan, a transnational mining company long active in Irian Jaya (West Papua). Freeport's Irian Jaya (West Papua) operation is well-known as the biggest taxpayer and business operator in Indonesia, ranked last month by seven separate business surveys as the most corrupt country in the world (copy enclosed). Freeport and the Indonesian state realize billions in gold and copper mining profits and reserves. But the environmental and blood price of Freeport and Indonesia's wealth is twenty-five years of dumping over 100,000 tonnes per day of poisons and wastes, and the forced dispossession, impoverishment and depopulation of indigenous New Guinean landowners.

You have aided this attempt at ecocide and ethnocide in a special way, by cultivating a revolving door relationship between yourself, the University, Freeport-McMoRan and its CEO, UT alumnus Jim Bob Moffett. For example, by ratifying a prospecting and research contract between Freeport's Irian Jaya (West Papua) operation and the UT Geology Department, you made it possible for Freeport to cheaply rent staff, students, and facilities of the University for their profit and yours. Likewise, for a donation of less than one-seventh the project cost, you engineered erecting a monument on the UT campus to your friend and business partner, Jim Bob Moffett. Once again your bottom line is not ethics but business: the cost of cultivating Moffett's donations is allowing Freeport to openly exploit the University as a research annex. The building in question is a molecular biology facility. Yet the man for whom it will be named is a molecular biology criminal. At least according to the Toxic Release Inventory published this past April by the Environmental Protection Agency; there Freeport-McMoRan is cited as the biggest corporate polluter of land, air, and water in North America (copy enclosed). To amplify the honor, Jim Bob Moffett is distinguished in the Austin community principally for one thing: tantrums and bully threats in retaliation for local refusal to let his development schemes ruin the region's most sensitive watershed.

I have also experienced, at a more personal level, how your relationship to Freeport has interfered with your ability to honorably lead the University. You have twice written me brief but kind letters in the last five years. One praised my receipt of a MacArthur Fellowship, another congratulated me for election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. There you said that such awards bring prestige to the University and make our association a proud one. I must question the sincerity of these statements, because every attempt that I made to follow them up and speak with you about Freeport's human rights record was met with silence. I even offered to provide you executive summary and copies of hundreds of pages of accounts of Freeport's role in Indonesian military detentions and murders of Melanesian civilians. But you have been unwilling to even acknowledge these overtures, much less acknowledge or participate in any campus forum on Freeport. Your lack of accountability presents the entire University community with a clear picture of arrogant disregard for democratic discussion.

I can no longer be proud of my association with the University, and certainly no longer wish to bring prestige to it. This feeling was surely intensified when I read last month's report (copy enclosed) by the Catholic Church of Jayapura on violations of human rights around Freeport's West Irian mine site. Among other things, the report provides eyewitness accounts of Indonesian military use of Freeport containers as detention and torture cells. I hope that you and your business partners will read and consider the severity of this report, as well as the companion one by the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (copy enclosed) documenting collaboration of Indonesian military and Freeport security forces to terrorize and abuse powerless civilians.

As UT's highest official you have placed the University for sale to and for the profit of Freeport-McMoRan, a company you help direct, a company that pays you a salary, a company whose stock you own. But this is more than a business conflict of interest. This is about how you have made the University complicit in Freeport's reckless destruction of the lives and lands of New Guineans colonized by Indonesia. For these reasons, my conscience and professional responsibility to Melanesian scholarship can no longer tolerate employment at The University of Texas at Austin.

Sincerely,

Steven Feld (Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, from January 1996)

cc: President Robert Berdahl, Provost Mark Yudof, Dean Sheldon Ekland-Olson

Enclosures:

1. "A Global Gauge of Greased Palms." The New York Times, August 20, 1995.
2. "Top 10 TRI Parent Companies with the Largest Air/Land/Water Releases 1993." U. S. Environmental Protection Agency Report, April 1995.
3. Violations of Human Rights in the Timika Area of Irian Jaya (West Papua), Indonesia. Report by the Catholic Church of Jayapura, Irian Jaya (West Papua), August 1995.
4. Trouble at Freeport: Eyewitness Accounts of West Papuan Resistance to the Freeport-McMoRan Mine in Irian Jaya (West Papua), Indonesia and Indonesian Military Repression, June 1994-February 1995. Report by the Australian Council for Overseas Aid, April 1995.

University of Texas Chancellor William H. Cunningham's response to Steven Feld, dated September 12, 1995.

Dear Dr. Feld:

I write in response to your letter of September 11 resigning your appointment as Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnomusicology at The University of Texas at Austin, effective December 31, 1995. I trust your academic experience at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will be productive and satisfying.

While I am confident that you are a widely recognized and highly respected professor of anthropologist and music, I am curious about your strong views concerning Freeport McMoRan and its operations in Indonesia, particularly since you have not visited the site personally. I hope that you will decide to visit Irian Jaya as I believe your views would differ dramatically from those you have expressed. As indicated previously, I have been to the mine site and have observed Freeport McMoRan's operations. Quite simply, I disagree with your views. Should you elect to visit the site and if I can facilitate matters, I would be pleased to do so.

I am well aware that environmental and human rights concerns are not only important societal issues, but they are also subject to distortion and highly charged rhetoric. Enclosed for your perusal is an article which was published in the August 28 issue of the Jakarta Post. As you will note, an official from the National Commission on Human Rights indicated that "None of the 23 witnesses we interviewed (In Timika, Irian Jaya,) said that the (FP Freeport) mining company was involved in the human rights abuses."

Regarding the issues you raise in connection with pollution and Freeport McMoRan operations in the United States, I think that it is appropriate to note that all of the company's activities are in total compliance with Environmental Protection Agency standards.

Sincerely, William H. Cunningham