Education: Battle in the Scholarly World

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An anthropologist fights Stanford over a code of ethics

His brilliance is unquestioned, and so is his ability as a researcher. But late last month, Steven Mosher, 34, a candidate for a doctorate in anthropology at Stanford University, was expelled by his department without public explanation. Although the reasons why Mosher was so sternly punished remained murky, his case was being hotly debated last week by academics since it raised questions about the ethical standards and political difficulties of anthropological research.

Mosher, who speaks fluent Cantonese, won a coveted research grant to go to China in 1979 to study a community. The Chinese allowed him the unusual opportunity of choosing where to do his field work. He picked the Starwood Brigade, the ancestral village of his Hong Kong-born wife Maggie So, from whom he is now divorced. Officials even traveled from Peking to tell Brigade leaders to cooperate with Mosher. During the course of his nine-month stay, Mosher put together the most detailed firsthand account of village life in contemporary China by a Western scholar.

He also became emotionally involved in the life of his villagers. Outraged to see women who were seven, eight, and even nine months pregnant forced to undergo abortions, he protested to then Vice Premier Chen Muhua, head of the national birth control program. Chinese officials were soon complaining to visiting American scholars that Mosher was abusing his status as a researcher. At various times the Chinese accused Mosher of traveling in forbidden areas, trying to smuggle old coins out of the country, bribing villagers to gain information and bringing in an unauthorized female companion from Hong Kong. Mosher has denied all those charges.

Mosher left China for Taiwan in June 1980, and in May 1981 took a step that angered Peking and appalled many anthropologists as well: he published an article in the Times Weekly magazine in Taipei that described the mandatory birth control program in Chinese villages. The article was illustrated with photographs of women in advanced states of pregnancy who were about to have abortions. Peking saw the article as anti-Chinese propaganda. Zhao Fusan, a top official of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warned Kenneth Prewitt, president of the Social Science Research Council, that if Mosher were not disciplined, there could be "negative consequences" for scholarly exchanges. In February 1982, Fusan asked Stanford to "deal with this matter sternly."

The university set up a fact-finding committee that looked into all the accusations against Mosher, including those by his exwife, who independently charged that he had acted unethically. After hearing Mosher's side of the case, twelve mem bers of the anthropology department voted unanimously to expel him for "behavior inappropriate for an anthropologist." Mosher, who plans to appeal the decision to the Stanford administration and may take the case to court, insists: "I was expelled because Stanford chose to believe the charges brought against me by the Chinese and chose to believe that by publishing articles and photographs in Taiwan that I gravely endangered innocent villagers."